Julian Köpke

Ansel Adams was a pianist. There’s even an edition of recordings of him from the 30s. For a long time he struggled whether he should become a pianist or a photographer.

Reading his book “The Negative” not only gives me insight into the technical processes that the “analogue” photographers had to struggle with. His often short sentences or comments on the image evaluation are an inspiring source, which always evoke in me the image of a qualified musician from Ansel Adams. He didn’t loose the spirit of music when photographing or processing.

His comments on infrared photography inspired me to rework a color image of the northern part of the island of Sylt and to study the effect of different color filters on contrasts and tonality.

I am feeling rewarded that this picture was chosen for the group in explore by Flickr this morning.

The contrasts in the color image are weaker, the color also distracts a little from the mood of an impending thunderstorm. A bit of luminosity or radiance comes out better in the clouds in the black and white image.

My others in explore pictures are here.

Has the future ever been read from the migration of the clouds ? Their forms and movements have always been exciting and inspiring for me. A vortex of clouds immediately creates a vortex of emotions.

That is why clouds have long been the subject of my photographic interest and I have created a considerable collection of cloud images.

Last night a long heat wave ended with a thunderstorm. Above our house the clouds were swirling, lightning sometimes closer, sometimes further away. Islands of brightness changed rapidly in a threatening sea of black clouds.

In some ways, these clouds remind me of interstellar gas clouds in our galaxy. In the example below the colors of the panorama image of M8 (or „Lagoon Nebula“) are suppressed to better recognize the structure.