Safari

I didn't go straight to work this morning. The weather was superb and I went to Hollufgaard, an old mansion in the southeast of Odense. I had a notion of photographing trees - which I did, but this mornings shot all of itself got a diffrent theme: a blackbird having breakfast - I think it's in a hawthorn. It took a couple of shots (continuous mode) before he/she showed me the profile...

Click on the picture to go to a larger size

Financial Crisis

Read an interesting story this morning from a Danish site Comon. The gist of the matter was the current international financial crisis might have been exacerbated by the computer systems and their underlying trading software responsible for much of the trading on the international stock exchanges.
Underpinning the article were references to a BBC article about the matematicians' role in market mayhem. These "quants" (quantitaive analyst) as they are often referred to, are behind the it-logic of many computerized trading systems. Automated trading in conjunction with highly sophisticated financial instruments such as derivatives are to a large extent responsible for the depth and breadth of the current crisis, according to Comon.
Intriguing thought - though I personally find the subprime-crisis in the US a key component in the breakdown. Giving loans to people, who are ill-suited to honour their obligations is a recipe for disaster once the housing-market starts to slide...

Hello again.

A veeery long time since I've been here - time to start again, I think. It's been such a long time there was a reply for one of my posts from Nov/07 I'd missed checking up on. Sorry Richard/Ricardo...
As of now I'm back into digital photography - I've bought a new camera (Nikon D90) and am busy putting it through it's paces. I haven't learned it fully yet, but the process of doing it is fun & I learn a lot along the way. I've realized I have to master the digital processing if I want to take full advantages of the camera and have the desired level of control over the final output. So - onto Photoshop Elements and Lightroom. So of now I have to negotiate three steep learning curves: the camera's, PE and LR. Phew...
Well- the innards of all this is probably for other photofreaks out there, so I'll spare the general public my rants. Check out my links-box for pointers to my photo hide-outs on the net if you MUST know what's going on photowise. I'll pop a photo here every now and then.
Above's one of the latest of him...

Long time - no see (& a few updates)

As of this summer I've been made grandfather. My eldest son and his wife got a son, who in the beginning of September was christened Nathaniel in a fine ceremony held i Landskrona, Sweden.
A bevy of family and friends was there and had a fine day - the little man was more interested in having dinner appointments with his mum and then a nap, another dinner and yet another nap &.... More of his merits to come, shortly more pictures too.

I've been away from my blog for quite some time. I have had some pressing (problems) to attend to. Suffice it to say, that I'm back at the keyboard and will blog true to the headings on the blog: rants 'n' raves, interests and so forth.

On another note: a couple of weeks ago we lost our cat. Old age (17 yrs) in conjunction with weak kidneys put an end to her life. So hard and sad to hold her for the last time knowing the vet's syringe would not make her well, but instead put an end to her life!!
We miss her so much. Her ways and habits were a fixture of our daily life, summer and winter, whether at home or in the summer-cottage, which she loved very much, hunting mice, watching birds knowing they were as unattainable to her as a Ferrari is to us. No more shall our black, feline friend greet us when we come home from work or demand her various tidbits during the day, tiny bits of cheese for instance during evening tea.

Aage

Aage
Originally uploaded by Joern W.

I made a haiku-poem for our cat. Strictly speaking not a Haiku, but rather a senryu-poem. (I'm a little uncertain here, but anyway).
It's in Danish - so English-speaking readers will have to bear with me.

Bløde potelyd
Forstummede for altid
Sorte katteven.
--
A tentative English version:
Soft sounding paws
Fell silent for ever
Black feline friend

Languages

One of my interests is language - it ought to be plural: I have a great love for languages. Danish - of course, my mother tongue, English is my chief secondary language, I know it tolerably well, read most of my books in English. I can get reasonably by in German, and also likes Swedish - unlike some Danes who tend to think they have to dislike the muscial tongue of our neighbours to the east of Øresund. Is it so they can't forget that the major part of southern Sweden used to be Danish and they can get a sort of revenge by not liking Swedish?

Topping my hit list of languages however is French. I know of no other language, which is so evocative to listen to - I love to tune in to TV 5 from France and just listen to this marvellous language - poetry and music vibrate in every sentence. It is as if all possible sounds one can have in a language is rolled into French in the most charming and titillating way possible. Try to read a poem in French or have it read out to you if you don't know the language that well. This really brings the magic in the language out. I'm not - however - very fluent in French, but I'm working hard on it and enjoy the process a lot. One way I've found to improve my French is via chat-rooms (Second Life of late) - it's not difficult to find Frenchmen eager to pass on knowledge and partake in an education process. I've begun reading in French to augment the learning process. I've set out with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's wonderful fable "Le Petite Prince" - I know it from way back in a Danish version, to which I can resort if I'm unable to precisely decipher the meaning - it's not that hard though. I'll follow up with other of his works when finished with the prince.

I can't resist the temptation to let you sample a bit from The Little Prince. It's from chapter VIII - the little prince gets to know a beautiful rose, which begins to grow on his tiny planet. Saint-Exupéry describes the rose coming into bloom (a female, of course) thus: "... Elle s'habillait lentement, elle ajustait un à un ses pétales. Elle ne voulait pas sortir toute fripée somme les coquelicots. Elle ne voulait apparaître que dans le plein rayonnement de sa beauté. Eh! oui. Elle était trés coquette ! Sa toilette mystérieuse avait donc duré des jours et des jours. Et puis voici qu'un matin, justement á la heure de lever du soleil, elle s'était montrée".

Concert

Concert time!
Friday night, Odense Koncerthus. The programme was Beethovens 4. piano concert and Shostakovich 14. symphony. Beethoven is invariably for me something special. Many consider Mozart to be the greatest. I don't disagree - his oeuvre leaves nothing to be desired. It is perfect in all respects. Beautiful music just (!) picked out of the skies, borrowed from the gods of music to bring us joy.

Ludwig - is another matter. Beethovens music is a work of extremes: jubilant joy in contrast with the deepest sorrow and bitterness. When he is joyful few other composers match him. His fourth piano concert leaves me almost in tears each time I hear it - ditto for his first violin concerto, I still remember the first time I as a young man heard it. Merely calling to mind bits from the concerto (Wolfgang Schneiderhahn as soloist) still gives me goose-bumps. I've had the fortune of hearing Anne-Sophie Mutters rendition of the sampe piece in Odense a couple of years ago - truly beautiful. I was elated for hours afterwards.

Alas - the concert: The pianist - Herbert Schuch (photo above - no, to the left!) admirably joined the task together with the spirited orchestra of bringing Beethovens melodiuos masterpiece to life - let me say they and he succeded with bravura. His play: subtle, energetic, pensive, joyful. It was all there my friends! We liked Schuchs performance so much he gave the encore of encores: Mozarts Rondo Alla Turca. Suffice it to say he brought the house down - sparks flew from his perfomance, technical brilliance and gusto to his style of play - Wolfi must have been pleased no end in his heavens. Listen out for Herbert Shuch out there, his star is on the ascent!

Shostakovich was an other matter. His symphony is more of a musical cyklus done over poems by Lorca, Apollinaire, Rilke and others, than a symphony in the classical sense. The sombre theme of the poems is death - Shostakovich isn't protesting against death, but death brought about by war, executions and violence. Sombre indeed, but very moving.

Why golf?

Hmm... As a golfer I shouldn't be asking this question or maybe that's exactly the question to ask. Sometimes when your game goes haywire and the shots are dispersed all over the course, the question inevitably pops up: Why don't I give up the game and do something productive with my costly spare time?
I'll give you my answer to the riddle: simplicity, complexity, improbability, refinement, gratification and play.
Golf is essentially a simple game: it's you, your abilities, your gear, the ball and the course. The ball doesn't move prior to your hitting it, you don't have to deal with opponents physically as in many other sports. On another note golf is a wildly complex game: all of the above components interact in myriads of ways not easily predicted, even less easily controlled.
Golf is probably one of the most improbable games in the world given it's fundamentals: the lenght of the clubs you use and their ridiculously small heads, the tiny ball (roughly 42 mm in diametre), the lenght of the holes (up to nearly half a kilometre for the longer ones) and the difficulties you may encounter en route to the tiny "cup" in the green, awaiting the ball. I know of no other game where the minuteness of the ball-contact area on your tools is in such stark proportion to the vast distances the ball is supposed to cover in relatively few shots (five or less for holes of nearly half a kilometre, ideally)
Once on the green, your tribulations are not over. Your objective is now to send the ball rolling into a hole of a diametre of 104 mm, on a bad day you may find your ball sitting a goodish 20 metres from the cup. Even if it's closer, as it's supposed to be, easy success is not granted.

Refinement and dedication is my answer to the improbabilities and complexities of the game. You have a gazillion tons of grooving to do before your coarse beginners mechanics are moulded into something that's usable and dependable over and over again. Ideally you have to be able to perform without thinking consiously about how to do your different shots mechanically. This can entail exercise shots running into the hundred thousands or more before the ol' autopilot is to be reasonably trusted. Moreover it's a work that never ends. So liking the hard, lonely work on the driving range definitely is, to this golfers mind, a bonus.

When everything clicks gratification sets in. Your swing works, you rotate seeming effortlessly the body around your spine, arms and hands follow suit, the clubhead meets the ball with a soft "plop" - you see the ball sail off in the air on a long, sweeping parabola, land on the green grass, hop a few times and roll to a stop. Rotation, suppleness and the strenght and grace of a ballet-dancer are the words of magic here, not brute force, mes amis.

I never play to win. I play to play - if I do it well, I win. Winning is an added bonus, but it isn't therefore I play golf. If I lose it's because I've performed badly, it is really that simple. What keeps my interest in the game alive is the joy of making all of the elements in golf: mechanics, the course, the weather, the conditions work in unison to produce a string of situations where you feel you can rise to the challenges of the game in a both physical and mental ( Zen?) way.
Although you often play together with other golfers, golf is by its nature a game for soloists, you are essentially on your own on the course. Golf can never be mastered, it's not a game to be controlled.

If you want the essentials on golf

Photography

Spring... in a moment
Originally uploaded by Joern W.

I promised (threatened?) in an earlier post to blog more about photograpy. So be it.
I've been spending a lot of time on flickr lately, I can only recommend other photo-addicts to do the same. flickr is much more than a convenient site for keeping your photos accessible to all and sundry. What to me sets flickr apart is the very powerful tools for cooperation and sharing. As a photographer - talent aside - you get a huge audience for your pics. Do the courtesy of commenting on other peoples photos and soon comments begin to trickle in to your own. This is of course always nice: I'm seen, somebody notices me and what I do!
Some comments are of the "pat-on-the-back" type, where others are more critical in the good sense of the word. If you hunt a bit for it you can get comments on your shots by people, who really are in the know. Thus you're suddenly able to learn from a goodish number of talented people in the field, get feedback on your work and give feedback in kind. I personally enjoy giving critisism - I feel I really have to concentrate in order to evaluate a photo fairly and give useful critisism the photographer (hopefully) can use constructively.
I have been on flickr now for about a month and feel I already have learned a lot. I'm much more aware of what I'm doing when i set about taking a photo. I feel I've just begun a learning process that can go on for as long as I want to partake in it.
On another note, which I will blog a little about in a coming post: I have gotten to know a number of people on flickr already - it seems many flickrites are quite sociable and I feel quite at home among them - have to come by flickr just about each day, in fact!
Thinking visually, juggling with composition, colours and shades, trying to bring out the hidden story in a scene is both a challenge and a joy. The vignette beginning this post is an example of what I do photo-wise these days and demonstrates very well the capabilites of a nimble Nikon Coolpix point and shoot camera.

Language

Readers of my blog will notice I've done a change in to ways: one in terms of layout (I like the wider layout better, a bit more dull, p'haps, stylish for others), but I digress. At the end of the day it's contents that matters(!)
The other change is more profound: I've changed from Danish to English. This is not without reasons or some considerations: A goodish number of my contacts speak and write English (on flickr the lingua franca is English) and the people I know in Denmark all have a fair command of English. That includes my two sons, who both have a strong linguistic instinct (Danish: sprogøre, English: ear for language (I tried to find an expression for the Danish variant, no luck. )). When we're together we frequently lapse into fits of mirth when we pull the stops out and let our fantasy run rampant in our's (and foreign) languages.
I do the change irrespective of the fact, that I never can gain the same command over English as I have over Danish. A number of situations will occur where I cannot express myself as well on a foreign language as on mine, corners will have to be cut and the end-result might not be entirely satisfying, merely usable.
On another note it's also a challenge and I intend to rise to that and give it my very best. I love English, as well as Danish and the glorious, vivacious French language, on which I only have a flimsy grip, alas.
Should any reader of my blog want to comment on the move, feel free to do that in whatever language you master.
:)