**

at the moment, i don't sleep well and have constant tension pain in my neck and/or headaches. i just can't relax. herbal teas, taking baths or a glass of wine in the evening, you name it, i've tried it. do you have any good tips? i'm just a little worried that this will continue until the end of summer, as i'm chock-a-block with projects (which is great, but stressful).

hybrid

things are still mad here, so just a quick hello.

some time ago, pascale wrote about going 'hybrid' - using analog lenses with a digital camera body. i really liked the idea and have been trying my hand at it last week, but have yet to get used to using the DSLR with an 'all manual' setting. my heart still is with analog photography, but this gives me an immediate feed-back that's really useful when playing around with angles, light, focus etc.

p.s.: new pins.

wishing you

a perfect weekend, and if you're celebrating, a very happy easter!

have you seen this? stephanie's been "tie-dying" easter eggs. pretty.

the sugarsnaps and heirloom tomatoes are slowing sprouting on my window sill, the garden plot will officially be open for planting from 3rd may. can't wait.

(oh, and very much looking forward to meeting this traveller from marseille today!)

sandal weather

ok, let's be a bit more upbeat, shall we? and a bit shallow maybe.

i want sandal weather because i want to wear these sandals other places than my living room.

how is it looking at your end? what makes you feel summery? any recent purchases or finds in your wardrobe that cheer you up?

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corner view: spring

a late corner view this week. we had our fair share of dark and grey days, but all of sudden the rain and little bursts of sun seem to have done the trick and the cherry trees at the end of the street have put their pale pink frocks on.

i didn't realise how hard it is to get a decent shot though. last year i was using my praktica with the 50 mm lens only, this year i've played with the DSLR and a zoom lens. very tricky. i will take some more photos with the analogue cameras and see how that works.

for now, have a wonderful holiday, whether you celebrate pesah or easter or just enjoy a long weekend!

for more spring corner views head on over to jane's spain daily.

thank you!

look what blanca sent me the other day - the nicest card from polaroid notes, some little goodies and such a kind message, saying thank you for being part of her blogosphere. i was so touched. this really is way too kind. i still feel so grateful to all the people making up the blogosphere for having me at all. it has been such a welcoming place for me. or rather, you have been so welcoming. there are countless things i wouldn't have done or tried without your feedback. and that's the truth. your feedback really is something i treasure. like a smooth pebble in my pocket. something that keeps me thinking about things. keeps me on my toes. keeps me from being lazy. makes me more courageous and adventurous in my creative endavours than i'd otherwise be.

so thank you! blanca. and everybody stopping by here regularly. and everybody leaving me their thoughts in the comments section.

so, dear readers, would you mind terribly leaving me a quick comment, saying who you are and where you are based? i'd love that.

time flies

such a cliché, i know. i wonder though, how come we sometimes feel this so acutely, and then sometimes time really seems long? obviously, it does seem long when we're waiting. but also, when we are really intensely enjoying something. then there are weeks like the past, where it's all a bit of a blur and time flies so madly i hardly even register it, since there's so much to do.

it's all psychology, right? or is it neurology? what do you think?

hope you had a wonderful weekend. i had a bit of everything. loads of work, a day full of running hundreds of little but urgent errands i had been putting off for too long. and an afternoon with friends who have just moved to berlin and now live a 10 minute walk from me. how cool is that? oh, and have a mentioned they have an amazing view and a roof terrace?

p.s.: not long to go now - there are little buds everywhere. and it's been raining a lot.

changing light

no buds and green and flowers yet outside, but the light is changing. i thought i'd show you.

juggling several projects, i'll have to skip corner view this week, the days just don't seem to have enough hours at the moment. see you soon.

comment te dire adieu

it's time to say good-bye to winter. and no kleenex needed for that, thank you very much. he's certainly had his moments - with the most beautiful snow, glorious light and happiness. but it's been a miserable drag recently. he's not exactly making a gracious exit at the moment, i have to say. today is officially the first day of spring, and neither is winter buggering off, nor is spring making much of an appearance. there must be some serious motivational problem. anyhoo, we are ready. go away winter, hurry up spring!

on this note... (ah, that video is not great quality, but so much fun. i've just been watching it tons of times. the studio set-up, the rather minimal expression, both on francoise hardy's part as well as in the audience. a rather jolly crowd. but hey, it's a sad song. plus, don't you think francoise looks a bit like a very young charlotte rampling? which makes me think i really want to re-watch a francois ozon film soon, preferably sous le sable. enough associations. have a good sunday.)

p.s.: photos are showing the cherry trees at the end of my street. pictures taken today at lunchtime. and they are colour shots, not black and white. what a glorious day, no? still, they will be flowering eventually. watch this space.

corner view: front door

quite a contrast to my last post, right?

my front door belongs to one of the few houses in our street that haven't been renovated. slowly, the neighbourhood is being gentrified and the university students, artists and bohemians are moving on to other districts in berlin, like neukölln or wedding. but still, rents are reasonable here and many of my friends live within easy bike riding or walking distance.

when i moved here, i had to completely renovate my apartment. without the help of friends i couldn't have done it. we freed the walls from layer after layer of hideous late eighties/early nineties wallpaper. and painted walls white and some of them in deep colours. for a while though, i have been very much into white, and the dark, tomato red wall in my kitchen is getting a bit much. the next time i have time and funds for decorating projects, walls will be painted white.

eventually, the front door will be renovated too, along with the facade. perhaps i will have moved on by then.

p.s.: those old signs in the hall date back to east german times and ask you to separate your household waste, as well as glass, bones, wood, medical products, wood and plastic. i've always wondered about the bones and medical products. peculiar.

UPDATE: well, i thought i'd better check up on the bones recycling as otherwise it sounds way too sinister. recycling has a long history in germany, east germany (the GDR) had a state owned company called SERO that was very effective in recycling waste. households separated their waste and had collection points nearby for plastic, wood, metal, paper etc. bones clearly refer to the old bone in your steak or chicken etc. i haven't found out yet what they were recycled for, but one thing seems to be bone meal (an organic fertilizer) formerly used heavily in agriculture. today, mostly synthetic fertilizers are used (organic farming being an exception, of course.)

i wish

... spring would finally make its way to berlin. how is it looking at your end?

p.s.: do any of you have experience with growing seedlings on the windowsill? if so, what kind of seeds would you recommend?

new week

thanks for all your well wishing - i did sleep rather a lot and started refreshed into the new week. on saturday, boyfriend and i drove across town to the grunewald district to see le corbusier's unité for berlin and to have coffee at café k on the grounds of the kolbe museum. i so love the old buildings at the museum.

when we got home, i realised that i had used the wrong shutter speed for my corbusier roll of film. such a shame. i hope the lab can rescue at least some of the pictures. we'll have to see. if not, i'll just have to go again...

there is lots of work waiting, so i better get back to it. have a good week!

sleep

we've made it. we've made the impossible possible and finished the exhibition catalogue in time. i don't think i'm ever going to touch a project like that with a barge pole in the future though. too many nights in the studio that ended between one and five a.m. - starting again late morning the same day. i think we ended up floating in a rather worryingly weird space/time continuum.

so now i'm going to sleep. zzz.

...

i've been sucked into a parallel universe in which people work through the nights, order pizza at impossible hours and try to maintain a minimum amount of sanity. all for the sake of making books.

see you soon.

open your eyes

sometimes seeing isn't as easy as 1-2-3. at least i do sometimes forget that it's not just about processing information but about beauty, about poetry, about the familiar, the unexpected, the surprising and the 'ugly' too. but when i remind myself it's quite incredible what you start seeing.

here are some more washing machine shots for you.

p.s.: i had a wonderful weekend with boyfriend. what have you been up to?

las vegas piggy bank

what is it with dreams? i have long since believed them to be the biggest driving force in our lives (apart from curiosity and dissatisfaction). while the latter two are not to be underestimated, i think dreams are just the most beautiful motivator to tackle things that otherwise might seem far too daunting. sometimes we can't say when a dream was born and where it came from. but there it is. sitting on the windowsill, blinking a little, maybe sniffling its nose and waiting quietly and patiently for us to acknowledge it. and no matter how small, it is a powerful thing, make no mistake. so go along with it. don't say good-bye to it when the going gets tough. be true. you owe it to yourself to believe in it. do your best, put your thinking cap on, follow up on random ideas that might get you closer to your dream. there will be friends to walk with you. and when it takes shape, this dream, it will not only be a blessing to you, but also to those around you.

thanks again for all your encouragement, for your comments and emails. last week has been truly mad, so i'm behind with getting back to your messages, but i will.

p.s.: go on, spot the vegas piggy bank. photo taken last weekend on arkonaplatz fleamarket. (and no, vegas is not my dream - thought you had caught me out there, didn't you...)

where do we go from here

recently, i've been feeling a bit restless and like i've lost my focus in photography.

part of it may be a side-effect of the 365 project on flickr i'm taking part it. it means i have to take a photo each day and post it to my flickr stream. not surprisingly, there have been some dry spells already. so i had to post photos i wasn't really happy with. and i took photos i didn't really care about. and i got a bit confused about what i want to be taking photos of in the first place. don't get me wrong, the benefits of the project by far outweigh the lows, so i'll keep going. i'm even finding i'm learning a lot by the things i'm dissatisfied with, perhaps even more so than by the things i'm fine with.

another part of this may be that i'm having difficulties in finding out how to use my digital SLR in a way that gives me the results i'm after. i'm struggling a bit with the "what you see is what you get" aesthetic of it, which i've written about before. i'm still a long way from mastering my new camera the way i'm hoping for. and i'm not particularly known for being patient.

there are so many photographers whose work i admire - artists whose work spans such a range of different styles. b&w masters like dorothea lang or walker evans, colour magicians like eggleston, shore or helen levitt. japanese photographers - from daido moriyama to rinko kawauchi (ah, don't get me started...). contemporaries like uta barth. i'm by no means implying a comparison between these artists and my own at times rather questionable attempts. i'm just saying that the aesthetic, the subjects i feel drawn to vary widely. i'm feeling really clueless at times as to what the heck i'm trying to do here.

so i've been thinking whether it's in any way justified to ramble on in this corner of the blogsphere and post my attempts at photography when i don't even know what i want half of the time. looking at other blogging photographers' work - say elisabeth of fine little day, sandra juto, ulrika, lea bolvig, alexandria of little postcards, anna of the baker's daughter, jen of simply photo, brian of the blue hour, abby of abby try again, charlotte of sprink, jennan mieli (i could go on and on) - i see so much beautiful coherence, i see so much focus. which is extremely inspiring. but i also feel a little bit lost in the woods.

i've come to the conclusion though, that letting people look over my shoulder while i'm trying to make sense of things, and while i'm learning, is a good thing for me. actually, it's probably a blessing. and so i hope you'll bear with me while i'm finding my way. 

p.s.: to help me a focussing a little and keep going, i've started a little project for my 365. it's called "on the washing machine" (oh ha, i know). could be you tire of this much earlier than i do. don't say i haven't warned you.

have a jolly weekend.

blank

i have been working like mad to make a deadline this morning. that's why it's been a bit quiet around here these last few days. my mind is rather blank right now. nothing some sleep shouldn't fix though.

see you soon!

p.s.: you know: an apple a day...

under the weather

atishoo. i'm going through a lot of tissues these days. thank you for your well-wishing, i'm sure the cold will leave the house soon.

what made me smile today: got the cat to pose for me on the blue sofa. yay.

sign of life

i've missed you!

the internet drama continues. although, to be precise, it's a wireless drama. with my old pc, i can still access the net, but v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. surfing, blogging, uploading pictures - simply out of the question. it really, really drives me up the wall. after lots of attempts to fix it, i'll probably have to get some new hardware. hopefully i should be back to normal by the end of the coming week.

anyway, i simply had to go to a café this afternoon with working (!) wireless access to quickly say hello. and catch up a little.

last weekend (it's a week already!), lovely marion of l'inventaire de l'esthétique was in berlin and we went to see a photo show at martin gropius bau. mostly fashion photography from the 1950s to 1980s by f.c. gundlach. the rather fabulous shot of the two girls on a berlin racing track was on show too. it was great to meet marion, so many things to talk about! i'm sorry though berlin was so freezing cold that weekend. -- then, the day before yesterday, i received a sweet letter in the post with the most fabulously rose scented hand cream from marseille - sent by marion. you are too kind, thank you so much!

p.s.: the wonderful dress is my mum's. she wore it for her engagement in 1968. it's such a shame i can't wear it, i'm simply not as slim as her. but i like to look at it!