Triathlon photography

This weekend I photographed the local DLRG (German equivalent to American Lifeguard Association) while they kept watch over the swimming part of a large triathlon here (Kraichgau Challenge). The swimmers started in 2 groups (1.9km and 1.5km) at the Hardtsee in Ubstadt-Weiher. It did get a bit cloudy by late afternoon, but the whole morning and early afternoon the weather was great allowing me to get some good shots. I selected around 45 photos, cleaned up the lighting where needed, and uplaoded them to the DLRG Ubstadt-Weiher picture gallery

Hardtsee Ubstadt-Weiher
Hardtsee Ubstadt-Weiher

website IP, Deviant Art

Sorry for the problem with the website. Seems my DNS Provider decided to do a rollback and the old IP was active for dopefish.de (www.dopefish.de still worked). Both DNS entries now point to the new IP again.

In my last posting I forgot to mention I set up an account over at Deviant Art where I am posting pictures of mine I actually find worthwhile looking at. Not that I find the rest of my pictures outright bad, but they are more average and sorted by events/vacations. The ones I post at Deviant Art are pictures I find are above (my) average and worth the time to have a look. Currently not too many, but the collection will hopefully grow.

Gaming & Photo

Haven’t posted here for a while, so I’ll catch up on events. I got two new lenses for my camera, both Nikon. The 50mm 1.4 and the 18-200mm 3.5-5.6. Both very good lenses, and it seems that either Nikon heard the complaints about the 18-200 and fixed the design, or I am just plain lucky because mine has no creeping when used vertically. Very cool. And words can’t describe how great the 50/1.4 is in low-light situations.

New games: Street Fighter IV (PS3) and Wii Fit

I played Street Fighter IV at the Games Convention in Leipzig last year, and it was fun. I liked the good old Street Fighter II Turbo on the SNES, so I went and pre-orderd the new version on Amazon. Since the British pound is so weak lately, I bought it on the Amazon UK website. Importing it from the Brits is about 15€ cheaper than buying it in Amazon DE 😉
Anyway, the game is tons of fun, and I can safely encourage anyone who like the II Version, to go out and buy it. Probably the best 2D Fighter out there. Even though you play on a 2D plane, the 3D graphics are good. The comic like shading is cool. But there are also some downsides to the game. First and foremost: it is f***ing hard. Now I know I’m not the youngest anymore, and I never was an uber-pro at this kind of game, but I kinda expected to have a slight chance at winning when I set the difficulty setting to super easy mode. Nah, it’s not hard, but you can still run into opponents that will kick your ass. Medium is … hard, I can’t say much about medium since I cant seem to get farther than 3 or 4 rounds before the computer starts whipping my ass. And don’t even get me going at the ranked online matches. Selecting “Find someone near my rank” seems to have zero affect. More often than not I’ll end up with some “hyped up teen drinking red bull” as an opponent and I feel like the match happens in fast forward and I’m just a spectator.

Wii Fit: Yeah, we finally got around to buying one. Not much to say here that hasn’t already been said a thousand timea before on the Internet. It’s fun and interesting 😉

I think I’ll add another widget here on the right with my online gaming pseudonyms so friends have an easier time keeping track of me.

Happy New Year

My last few postings were all a bit technical, so this one is going to be  a bit more “normal”. I hope every reading this had nice Christmas and New Years celebrations.

It is a cold as heck here, but still no snow. My guess is that it won’t snow here whis winter, just cold and windy weather.

I must admit I haven’t been climbing for about a month. I really need to get back to the gym and train more. I want to shoot some nice pictures during climbing outdoors this year (not just from the bottom or top, I want to shoot pictures while in the route). And to be able to do that, I really need more finger strength to be able to keep the pace when the holds start getting crimpy.

I haven’t been on my bike the last months either, but considering how cold it is out there … I guess that can be excused.

Without going into too much detail, I’m planing on buying 2 new lenses for my Nikon. They should give me a few new possibilities (which reminds me that I really need to clean up my picture gallery). And I should have a look at my helmet camera, the last thing I shot with that was an indoor climbing session.

New theme, new pictures

I finally got done getting the new theme adjusted to the site. To make life easier I added the links to the gallery as a separate page, will save me the trouble of customizing the whole thing again the next time I change themes.

While I was at it a updated my gallery with the pictures I shot at the Games Convention in Leipzig this year. A few thumbnails from the gallery …

Any while I’m at it, I totally forgot to mention our last adventure with my helmet camera. We took a few videos while climbing indoors, and out came a 18 min. clip. Next time we do this, I promise it will be more interesting 😉


Online Flash Version (320×240) downloadable .avi (640×480, ca. 280MB)