Nick Prosch online

Ein Brötchen in Zons. Lecker.

Friday, May 3rd, 2013 | Activities, Photography | No Comments

So, das schöne Wetter Anfang Mai musste ich ausnutzen – und welchen schöneren Grund gibt es nach Zons zu fahren, als sich ein deftiges Wurstbrötchen am Rhein zu snacken?

Track@RunKeeper (Post in German, because “Wurstbrötchen” is such a nice word)

Tags: biking, düsseldorf, ferry, hildener heide, rhein, schloss benrath, wurstbrötchen, zons

May Day 2013 – biking Schöller / Sambatrasse

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013 | Activities, Photography | No Comments

Just a random trip, this time off my beaten tracks. Wanted to check out the lime works and see for myself that this is hardly a place to fancy a swim – unfortunately. I also wanted to check out Schöller because I’ve been to Kindergarten there. No recollections though.

For the complete route and stats visit my RunKeeper profile.

Tags: biking, may day, sambatrasse, tiger, zoo

Building a “silent” e-drum platform

Friday, December 28th, 2012 | Gadgets, Photography, Tech-savvy | No Comments

When I am not busy working my immaterial day-job I like to fiddle with handicrafts. This time I wanted to build a platform that decouples my new e-drum set from the concrete floor for reasons of noise reduction and neighbour amity. First, it was just plywood elevated by layers of bubble wrap, but then I fancied some power outlets and light. I am pretty happy with the looks of the outcome, even though I guess it’s not significantly less noisy

Tags: blue light, e-drum, handicrafts, noise reduction, plywood

Stop To Smell The Roses II – Winter’s Coming!

Saturday, October 27th, 2012 | Activities, Photography | No Comments

Even though the sun was out again it was freezing cold. The shot of the frozen grass was taken at noon! See the route at RunKeeper.

Tags: cold, freezing, runkeeper, windy

Stop To Smell The Roses I – Autumn Bliss

Wednesday, October 24th, 2012 | Activities, Photography | No Comments

I love biking. I love taking pictures. Biking is a fast paced sport and you should really focus on where you are going instead of gazing to enjoy the beauties of the world. So I decided to simply stop first and gaze later every now and then, and as RunKeeper has a neat auto-stop feature this doesn’t impact my tracking too badly. Anyway, here are the first couple of shots. I want to continue theses tour shots and call the series “Stop To Smell The Roses”. Enjoy.

Tags: biking, runkeeper

Everyday Life’s Insights II – Keep Keepsakes

Friday, October 19th, 2012 | Activities, Insights, Photography, Tech-savvy | No Comments

I love to keep things. Not in a messy kind of way, rather hanging on to the past. Which is worse is up to you to decide. Anyway, people tend to tell you to get rid of old unused stuff, get rid of all the clutter. So last time I “optimized” my cellar I threw away my somewhat broken Ixus 70 which turned out to be a pretty bad idea.

Someone that is very closely related to me dropped the old camera to the floor. The flash did not fire any more after that stunt. So we bought a new Ixus 500 HS – a decent device but by far not as convincing as the 70 in terms of features, handling and (subjective) image quality.

Anyway, the old one went straight to the storage to RIP. Same goes for my first “New Zealand” Ixus, a 330 from 2002 – what a beauty!

So I decided to throw away the beloved Ixus 70 because of a broken flash. A few weeks later I felt the need for a camera that I could take on bike trips – and what do you not need for landscape photography? Correct. A flash. The old Ixus would have been the perfect companion for the purpose. What a bummer.

Bottom line: Keep your stuff unless you are absolutely sure you don’t need it any more. Full stop.

Tags: canon, ixus, ixus 330, ixus 500 hs, ixus 70

¡Hola Mexico!   aka   Our 2011 Xmas Retreat

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 | Activities, Photography | 2 Comments

Mexico – a great place to escape the Xmas stress and general greyness of Germany in the winter. It’s almost unbelievable how many colours you miss getting out of a plane from Mexico … just look out of your window when you’re done flicking through these sample shots. Enjoy.

Regarding the post-processing – I feel like a cook that just learned about salt and pepper, so he applies a lot to each meal. Right now I like the style of punchy colours and unsharp masked pictures but I already feel that I am getting tired of these dishes … I’d like to experiment with thyme, oregano, parsley and what else the kitchen (RawTherapy/GIMP) has to offer. So much to learn …

Tags: beach, cenote, colours, gimp, holiday, mexico, rawtherapy

Turmhotel: impressions of a dying building

Monday, December 12th, 2011 | Activities, Photography | 5 Comments

The Turmhotel has been around for as long as I can remember. I heard stories of the cinema (Metropolis?) that stood here before. Fun fact: the same guy who blew up the old cinema in 19xx (help needed) is responsible for blowing up the Turmhotel on December 18th this year.

Here are some impressions of the building a few days before its planned destruction. Black and white high-contrast images to emphasize the abuse the bulldozers did already. It’s spooky to see the violated remains of a building that once hosted a vivid shopping centre and – of course – the infamous hotel. Even though it is considered an unsightly building it’s still the landmark that represented the centre of town for decades. I will miss it.

Tags: gimp, photography, turmhotel

Würzburg at night: 911 long shutter shots

Saturday, November 5th, 2011 | Activities, Photography, Tech-savvy | No Comments

Tags: long shutter, würzburg

Photography, new tricks up my sleeve: filters

Friday, November 4th, 2011 | Activities, Photography, Tech-savvy | 5 Comments

Recently I tried to take pictures of objects in bright sunlight with a long shutter. Even with the aperture closed as far as it went and an exposure compensation of -5 (whatever that is, it’s the max ) I only managed to shoot for half a second without over-exposing. I went to one of Würzburg’s local photo retailers but they did not sell what I needed, namely a pretty dark gray filter (or technically correct, neutral density filter). Instead I got introduced to polarizers – as it also has a slight gray filter (ND2) I gave it a go. Lucky me. Less reflections, crisp colours and the sky becomes blue again. After playing around with this entry level filter I bought a better one and a gray filter (ND8) on Amazon the other day. (No, not B+W, Hoya. I guess that’s somewhere in the mid-range regarding quality.)

Anyway, today I went to test drive the filters. The polarizer really kicks ass – if you shoot in a narrow angle. A sky shot using a wide angle approx 90° to the sun reveals that the filter only works in certain areas, naturally Still, the results are pretty darn kewl. Here are a few examples of what I shot today. The first picture got auto-leveled with Gimp – I thought it looked quite nice, so I kept it that way. The rest comes directly out of the camera. Sometimes these images almost have a HDR touch. See for yourself:

Ah, btw, the gray filter works as well, I just did not find a proper object yet. The Wupper is just running too slow – only for the record: I can now shoot up to 4 seconds in bright daylight w/o over-exposure. Just what I needed.

Tags: filters, neutral density, polarizer