florian.photo

A tree. That's the post.

Went to the flower shop today (it is open on Sundays), which happens to be right across from the local airfield. Spotted the airship.

Cleaning up the kids' room. It gets so messy in there at times, that the toys start "overflowing" into all the other rooms. Today it was time for an intervention! 🙂

Balloons. I've had this image in my "photos for the blog" folder for a couple of weeks. That does not usually happen, because I mostly post images from the same day. But today I only photographed my kids being very happy about vacation starting. Oh, and it was the very last day of Kindergarten! 😱 How time flies!

I guess going through the basement to get to the bike is also part of my commute?

Observing shadows. Another singular-image day. Taken right when I started the morning commute.

They are already setting up Kirmes. I guess we have to visit at least once. I remember it being really annoying last year. We'll see…

The only image I took today, because I was so busy with work and other stuff. (It is only the fourth A41 image this year, btw!) Meet-and-greet evening at school. We now know who Suvi's teacher will be – and most importantly what the class mascot is!

Open house at the maternity ward in Ulya's hospital. The kids got to see where mom spends so much time recently. Photo above shows the old hospital right next to the new building, where we visited today. (I am pretty sure I shot this from the exact angle before, but couldn't be bothered to check just now…)

Fun morning at Gruga. 👉 View 4 more images

I kinda like this one. Had to react very quickly and was lucky that the auto focus actually nailed it! Reminded me of this image from a couple of years ago. Homeserver update: Immich is now also fully synced with the iPhone. Only got a handfull of new images that were – for whatever reason – not part of the Parachute backup (which I used for the initial import). I also got restic backups set up to an external drive. Really happy with everything so far!

While at the Farewell party yesterday, I documented some of the little details of kindergarten, before it's over.

Farewell party at the kindergarten today. Only one more week! 😱 Immich update: Processing of the files finished sometime today. The facial recognition is mixing up my daughters quite a bit, which I have to fix manually, I guess. I activated the backup feature on my phone and it is currently syncing photos. Halfway through it has only found a handful of screenshots that for whatever reason, weren't part of the backup I used for the inital import.

Football match at the kindergarten. Since Suvi is not interested in football at all (I can't blame her), she and her friend were given the role of first aiders – with deployment during the match. (The ref didn't seem that interested either and was climbing the tree at some point. 🤷‍♂️) Homeserver/Immich update: The import was done after around 15 hours (give or take), but the processing (creating thumbnails, face recognition) is actually still ongoing! Currently still 35k+ images in the queue…

DIY kite. Made some progress with the homeserver today. Started the import of my iCloud library into Immich. This will take at least half a day – if not longer. I'll probably write a post about my setup, once it is done. 👉 View one more image

Dedicated photography time with Daniel is always a delight. We took a longer drive this time to check out Hasper Dam. The surroundings were not super photogenic, or at least I wasn't super inspired. I still enjoyed being out with my friend – which is the main point of these trips anyway. We didn't get any (meaningful amount of) rain, although it looks like it would start pouring down any second in the images. Daniel made a Polaroid, which I am sure he will post today. 👉 View 9 more images

Went into the city to buy swimsuits for the kids. In completely unrelated news I finally got started on turning my old 2013 MBP (which has suffered a broken screen) into a homeserver. Very minimal (headless) setup. Installed Immich as the first service on it. Still need to figure out how to best import all the iCloud photos. Tomorrow: Setting up remote access. It has been fun so far! :)

Next week is the farewell party at the kindergarten. 😢 How did this happen so fast?

Early morning Gruga walk. 👉 View 3 more images

Playing school. Almost time for the real deal! Didn't get anywhere with Darktable with this one. I wasn't getting any detail in her hair without using a mask, which I really don't want to bother with at all. My post processing usually takes a couple of seconds – highlights, shadows, whites, blacks – done. Couldn't be bothered today, so Lightroom this was.

Sisters. ❤️ Processed the above image using darktable. I actually worked on the image in Lightroom first and used that as a reference trying to match the adjustments in darktable. There is a shit ton of modules you can lose yourself in. (The Contrast Equalizer looks really powerful!) I guess I'll try to get down the basics and see how natural it feels at the end of the week.

A scraped knee and – finally – a little bit of rain. 👉 View one more image

Went swimming in the Ruhr river yesterday. My first time! The neighbors showed us a great spot with very slow current. I was a bit surprised my kids actually went into the water with me (they are a bit on the squeamish side when it comes to water and whatever could be living in there), but they really enjoyed it. Saw these clouds from our spot. They signaled some relief from the heat, but the storm was too far east to hit us. We should get some lower temperatures tomorrow though. 🤞 I removed…

The only way to live in this heat is with your feet in (very) cold water. Admittedly, the pool used to feel much larger when the kids were much smaller, but it still gets the job done. Thank God this new garden has a tap, so filling it up was a lot easier. Stay hydrated people!

I am melting over here. 🫠 Photo taken during my bike commute. I want to finally give Darktable a good try. Cliff shared a link to darktable.info, which looks like it is a good resource to get started. I am aware that I won't replicate my current workflow in two weeks. It will take more time. But, if I never start, I'll be stuck with Adobe forever. I also want to put Aphera through its paces. I am not sure how I feel about the way it works from my brief, initial tests – basically layering a…

Too hot to sleep. Might as well watch the match. 🤷‍♂️

Ulya bought a fan today, the little one put it to use right away. It is too hot to do anything in the afternoon. Just brutal.

Lumi was off school early today because of the excessive heat. It is a pity that there doesn't seem to be a direct translation for the German "Hitzefrei" (which basically means "free because of heat"). I think she used her time very wisely.

Bike ride with the little one. (The forest was nice and cool, so that's where we went.)

More music at Fête de la Musique. All the locations were pretty close by. But the kids did not fancy the high temperatures, so we didn't last long.