Reading list

I mentioned before I like to listen to audiobooks while I take photos, and mostly while doing anything else. Especially if I put on noise canceling headphones (currently I use the Bose qc35) I can enjoy them so much better.

So what I am reading/listening to right now? I like to combine fiction with non-fioction, and switch based on the current mood. So for fiction, I’m currently getting through the second book in the The Themis Files series from Sylvain Neuvel. I listened to it before, but since the third book came as audiobook only recently, I want to get back into the full story first, before continuing. The whole series is a great sci-fi story, with the whole story being presented as a set of interviews with participants.

For non-fiction, I, currently reading two books. As I mentioned minimalism yesterday, I’m reading The Goodbye, Things from Fumio Sasaki. It does have some good ideas about the topic. Secondly, since I have not read any history books in a long while, I’m right in the middle of the The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer. This is a huge audiobook, with over 57 hours of audio. But it’s also very detailed and interesting. Worth the time spend to learn more about WW2.

So what’s next on my list? For fiction, I finally want to get through Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Have not seen the movie and I do prefer to read the book first if I can. For non-fiction I will go with Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed or Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. Both seem intriguing and I think both are worth the time.

What are you listening to or reading? Feel free to leave a tip if you have a good one :)

Chained mountain at the Traunsee

Ok, it’s not really chained, but it does looks so a bit. This is another photo I took during my trip to Austria, to the Traunsee lake, in January this year (yes, this is in the middle of winter in the mountains :)). It was just so nice and sunny, even if not so warm. Traunsee is one of the many lakes in Austrian alps. Maybe not the most popular, but looks great anyway.

I used two separate techniques here. Fist, this photo is a long exposure. I used the Formatt Hitech 10 stop ND filter to get the water so perfectly smooth. Secondly, this is a focus blend. This means, I took a photo where I focused on the foreground and a second photo where I focused on the mountain in the back. Blending them was really easy, as the blend is in the middle of the blurred water, so it can be down with just little masking in Photoshop. More on focus blending here.

This is a blend of two exposures, done in Photoshop.