I almost missed that one: Apple Aperture 3 wins the EISA Photo Awards 2010-2010 in the Photo Software category. The official statement of the European Imaging and Sound Association describing the “European Photo Software 2010-2011”:

Apple Aperture 3 is a winner when it comes to organising your pictures in a smart and effective way. Thanks to face detection and GPS tagging, this software package makes it very easy to index, sort and retrieve your photographs by searching for the people or the places in the pictures. The program is very easy to use, and offers many new additional features together with high-class album printing and multimedia slide shows set to music. The new edge-aware ‘Quick Brushes’ tool is particularly useful for precision retouching.

Important Reasons

• Face detection tagging
• Sort and search by location
• New photobook integration
• Easy to use brushes with edge awareness
• Ready-made picture styles

Can’t really shorten that one… in fact, I could add various points to that praise myself.

On their site, the EISA features a nicely done visual citation of Apple Aperture 3. Other winners of the Photo Awards 2010-2011 are, e.g., the Canon EOS 7D as “European Advanced SLR 2010-2011” and the Nikon D3S as “European Professional Camera 2010-2011”.

EISA is an association of 50 special interest magazines from 19 European countries. Since 1982, each year the editors-in-chief from all EISA member magazines meet to decide which products deserve the internationally acclaimed EISA Award.

Tags: Aperture, Apple, EISA Awards

We started our trip to Altmühl Valley at the ‘Altmühlsee’, north of the border of the nature park. Lake Altmühl is a great destination for birding, and while my wife focused on the birds, I took some nice landscape photos… I really have to get a better lens for bird photography!

Lake Altmühl was created in the 1980s as part of the larger Franconian Lake District project to reduce flooding in the Altmühl Valley as well as redirecting water from the Danube basin to the north. The 450-ha/1,112-acre Altmühl lake is at most 2.5-m/8-ft deep.

Located within the northern part of Lake Altmühl, the 120-ha/300-acre “Bird Island” is hosting well over 200 species of birds. A circular, 1.5-km/one-mile long hiking route with observation tower is open to the general public.







The Google-view on Bird Island, the pins designate the location of the photos above:

Tags: Landscapes, Birding, Altmühl Valley, Lake Altmühl, Bird Island, Franconian Lake District

Located right in the middle of the bavarian Altmühl Valley nature park, Eichstätt — a small town with a baroque old city center — has its own, slightly sleepy charm. In fact, Eichstätt hosts its own University — supposedly it is Europe’s smallest University Town.

This summer, Eichstätt hosts a culture festival exhibiting art from about 30 mostly regional artists. We visited Altmühl Valley and Eichstätt yesterday, and one particular piece captivated me.

This May, Marc Köschinger started exhibiting his installation ‘Schmetterlingsschwarm’ (butterfly swarm). Since then, his butterflies have been found in more and more places all over the world… I have taken the time to get a few photographies illustrating the origins.







Citing Marc Köschinger: “The butterfly is a baroque symbol for death and change, a memento mori implying hope for resurrection or an afterlife.”

In addition, this installation is supposedly inspired by early childhood experiences of Mr. Köschinger in South America, where huge swarms of similarly colored butterflies can be observed feeding on carcasses. Once satiated, they move on — soon looking out for the next dead animal to get nutrients and minerals.


There is a short movie on youtube introducing Mr. Köschingers butterflies project:

Tags: Art Installation, Eichstätt, Altmühl Valley, Bavaria, butterfliesworldwide