Time Travel / Germany 1983 / Part 4 - Kloster Arnstein

 

 

Already in my first post in this series did I mention Kloster Arnstein, an old monastery situated high up on the mountain above the village Obernhof an der Lahn. There was a narrow road leading up there from Klostermühle down below (where I was staying); and I went all the way up there at least once, to have a look at the church, which was open for visitors. 

I'm starting with a couple of postcards from my album at the top, which have kept the colours better than most of my own photos. (A bit yellowed with age, but not all that much.)

Going through my photo album as well as the slides I recently had digitised, I have come to the conclusion that I must have used two cameras on this journey: One for slides, and one with negative film for prints. But I also had prints made from some of the slides. 

The prints vs the slides have "aged" rather differently. Most prints have turned almost sepia with age, with very little colour left - and difficult to "bring back" in editing. My slides on the other hand have acquired a distinctly blue-ish tint - but a little bit easier to adjust in editing. (All editing done in Picasa3 because that's what I'm used to using...)

 ▲Just to show you what I'm "up against" with editing old printed photos from my album...

 

The road leading UP

Looking DOWN

I probably didn't go up alone, as someone must have taken this photo of me!

 

Some monks/priests up in the gardens at Kloster Arnstein

 

 

  

 

Cropped from the above photo

Among my dominantly "blueish" slides, I was surprised to find some from Kloster Arnstein that had turned all red instead! And no attempts to colour-correct those were successful. I've been scratching my head about those until today - when it occured to me take out the original slides to have a look. Turns out I did not take those myself, but bought them. Probably one was not allowed to take photos inside the church. So those I bought must have been taken with a different kind of film, aging differently... 

 

Here are the bought slides - you can compare them to the postcards at the top: 

 

By the way, exactly the same thing (turning red) also happened to slides I bought at the Basilika in Trier. (I'll show those when we get there.)

There is a Wikipedia article in English about Kloster Arnstein here. 

 

Playing with Tulips

 

I divided the large bunch of tulips that I bought yesterday into two vases, and put one in the kitchen window, and the other on my living room table. 

And today I took photos and played around with them in Picasa...

 

 

 

Overlay Images

For Sandra the MadSnapper and others who enjoy playing around with images... ;)

Sandra's comment on my previous post: "wait till you figure out how to put the cut out in a photo. woo hoo"

So of course I had to take on the challenge, and find at least one simple way to do that...

Today I found this free online tool: https://overlay.imageonline.co/ and tried a few experiments with my recent photos + the cut-out feature that I accidentally happened to find included in the photo gallery on my Samsung Galaxy phone. (I did the overlay editing on my computer though, not on the phone. That might be possible too, I suppose - but I prefer a bigger screen for things like this.)

I thought the dry football (soccer) ground could do with a splash of colour, so I stole a flower pot from the apartment complex down by the river to liven up the place. (Not very convincing, but ok for my first experiment.)

 

I also brought the watering can from the cemetery to another dry spot nearby. (As I still don't know how to separate the tap from the can, that had to come, too.)

 

I moved a grave ornament from one spot to another, giving it a more interesting background. (This one I think actually looks quite convincing, if you have no special reason to question it...)

Feeling bold now, I even experimented with moving a skyscraper around to change the silhouette of the townscape...

Below is the original photo! That grey "tower" is really in a different place altogether - a few hundred meters to the right of the photo above.

(original photo)