Hello everybody.

It is quite a long while, since I am been active and updating this journal. Please accept my apologies. I have been really busy these days.

First of all, my son got ill and had to stay 6,5 weeks in university hospital in Göttingen, which is 1 hour by car from us. My wife and I have acompanied him alternately, i. e. our family was split apart for this time. It was rather exhausting for all of us. Arved had a not correct detected inflammation of the bone skin (excuse me for not being more correct, my dictionary has nothing better) on his backbone, resulting in the destruction of one spinal disk between the 10. and 11. vortex. This could have resulted in a paraplegia! So we were once again very lucky, that it didn't come worse!

Next, I am very glad, that I finally managed to get our next years fine nude studentic arts calender prepared for printing. 10 models, including me, were found and shot in typical locations of our university and the surrounding of our town, Clausthal-Zellerfeld. We have a well balanced mixture of male and female, as well as scenes from study and spare time. You can see on our titlepage ([link]) how much fun we had with the "production" of this calender. I am also very gratefull, that ~Binne allowed me, to upload her calender image, presenting her as Miss November in our old Calvör's library. She is such a lovely model, I am so in love to her, that she was not only photographer, but also a wonderfull (and for her first time nude) modell. See her as Miss November: [link] Please notice, that the composition of the title page was prepared by my colleague and friend Steffen, please visit his page [link]

The calender is a charity project! Neither the photographers, nor the modells did get a fee. The only costs are the costs of the printing shop. The calender will be printed on heavy weighted printing paper in 4C, 14 pages, each 32 cm x 32 cm sized. It will be available soon for 10 euro per piece. All gains will be spent to the students of Clausthal University of Technology. If you are interested in supporting this project, please place your order at [link] or just drop me a note.

Nearly immediatly after beeing tagged by *Doroo I was tagged by . I promised her, to play the game again, so here we go for the next round. (To be true, I am going for the second time; I had already begun it a week ago, but didn't safe it and hence lost it, when I shutted down the computer. Silly me.)

Here are the 8 questions, Sandra invendted and wants me to answer them.

1. Tell me the 5 persons that you immediately think about when you hear DA and show me something from them?

That is (as most of the other following questions) a very difficult question. My friends or watchlist is rather long and most of them are on it with good reasons. I am quite new to DA and mostly stay on DA, because to improve my own creativity and craftsmanship. I am a photographer and work mostly digital, still on beginners level by digital post processing.

When I open DA to see, what happening and whats new, I hope, that there are some interesting journals or uploads from a lot of people. Featuring those, whose pages have been watched for more than 10 000 times or even 10 times more, might be worth, as their art is of great quality. But I would like to feature some artists, whose pageviews are not such high and who have a great influence on my own work and style. So, all other, that I watch and that should be also mentioned here (e. g. *josemanchado ~ericbb *Pelicanh, ...), please don't mind me, featuring not you.

First, I want to feature . I stumbled across her page by the random deviant function. What a superb feature. I was amazed by her stunning gallery. She is a painter as well as a talented photographer. Luckily, she used to live near me and so we met in real life and spent some very lovely photo safaris with each other. Most of them start by shooting landscapes and flowers, but end in shooting Binne as modell. I adore her work as artist and as modell. Thank you my dear friend .

As the rules denote, I have to present some of my favourites. But as most of her gallery is ed by me, this is absolutely a random choice. I urge you to visit her stunning gallery.
[link] , [link] , [link] , [link] , [link]

Secondly I want to feature . I am watching her for a long time. I stumbled across one of her wonderfull self portraits, which are mostly (partiall) nude art. She made wonderfull images and I adore her complete work. But unfortunately she became very ill and angry about that and decided to delete her complete gallery. Shortly after that, she began to fill it anew with newly created images. Before her disease, she never crossed the border of showing to much of herself; to my great wonder, she now did it in one image. You might imagine on this, how great the influence of her disease on her is.

If you have watched her before getting ill and could compare her images you can cleary see, that she made a great change in her style, after getting ill.

I am very sad, that Julie is rarely active on DA, due to her disease. I pray for her, that she gets well soon and will be active on DA. I love her work and to write letters with her. Hope to see you soon, Julie! My thoughts are with you. Look up to the stars.

Here are my favourites from her gallery.

[link] , [link] , [link] , [link] , [link] , [link]

Third, I want to introduce you to .

I met her in Clausthal and we did some photo safaris and grew dear friends. She is a beginner photographer on DA but I am sure, she will evolve soon a recognisable style. I am looking much foreward to seeing her back in Clausthal. I owe her a lot!

Lots of greetings to sweden: Hej Hej Aiofe!

[link] , [link] , [link] , [link] , [link]


Fourth, once again a wonderfull female DA member: I stumbled across Suse on many of Jose Manchados images, where Suse acts as brilliant nude modell. Some of the images faved on his page, are Suse, but I didn't even know. From Joses page I followed to her own page and immediately added her to my watchlist. A decision, I never regreted Suse had since then created an own account for her own photopgraphy, and a second for her modelling images: ~DreamKidnapperShrew. Suse has developed a very brilliant recognizable style of her own. She does a lot of architecture images with minimalistic elements. I wish I could do those images.

Suse now lives in Berlin and I hope, we have the chance to meet in Real Life (tm), to do a safari through Berlin. That will be very instructive to me, I am convinced.

Here are my favourites from Suse. Please have a look of your own and watch her comments, too:
[link] , [link] , [link] , [link] ,
[link]
and many more.


Last but not least, I would like to feature one of my latest additions to my watchlist: She takes beautifull images of her friends and the swedish country, which she is living in. I must say, that sweden is one of my favourite countries to live in, so its rather easy for her to collect points But she is excellent!

Unfortunately, Anna is underage and is hence prohibited to watch nude art, which she herself is producing. So she decided to leave partially DA and presents her images now on FLIKR. What a pitty and what a loss.

When will DA understand?

Anna, I hope you will return, as you've had got magnificent images on you gallery. Sorry, folks, some of those images, I had in mind, are not available on DA any more. (Silly DA authoritives!)

[link] , [link] , [link] , [link] , [link]



2. What is your favorite kind of art here on DA and why?

I came to DA, to watch photographers and to enhance my craftsmanship in photography. I had just finished my first nude art calender of 2007. That project lead me back to photography after a long break. And it was the first time, that I was doing portrait and nude arts seriously. I am also interested in landscape and macros (thanks to ~Binne).

(If there are any willing models near Clausthal, please contact me, I am always looking for new models for nude and also non nude.)


3. What is your favorite kind of colour and what image do you combine with it here on DA?

I can't say that.

I love strong, clean colors. Red, blue, green, orange, yellow. All colors of the rainbow.

I have a lot of colorfull images in my gallery and even more in my favourites. But I also do like the B/W images, which have the great impression of strong, contrasty "colors". It mostly depends on.

I don't combine any color to a special image on DA.


4. What are your favourite movies and what images or artist here on DA are reminding you of them?

I generally love movies wiht happy ends. Rarely I love a move like "Moulin Rouge" lacking a happy end (maybe "Moulin Rouge" is the exception to the rule? But for me, this movie has a lot of memories to a love of mine, which didn't end with an happy end---sigh).

I love movies, with lots of love and funny movies, as well as some fantasy stories as Harry Potter. But most of my movie favourites are movies like "Love Actually", "Pretty Woman", "E Mail For You", ...

I didn't bother with fan art yet.


5. What are your favourite books and what images or artists here on DA are reminding you of them?

Mostly the same from answer to question 4 applies to this.

I love happy, funny books: Kischon, Loriot, Heinz Erhardt, Tucholsky are a few of my favourite writers.

"Schloss Gripsholm" is a novel I like best. I've been in Mariefred, where the story is taking place, myself. More by accident, than planed. I love the nordish scences, as could be seen in :devgrugsters: images. So that are images, which remind me to one of my favourite books.

I know, that Sunny is addicted a lot to fan art from Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings. Being a Potter fan myself, I have had a short look on some of her featured images. They are of very high quality and stunning craftsmanship, as far as I can tell. But I didn't bother with fan art, sorry.

In fact, I absolutely dislike Lord Of The Rings. This dislike applies also to the fan art images, Sunny features regularly.

So I can't tell you anything about my favourite fan art. Sorry, Sunny.


6. What are you favourite countries and what images or artists here on DA are reminding you of them?

This is much easier to answer!

I love the nordic countries: ireland (~AoifeMcSweeney as she has visited it and have choosen her DA nick from usual irish names), scottland, norway (and here of course Sunny herself: =grugster) sweden (~annaberglund) and so on.

Except scottland, I have visited all of the above mentioned countries.


7. What are you favourite animals or plants and what images or artists here on DA are reminding you of them?

I don't have a fouvirute there. Maybe I will develop some addiction in that direction later on? Let's see.


8. What is you favourite element and what images or artists here on DA are reminding you of it?

I am a sailor, and hence I love mighty water scenes, as you can see in those magnificent Latefossen images from Sandra =grugster.

But this is only the half truth. I also love clouds and great skies, as can be seen on *slamdunkers series of Austria, for example.

And I love mother earth, with its uniqe scenerys from *andre-j to mention some new continents.


9. Which art or which artists do you admire here on DA most?

I either can't answer this. There are a lot, I admire.

To mention only a few: is a superb photographer. I am mostly not addicted to that kind of fetish, he is shooting. But read his comments to his images or read his journals. I never read any more delightfull texts like this. So full of love and lust of life.

I also admire Sunny, for her stunning images from norway, as explained above.

I admire Suse Kew, as she has found a very remarkable style.

I admire ~Binne as she is a talented painter, photographer and such a sweet and courageous modell.

I admire a lot of people here on DA. Excluded most of the gallery directors and DA-authorities, as the don't do a wise job, I think.


So, now I have done my duty. Are you satiesfied, Sunny?

I would like to tag:

1) as she also does very wonderfull nude selfs. She is also rarely online these days. Miss you, Shine.

2) she is a very talented self shooter. She once said the remarkable sentence: "Nudity Is Purity". There is nothing more to say. Have a look at her great gallery.

3) as I think, she is full of mystery secrets. Hopefully she will reveal at least some of them in this game, please!

4) although it will take a long time, till she takes on the game.

5) she is a talented photographer and modell. Please visit her page, it is worth it.


Looking foreward, I must say, that christmas is coming soon. So I won't be able to be as active.

But be asured, I will be very active in backing cookies, tasting cookies with friends, setting up a christmas tree with my children, ... it is one of the best seasons of the year.

My christmas wish is to get visited by a lots of friends, having time and fun with them. I wish you enjoy the same with your friends.

Cheers

Jan