Web, Photography & Digital Art
Sorry for getting back here about my perpetual road construction issue.
This time with the hope to amuse you: the mentioned 6-months distress under and around my home evolved into the production of a weird funny clip about a brutal fight between two E- Rex (Excavator- Rex, as explained to Midjourney), the one dismembering the other in a construction site while the workers run away terrified.
It was, how shall I say…refreshing?
Enjoy!
Away from the enormous beer tents, crowded alleys and noisy attractions of the modern Oktoberfest, the Oide Wiesn offers a charming journey into Munich’s past. It is only a fenced part of the Wiesn with a fee of a few euros, just enough to keep the crowds of tourists away.
Here, historic fairground rides, traditional Bavarian costumes, brass bands and old-fashioned beer tents recreate the atmosphere of the Oktoberfest of earlier generations. It’s a place where local traditions are not merely displayed but genuinely enjoyed, with music, laughter and, inevitably, a Maß or two.
This small photographic collection captures some of the colours, characters and delightful details of the Oide Wiesn — a living piece of Bavarian cultural heritage.
Little known by tourists, a little more Bavaria.
“Nobody!” comes to mind first, but that’s not entirely true: in fact someone in the municipal administration must really enjoy deciding and entrusting more and more new ones, and certainly the white collars of the companies that get the contracts don’t cry over a higher income.
Nevertheless the rest of the world would probably still accept “nobody” as a nicely fitting answer: waking up early in the morning at the merry rattling of squeaking tracks accompanied by a musical engine roar in the sweet scent of diesel exhaust may be an enthralling experience for the first two or three minutes of heavy swearing but over time it tends to become rather annoying, in particular after the sixth month…
I speak from direct experience, of course: since last April, right outside my windows, just one floor down, a team of gaudily dressed and not particularly silent men are ceaselessly disemboweling (and occasionally re-emboweling) what previously looked like a quiet country road, in this helped by a herd of impressive steel monsters of all sizes having in common a thick layer of dirt and the incredible amount of decibels they produce. Just great!
What should one do? In such an unholy racket simple profanity would go totally unnoticed. Nor would sugar in the tanks work with diesel, and even if it did it would just prolong the sufferance.
But even the darkest cloud has its silver lining: if you can’t beat’em, use’em.
That’s, in a nutshell, the story of some of my most infamous images 😉
And Amazing Aerial has chosen quite a number of them – among several others, of course.
I’m a newbie at AA and the first impression is amazing good: there seems to be a true intent to create a community of skilled photographers rather than just a common standard agency.
Quite an interesting possibility in this troubled stock images times! Allow me a while to get better acquainted with them, then I’ll be back with – hopefully – long awaited good news 😀
Online there are several websites of mine, each one with a specific purpose and leading theme, thus it’s pretty easy to get lost among them.
As my uncontrolled interests range farther than that, I think it’s a good idea to contrive a simple summary page like this:
Uh, oh may be it is a true addiction…
I just added a new website!
Small AI Art collections ready to use
Small sets, small prices, no unnecessary complications.
I’m interested of images that speak to one another, forming complete visual worlds rather than disconnected fragments. Single images from the past, isolated from their context, often lose part of their meaning.
Working with historical imagery often means long research times, inconsistent quality, and stylistic mismatches.
Curated sets solve this by offering visual consistency, contextual coherence, and immediate usability:
press history, old magazine advertising, botanical art, medieval marine monsters, antique Egypt history and art… does it ring a bell?
And yes, I almost forgot it… there’s also my blog here.
I have a lot of fun writing it, hope you’ll enjoy reading it and commenting (unless you’re a troll – in which case you’ll be fed to our pirañas 😄).
Alas no, most of the times it doesn’t work like that: while between two people it takes plenty of patience, tolerance and forgiveness on both sides for a marriage to work fine until its natural end, between a person and a microstock agency things seem to be much harder – maybe because usually only one of the partners has a heart and a soul.
Be as it may, oftentimes the initial enthusiasm sooner or later drifts slowly into disillusion first, then into annoyance, and eventually into divorce.
Having gone through that unpleasant experience several times (with the microstocks, I mean – I still get along pretty well with my nasty old husband 🙂 ) I’ve learnt the hard way that even divorcing a microstock has a price, fair or outrageous depending on the agency. Let me share with you a few of those experiences, so that you may think twice before putting that confounded virtual ring on your finger.
Because wasting time and toil for a few cents was never my favorite hobby, so I resolved to get rid of the agencies that in the last years had sold just a negligible number of my works.
Eventually I counted the dead: there were eight of them!
As a result I’m listing below the “won’t-miss-them” by star rating according to the smoothness of the parting.
Pond5: 
The best. Smooth and gentlemanly parting.
Someone there asked me kindly why, I replied that all in all by them I wasn’t a best seller and parting was the best course of action. Soon after the same person sent me a kind email to confirm the account closure, a PayPal transfer notice to settle up and the promise that should I change my mind I’d be welcome back.
Worth a kiss!
Arcangel: 
No hard feelings, with a frank and honest email exchange.
At first I had sold through them a couple of covers but that was it.
They were extremely choosy and I was increasingly skeptical because as a matter of principle they refused any job touched even remotely by AI, which at times like this doesn’t look very convincing to me.
But that’s not my problem, I wish them good luck.
Zazzle: 
Simple and quick divorce, the only problem was to find the right web page, that as usual was well concealed.
I was making a little money by them but in the end personalizing various items using a rather cumbersome software wasn’t worth the time and toil. Too much work for too little.
FineArtAmerica: 
Easy quick impersonal parting, no hard feelings (actually no feelings at all).
The last year I haven’t sold a hairpin by them, and no news from them.
Red Bubble:
Here too an easy fast impersonal parting, though somewhat sad on my side.
Through them I was selling some more than through other POD’s, I’ve been by them for several years and I was genuinely fond of them. But the day after they cut drastically the royalties I had no choice but leaving.
123RF:
No problem. Nor a word from them.
Dreamstime: 
As a reply to my termination request I got an unpleasantly clear text:
“Please take into account that contributors are required to keep at least seventy (70%) percent of their portfolio online with Dreamstime.com for a period of at least six (6) months. You may disable all files older than six months from the date of review at any time. You will be allowed to disable a total of thirty (30%) percent of your total Media submitted within the past six (6) months. Media that was disabled and then enabled again will be counted as new submissions, no matter of their original upload date.”
Great: as punishment for my infidelity the images owned by me, on which I hold copyright, are held hostage for 6 months.
No doubt they are legally entitled to do so pursuant to some clause buried somewhere in the fine print that few contributors are likely to remember years later, but still…
They have been my first microstock agency, I stayed stubbornly with them until my royalties dropped below $100 a year, and even then I was saddened by the idea of leaving them. But as I read their reply my sorrow vanished like snow in the sun. Time flies…
Zoonar: 
Same as above: apparently here too I’ve been a bad girl and thus my works are held hostage for 6 months.
I don’t remember for how long I’ve been keeping an account by them, however I found in my archive an email from Zoonar dated 12.05.2009.
Long story short: so far I haven’t attained their pay-off threshold yet — possibly also because quite a share of the images I submitted got usually rejected (and keep selling nicely on Adobe and elsewhere).
Such a pity that their communications concerning the cancellation of my account and the inherent restrictive conditions were not sent me per email as one would expect: if memory serves they only appeared fleetingly on my dashboard, and when I got back there to make a copy they weren’t available anymore. I also seem to remember a message about something concerning my PayPal account (also mysteriously vanished from my dashboard) that might prevent them from paying me off… a real financial catastrophe, but I think I’ll survive even without the €6.71 they still owe me 😀
Do I hear an “and what about Shutterstock?”
Well, embarrassing as it is, I still retain a tokenish account by them. Since they cut their royalties to a few cents/image all I left by them was the picture of a (never sold) toilet paper roll, but so far I never deleted my account there.
Why? Please don’t ask 🙂
Unless you have stolen them, your images belong to you: you shot them, you processed them, you keyworded them, you uploaded them, you own the copyright.
Some agencies will be fair and acknowledge that, some will expect to hold them hostage for months – just like an obnoxious partner would do with the children, although in this case they didn’t even contribute to their birth.
An excellent reason to read carefully the fine print before signing in.
Just saying…
One morning of this hot weather summer season, looking for a bit of fresh air we made a stop there and it was charming: quiet fresh blue waters, nobody in sight.
Taking out my camera was irresistible. I hope you like the pictures 🙂
Would you fancy a swim?
You find something’s wrong with your website – alright, sh*t happens, don’t panic. First things first, you check all you can on your side (WordPress, plugins etc.), but everything looks OK.
Oh oh… then there’s one and only one thing to do: call your host’s secret… opps, support service.
And the ordeal begins.
Exception: BoostedHost is one of my host and it seems to be still human 🙂
Instead of the polite competent expert you were expecting, on the other end of the chatline you find an AI (Artificial OK but not necessarily Intelligent) tasked with getting rid of the most inexperienced or naive customers by suggesting that the issue is their own fault (“Was your computer properly plugged-in? Then you probably did this, or this, or that…”.
Note: you can skip this step by just opening a ticket and hoping for a fast reply thus saving one PITA.
Once you manage to clear the hurdle (sometimes just shouting a couple of times “I want to talk to a human!!!” works fine), you’re put in contact with a junior serviceperson full of goodwill who does his/her best to understand your problem within the limits of his/her skimpy competence, to empathize with your sufferance and to praise you for your patience.
Don’t be harsh, he/she isn’t there to solve your issue but rather to pass on your complaint to a senior serviceperson. If you manage to hold your temper throughout those first two steps, you’re worthy of their attention.
The senior serviceperson sounds somewhat competent and professional (can tell a cache from a cake, and even more), listens to your complaints, suggests a couple of tests you already run as a matter of course, looks a bit annoyed that you thought of them first, then solves the issue by blaming you for doing something you know you didn’t.
With your nerves on edge you pay a visit to ChatGPT and tell it in detail the established facts and your hypotheses – GPT is a gentlebeing and thus listens patiently without interrupting or jumping to conclusions.
From it you get all the understanding you need to placate you and a nice list of 3rd-degree questions to grill the senior serviceperson with (“yes or no, no maybe’s!”).
The senior serviceperson (not necessarily the one you already met), crushed by GPT’s 3rd-degree questions, finally admits that one of them hit the bull’s eye and the problem is actually their fault.
Without a word of apology or regret for their indifference and/or incompetence – the customer’s always wrong, huh?
Dark clouds are gathering on the horizon:
many hosting companies are excited to announce that the AI is on board, ready to ‘help’ you design your websites to your taste, no web knowledge needed – just warm up and serve.
I’m afraid that such a grand entrance will encourage the Big Bosses to regard human competence as even more irrelevant than it is today. Then why squander dear money in expensive junior and senior servicepeople while the AI can take care of the customer support as well?
Let me hope that at least it will be ChatGPT…
However at this point I’m wondering if there’s still space enough in my cellar for a small, old-fashioned tower desktop to configure as a server 🙁
Over the years, my websites have gradually grown into very large image archives, bringing together historical reproductions, restored engravings, and AI-generated visual work.
Many visitors have explored them freely, sometimes using individual images as references, illustrations, or inspiration in ways I often discovered only by chance.
Recently, however, I began to feel that this structure no longer reflected the way I actually work.
Single images, isolated from their context, often lose part of their meaning.
What interests me increasingly is not accumulation, but coherence: images that speak to one another, forming complete visual worlds rather than disconnected fragments.
I was also aware that my customers often prefer to buy several images of similar content instead of a single one (botanical illustrations, more photos of a business center together, portraits of 18th century scientists, just to name a few).
For this reason, the sites are gradually being reorganized around curated thematic sets.
Here two of them on Antikstock
This transition also allows the visual material to be presented more clearly and consistently, while preserving the possibility of acquiring individual images when needed.
A smaller selection of standalone images and free resources will remain available, while new curated sets will continue to be added over time.
If you are interested in licensing or acquiring a specific image from a set, feel free to get in touch directly.
Thank you to everyone who has visited, shared, referenced, or quietly followed these archives over the years.
“Formation of a quantumhenge” megalith monument of granite, artwork of Judith Neunhäuserer in front of the Center for Quantum Engineering at TUM campus in Garching of the Technical University of Munich.
The art inspiration was an iconic quantum experiment from Crommie M.F., Lutz C.P., Eigler D.M. “Confinement of electrons to quantum corrals on a metal surface“, in: Science. 1993. V. 262.P. 218ff. (painstakingly copied from the board there 🙂 )
Suggestive, indeed, and discovered by chance, driving along the campus.
The first impression was surprise “How! Why nobody told me that we have a megalith Stonehenge here!”
Then came the curiosity and I also took an aerial shot.
Walking around it, I thought I saw a piece looking like the Rosetta stone inside the circle.
Worth a visit, definitely!
I’m quietly transforming my websites.
The idea is to offer full sets of selected images built around a focused idea — a set of visuals that share the same atmosphere and narrative thread, designed as a complete package ready for illustrators, designers, publishers, and anyone who needs consistent imagery with a strong personality and immediate usability.
One of my curated sets is The Café-Library open at night
I’ve ever been and still am fascinated by books – don’t know how many thousands I have at home – thus the idea seems fabolous to me:
a bookshop-café open all night with the option to sit quiet and read a book (rented or bought), and at the first morning light, with a warm latte and a book in your hand, to go back to your place and sleep the day.
The atmosphere draws loosely from literary and real references – from Gianrico Carofiglio’s Osteria, to many brillant works of Walter Moers, to the Library Bar in Copenhagen.
Then came my imagination: the quiet pedestrian streets of an Italian downtown, dim light all around, most of it coming from a cheerful open bookshop with tables and seats outside or inside, with people sitting there, reading comfortably and sipping a coffee.
Every so often at the same table sit two people, occasionally they talk together but usually they are as good as alone, each one completely absorbed in their reading.
Sometimes under a vaulted ceiling of one of these coffee-bookshops someone sits at the piano in a corner and plays a soft tune.
Not easy feeding the feeling to Midjourney, but I’m happy with the result of a consistent, common atmosphere.
Et voilà some of the 16 selected images from the set:
In a time of constant distraction, the idea of a place dedicated to open, welcoming, uninterrupted reading looks quietly radical to me 😀
Une petite note for the AI-skeptics:
If you feel like writing a piece of poetry you’ll probably use a word processor, if only because today stylus, nibs and ink aren’t all that easy to find. And no one will dream of claiming that the real poet is the word processor you typed on and not you.
Things change if you use a sophisticated AI as a writing tool, but not by much: there’s still something essential, let’s call it ‘the human touch’, that you must provide yourself lest the outcome sound somewhat dull, insipid – even though there’s always the simpleton who takes the bite and congratulates, but that’s another story 😉Same goes if you use a sophisticated graphic AI to give body to a dream you found in your mind, that otherwise would take you days or months to draw or paint with your own hands: if you want it to evoke the feelings that inspired you, the human touch must come from you.
Hard – if ever possible – to tell what this mysterious human touch really is: it’s something that you feel, not that you understand. Something related to the rustle of old pages under your fingers, to the smell of an ancient leather binding, to a gentle breeze ruffling your hair, to the taste of an early coffee, to the faint memory of a happy moment lost in the past… and this is as far as I go.
A tool is a tool is a tool.
