Mercedes 300SL
During the just passed weekend I got the chance to visit the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart. The time there was worth spent not to mention that it took almost half a day to walk through all the floors and look and listen to all the Mercedes history.
I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the German company has also produced aircraft engines, motorcycles and bicycles and has brought forth many engineering solutions, for example from aircraft engines to racing engines and than from the racing track on the normal road and I have the best example for this: the 1954 Mercedes-Benz 300SL, the fastest production car of it's day!
The 300SL describes the 2995 cc straight-6 engine and the "SL" stands for "Sport Leicht" or put in plain English "Sport Light". The car has it's origin on the race track, being based on the highly successful 1952 Mercedes-Benz 300SL racing model, code named W194. The 1954 road model 300SL was codenamed W198.
Noteworthy is also that the 300SL was the first production car to feature direct chamber injection, technology that Mercedes took from aeroplane engines, which made the car's engine able to produce almost 230 PS, compared to the actual carbureted racetrack version which developed only 115 horse power (86kW). The direct injection was a Bosch mechanical direct fuel injection system.
This particular car was requested by the New York Mercedes distributor and official USA importer Max Hoffman. He told the Mercedes-Benz AG management in Stuttgart Germany that the market, especially the US market, is well prepared for such a car taking into account the economic boom after the Second World War. More than 80% of the vehicles produced were sold in the USA.
After it was first introduced in 1954 as a closed sports car with distinctive gull-winged doors the German car company also offered the 300SL as a open roadster. Until the production of the model ended in 1963 Mercedes sold 1400 gull-winged coupe units and 1858 roadster units.
Today the value of this car is quite high being a popular collection item for car enthusiasts. In 2009 a couple of 300SL models were offered for sale from the Foxwood Collection at over $1.3 Million US Dollars.
I'm a car passionate and loved photographing this car, I think it is the car I took most of my time on from the entire Stuttgart Mercedes Museum and trust me it had plenty to offer. For most of the shots I used the available light and the on camera flash did not help as much as patience did. Why patience ? I had to wait for all the other museum visitors to pass by, to photograph the car, to try again or to listen to the guide while walking round the car.
I'll post more about other cars I have photographed during my visitation in the coming days.
Until then..
Cheers! Z.
Happy shot
A little while ago I was visiting a good friend of mine and decided to take the camera with me and take a few shots of his pets. Some turned out good, some turned out .. not so good, but we had fun and got more experience in photographing pets. Honestly, who would have thought that they run and move so much and it's so hard to get them in the frame like you want to.. but than again if you got a trigger friendly finger you can get some unexpected shots.
Long story short, I got this little shot here which I really like a lot and it turns out that not just me. I decided to gave the pictures to my friend since they are his pets anyway and he placed the next one on some pet owners forums.
As you can see if you followed the link on my image above, it got a few votes in the pet image contest, reason enough to be a little bit happy, but that is not the explanation for the title at all.. no, this is a happy shot because.. well, just look at the image.
And if you want to see it larger you can check the shot on my flickr stream:
Zmurfu.
Baiersbronn im Schwarzwald
..or how they put it on the official website Earth : Europe : Germany : Baden-Württemberg : Northern Black Forest : Region Karlsruhe : Freudenstadt County : commune Baiersbronn, is a lovely area within the Black Forest with plenty of vacation opportunities both in winter and summer.
The entire commune has 16.082 residents, split among Baiersbronn village with 5.735 residents, Friedrichstal, Mitteltal, Obertal, Tonbach, Klosterreichenbach, Röt-Schönegründ, Huzenbach, Schwarzenberg, Schönmünzach and Schönmünz with only 162 residents.
With such a small community that receives plenty of tourists all year round people are cheerful and welcoming. We went there to find some ski slopes and were amazed by how trusting and friendly everyone is there.
One example is at the ski renting shop in Baiersbronn village, where they were closing shop on Sunday at noon but let us keep the skis all day with the promise to put them behind the house, with a small paper note in them stating our names, before we left. Where would you find something like this ? Complete strangers renting a couple of ski equipment sets and than walking away on promise to bring them back in the evening.
Another example is that we left our gloves and hats and a pair of snow glasses on a bench near the slope elevator when we got there and they were still there in the evening when we packed things into the car.
Not to mention that everyone on the ski trail was friendly and helpful even if at times bothered involuntarily by some of us making mistakes and falling off the cable while going up.
And at the end of the day we left for home tired, happy and with a few lovely photos from which the ones posted above. Sometimes things just go right.. happy with the photographs and the time spent there, now all that's left is to get back there before summer comes and melts the snow.
Cheers!