Tea!

I think if you put your tea in the glass container, you might end up as a still life!

I'm not so sure about the coffee drinking Germans. My mother in-law who will be 90 next birthday is Swabisch and has never lived far from Reutlingen for her whole life.

She is a tea drinker and I believe her whole family was. Whilst visiting her over the Christmas New Year period just gone by, all we had was tea.

Same when we visited most people, tea was offered first with coffee offered secondly, if we really wished for it.

Ps:- love the self portrait.

Mick.

I do like the idea of this shot - the simplicity (and value) of ordinary things... (btw is that an auto-portrait in the teapot? - possibly that's a little distracting - or was it on purpose?). There are some good shapes there, the composition works well for me - though if I can just say something about the edges... I think it's an interesting thing to do to have 'cut off' pieces around the edge, but my own feeling is it might be good to keep the pieces in proportion - i.e. a little more of the tea strainer (not necessarily all) and whatever it is to the right...Anyway, good subjects....and I like the light very much
Cate

@Mick
Happy you, having a *tea-drinking* mother-in-law this far south in Germany. It's a real pain for tea-drinkers travelling farer south than Oldenburg (about 35 Miles from the coast) usually .
As for the glass container: Looks ugly isn't it?. Real tea-drinkers (the ones from the friesian coast) have the habit never to clean up vessels for preparing tea internaly. Therefor, using glass is quite uncommon but has the advantage that it's not nessesary to warm it up first.
@Cate
Thanks for commenting the composition. I have looked at the negative again. It's in fact croped a little. There is a little bit more to show of the tea strainer and the tin can (containing the tea). You are right, I should have shown the whole picture.
The selfportrait was not intented. I didn't notice until I saw the print. I think without movements it couldn't have been avoided.

Ulrich

Nice, but I can see that you did not use a tripod.

Very nicely done, Ulrich.