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03/01/2016

A Climb to 2016 in Saxon Switzerland

Climber's paradise is good for photogs, too. — Climber’s paradise is good for photogs, too.

Spending the time after Christmas with friends and leaving home for some nice travel destination has a long tradition with me. This time we decided to discover East Germany’s Saxon Switzerland in winter. (fyi: this is where free climbing was invented) This area is famous for its sandstone table mountains and very popular for climbers from all over the world. Since I am a bit afraid of height, I decided not to climb these rocks and to use the touristy paths instead to get on top. Finally my goal was to take some nice photographs.

08/09/2015

Solution: Mouse disappeared and reanimated

Mouse disappeared - Don't Panic! — Mouse disappeared – Don’t Panic!

What a crazy morning. Last weekend I had cleaned my desk after extensive work on a wedding photography project. When I shut down my workstation the mouse would not react. Um. Okay, maybe it ran out of battery for wireless transimission, I thought. No problem to recharge or to use my fall back solution which is a good ol’ wired mouse.

When I switched on my computer this morning the mouse still would not work. Batteries were charged and even the wired replacement device showed the same behaviour: the mouse pointer was like stuck on a certain spot on the screen. Moving the mouse would cause some pointer movement, but within a split second it would return to back to the very spot.

17/08/2015

God Beams: Heaven over Sweden

Last week I was invited to attend the wedding of one of my best friends doughter. Okay, not only to celebrate but also to jump in as the photographer. The specialty about this was that Marie and Sascha are German expatriots, now living in Sweden. Thus I had the chance to arrive early and to return late – with the result of a wonderful 5-day short holiday trip to Scandinavia.

Ofcourse I took this chance to shoot some more than just the ususal wedding photos. I also took a lot of snapshots of the life around this event which was quite entertaining because friends and family were all invited to stay at some kind of mansion North of Malmö. So everybody knew each other already before the official part started. And I did some personal work – Skies. To me this sounded really promising because I feel that the light up there in the North is quite different. And I was curious for the results.

22/05/2015

Impressed by Laforet Air in Berlin

My Ticket to WOW - Laforet Air Berlin — My Ticket to WOW – Laforet Air Berlin

Yesterday I went to see work of photographer and filmmaker Vincent Laforet which has impressed me over the last year. His current project LAFORET AIR shows cities from above. Okay, this does not sound exciting since everyone can see such imagery via Google Earth.

But Vincent does a totally different job – he flies very high with a helicopter and shoots these cities at night. All the illumination becomes visible and produces different impressions for almost every city. Some look like electronic circuts, some like the vains of some creature and some like islands in the desert. Somehow every mental association seems to be connected to life.

12/10/2014

Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photowalk in Berlin

Soap Bubbles at Alexanderplatz (TV tower and St. Mary's in reflection) — Soap Bubbles at Alexanderplatz (TV tower and St. Mary’s in reflection)

Every autumn American photo educator and photographer Scott Kelby calls for his worldwide photowalk with several hundred locations and tens of thousands participants. The Berlin group of this event met yesterday afternoon for a stroll through historic (East) Berlin.

The weather was far from optimal for outdoor shooting of architecture and cityscape due to haze and deep clouds (around 250 meters since you could not even see the top of the TV tower). On the other hand I had shot these motifs so many times. Thus I concentrated on a special assignment:

28/09/2014

Looking forward to Fall

This summer I started to care for a vine in my backyard, which was in a bad state. Unfortunately a little late for cutting it into shape. Nevertheless I removed all the dead branches and fruitless young shoots.

Now, since fall has started, the time of harvesting comes closer. I am quite proud that I managed to grow so many grapes – okay the berries are somehow small but that may be caused by the type of wine. On the other hand everything is absolutely organic. Next year I will try to optimize the result of the harvest by starting to care for it in late winter.

18/07/2014

Summer in Germany

This year I had not planned any big vacation trip to some awesome target. No. I just wanted to stay home and keep things quiet. Thus I decided to spend a few days in the South-West of Germany – a region I haven’t really been at before. I met with Dietrich, a good old friend of mine, who was working in Stuttgart for a short period.

We did a lot of bike-riding – man, Stuttgart is a really hilly city and it cost me a lot of sweat to reach some of our targets. But then we also did some nice roundtrips to the Black Forest and the Swabian Jura by car. One hightlight was a multi-day trip around lake Bodensee with short visits to the Swiss Alps. Finally it was a great holiday trip with lots of new impressions, funny conversations between old friends, visits to beer gardens to watch the football championships and ofcourse with a lot of shooting photographs.

13/04/2014

Spring Attack: Bicyclotography and GPS for Lightroom

Every Doctor says: You need to move to keep your systems intact. Umm. Therefore this morning I have woken up my bicycle from winter sleep and planned my first test ride for this open air season.

The weather was perfect for cycling, but not really for photography (and lightwise it was the wrong time anyway). But to take my camera with me turned out to be quite a clever decision. Every now and then I could stop, pretending to take a photo :-). Since spring has just started in our area, I decided to take some pics of fresh leaves and other greenstuff. So I have lots of green and surprisingly even some shiny yellow.

25/03/2014

Who did Strobist’s New Lighting 101 in German? I Know ;-)

Today I got a short message from David Hobby, a.k.a. The Strobist, that he has made my German translation of his famous e-book “Lighting 101” available via his website.

During the last few weeks I did the translation, editing and layout with my editorial service GermanoMedia. This book is the renowned beginners guide for photo enthusiasts who want to learn lighting techniques, that drastically improve the quality of their speedlight photography.

20/03/2014

Blue Hour Photowalk at Berlin’s Government District

Whenever one of our friends from Nikonpoint photography forum is in town and suggests to meet for a photowalk some forum members from Berlin are ready to meet and to do some cool shoot.

Tonight FM2-User from the city of Mainz was in Berlin and we suggested to make use of the Blue Hour in Berlins Government district and to walk along the river Spree. It was quite a short distance, maybe 1500 metres and our bunch of four were shooting for about only 75 mins. But this was absolutely okay because the evening sky and the illuminated Buildings were excellent subjects.