Street | Urban | Travel | Photography by Marcus Puschmann
Approaching Easter Sunday, The Significant Other and the Kids diligently colored some Easter Eggs. I decided to work on a photographic Easter Egg for myself, trying a technique I read about on the web but have never explored so far. For a bit of how to continue after the jump…. Continue reading “A Photographer’s Easter Egg Painting”
The Friday preceding Easter Sunday is Good Friday, a Christian holiday commemorating the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and his death at Calvary. It is also known as Holy Friday, Great Friday, and Black Friday.
We are spending Easter at a very good friend’s house in the Lungau region in the Austrian Alps. Not really the place for Street Photography, but the opportunity to capture some monochrome landscapes.
The weather was not all that great, rather fitting for the subdued mood of Good Friday. While the kids took to the slopes, the Significant Other and I hiked up the Weißpriachtal along the Longa River. Readers of this blog might remember my post about High Contrast Landscape Photography, where I took some Ansel Adams like images on a sunny December day in the very same valley during an earlier visit.
Today there were only low hanging clouds, nothing spectacular to photograph, so we just enjoyed the hike. Only when returning, I took my Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom out of my backpack and shot a few detail shots of what nature gave me. Kind of zen-like. Probably nothing anyone apart from me would look at, but really satisfying me as a visual artist. I will share these images tomorrow.
My photo of the day was that of the mountain above us, in a brief moment when the clouds opened up and gave us a vista of a moody mountainscape. Perfect for a Good Friday.
Image specs are 1/640 sec @ f/7.1 and ISO 200, focal length 100mm (equals 200mm full frame equivalent).
Wish you all a great start into a hopefully splendid Easter weekend!
Marcus
Related Posts:
High Contrast Landscape Photography
Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: Abandoned or Alone
Preparing for the trip to the Big Apple a week from Sunday, I was looking at some old photographs from my last visits in 2010 and 2012.
Just to play around, I was looking for some images with high contrasts, that I could convert to monochrome. All of those places (Statue of Liberty, 9/11 Memorial / Top of the Rocks) are on our to-do list for our upcoming trip. The Significant Other even secured tickets to visit Lady Liberty’s Crown. Can’t wait!
All photographs were taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the mZuiko 14-150 F4-5.6 Travel Zoom. RAW and monochrome conversion in Lightroom CC Classic.
Have a peaceful Good Friday
Marcus
Related Posts:
Instant Inspiration (10) – Nocturnal Skyline
“Rise/Set” is the theme of this week’s WPC from Word Press’ “The Daily Post”. This is a perfect challenge to send us all into a (hopefully) sunny Easter weekend. In Germany, Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays, so we have a long weekend ahead. Time to spend with friends and family, time for some photography. To see some sunsets (and a sunrise) from my travels around the world, continue after the jump…. Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: Rise/Set”
How ’bout a small German lesson – “Ostern kann kommen” – reads this shop’s window and attracts (chocolate starved) onlookers. I personally take a good tasty Bratwurst any day over a chocolate Easter bunny. But that’s just me.
I’ve officially made it already to my long Easter weekend, but it was a rough ride the last days. But the business laptop is closed and won’t be opened until Tuesday. Never mind, the e-mails will also arrive by iPhone 😉
Photo was taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the Oly 12-100 F/4 Pro Zoom, image specs 1/320 at f/8 and ISO3200 (still form that infamous series), focal length was 38mm (76mm full frame equivalent).
If you still look for inspirations around photography for the Easter weekend, check out the tips in my Learning Center .
Have a great Friday!
Marcus
Related Posts:
Street Photography Quick Tip 1 – A way to shoot inconspicuously
Street Photography Quick Tip 2 – Another way to shoot inconspicuously
Another nice day is in the books, spring is coming with all might. The job that pays the bills is once more demanding all my time, but a long Easter weekend is just around the corner. Time to see friends and family, time for some photography. We’ll be heading down to Austria for the weekend, then four more workdays (and the 18th birthday of my Big Boy), and the Significant Other and me will be off for a week in the Big Apple.
I’m still figuring out all the great things we want/need to do, but then again, isn’t planning the trips just as much fun as actually doing them? Equipment-wise I want to travel light, the OM-D E-M1 with the 12-100 F/4 as all-round cam/lens combo, and the PEN-F with the 17mm F/1.8 for some light street shooting. That’s all. Maybe I bring the Lensbaby Trio and/or the WALIMEX Pro 7,5mm 1:3.5 Fish-Eye, two small lenses that easily fit in the bag. That’s it. Maybe I change my mind, maybe 😉
The photo was taken with the E-M1 and the 12-100 F/4. Image specs 1/2000 sec @ f/11 and ISO 3200. Yes, also this photo was affected by me not noticing the wrong ISO setting with which I shot all afternoon. The Olympus handles ISO well, so no big deal in this sunshine photo.
Have a great Tuesday!
Marcus
Related Posts:
Saturday Rush (or running after the subway bird)
Photographers are similar to children. They wander the world totally open-minded, use the creative tool in their hands to try out new things, finding new and creative ways of capturing light onto their sensor. Digital photography sometimes reminds me of kids using crayons and paper to ban their thoughts and fantasies onto paper. It doesn’t cost much, nobody confines their creative process. There are no limits to the creativity of children. Children love to experiment. And sometimes, they achieve interesting results just by accident.
This is what also happens to photographers. I love to experiment, try out new ways of producing art with my camera. Not necessarily art in the sense of intending to make money with it, but art that I personally find visually pleasing and that makes me go to bed with a content feeling of having achieved something to satisfy my creative aspirations. And sometimes, just like with children, things happen by accident.
I just came out of a department store where I shot shoppers moving up and down escalators with a low shutter speed of 1/15 sec to achieve some motion blur effects. Coming out of the store into bright sunlight I forgot to switch back to P-Mode after shooting with shutter priority. So my shutter speed was still 1/15 sec. Chip in the fact that the whole day I was shooting unintentionally with ISO 3200, I was way above correct exposure of the backlit street scenery that I wanted to capture outside the store in bright daylight. After I took this image of shoppers standing in the sun in front of the reflective storefront windows, I checked the results on my LCD screen, saw it was way overexposed, realized my mistake, dialed in P-Mode and retook the shot, now correctly exposed.
But only later, when downloading the taken photographs to Lightroom Classic CC, I realized that I much more like the x-ray style shot I took completely unintentional and by accident by shooting way overexposed with 1/15 sec @ f/22 and ISO 3200. And which gave me the blueprint to in the future go out and intentionally go after similar effects.
This is what I love so much about photography, the infinite possibilities of endless creativity, be it accidentally or intentionally.
For all my tips and inspirations around photography check out my Learning Center.
Have a great week!
Marcus
Related Posts:
Finding your photographic style
Together with the Significant Other I headed into town yesterday, where we seemingly met the rest of Nuremberg’s population, as everybody was drawn out to just a touch of spring, with the sun shining from a spotless sky and temperatures hitting almost double digits. And everyone was trying to find her or his spot in the sun.
I brought the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 for some snapshots of the sun seekers. Oh, and just for the case I haven’t mentioned it yet on this photography blog (I know I have numerous time), don’t forget to check your camera settings before you start shooting, they might be way off from your last photographic outing.
Stupid me shot the whole afternoon with ISO 3200, which was still dialed in from me shooting the inflight Polar Lights during my return flight from Portland last weekend. No I was lucky, because the OM-D handles noise quite well and there is no issue of having a grainy look on street photographs. Best is we all put a piece of paper in your camera bags with the text “check your settings”….or better make it a habit to reset them after every outing with your camera.
So far it was a good weekend, with the beautiful sunny Saturday. The daughter of a very good friend married yesterday, and at least they got very decent weather for their special day, after a mostly grey and cold week. Also this morning looks promising, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, although temperatures are still way below freezing. But I hope again for the afternoon, and coffee and cake in the sun. And some more photography with the correct ISO 😉
If you still seek some tips and inspirations for your photographic outing today, check out my free Learning Center and get inspired.
Wish you all a happy and sunny Sunday!
Marcus
Related Posts:
The Weekly Photo Challenge calls to depict a “Favorite Place“, an image of a happy place or a faraway location you return to again and again.
The city that has a special place in my heart, a city I return to again and again, is Genoa. “La Superba”, as the city on the Ligurian Riviera is also called, was our home from 2001 to 2005, and where we have many very good friends.
Typically the first place we head to, when visiting, is the “Porto Antico”, the old port, that dates back to Roman times. Towering above the harbor basin is “La Lanterna”, the historic lighthouse, and the principal landmark of Genoa.
For centuries the tallest lighthouse in the world, it is, at 249 feet (76 m), still the fifth tallest lighthouse. Considered as a whole with the natural rock on which it stands, its height is even 383 feet (117 m), making it the second tallest lighthouse in the world. Originally constructed in 1161, it was rebuilt in 1543 in its current structure, making it the world’s third oldest existing lighthouse. One of its keepers was Antonio Colombo, uncle of explorer Christopher Columbus, who was born in Genoa in 1451.
Sitting in on of the bars at the Porto Antico, looking at the Lanterna, sipping a cocktail and enjoying a warm sunset, there are not many places on this planet that mean more to me than this one.
Have a great Thursday!
Marcus
Related Posts:
StoNur on the Road – Portofino
During my last transatlantic flight I watched “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”, a quite impressive movie, for which Frances McDormand deservedly won the Academy Award in the category Best Actress in a Leading Role.
“Variations on a Billboard” is the title of the 22nd episode of my “Instant Inspirations”, my series for you if you feel you suffer from “Photographer’s Block” or simply want to shoot something that you have never tried. Or at least not recently (you can find all previous episodes in my Learning Center“).
I saw this huge advertisement on the side of high-rise building in downtown Portland. It caught my eye in more than one aspect. Even though it is obvious, I honestly saw it only when I processed the photographs on my computer. They eye wants to see what the eye expects to see.
Then, I started to work the scene trying to capture more variants of this big billboard advertisement. My other favorites and links to previous episodes of “Instant Inspirations” you can find after the jump…. Continue reading “Instant Inspiration (22) – Variations on a Billboard”
I haven’t done a “Monday Mountain” in quite a while, but I thought I show off this photograph of a rugged, snowcapped peak in the Northern Cascades. Unless previous episodes, where I wrote about particular mountains, I have no clue how this peak is called. If anyone recognizes this quite distinctive shape and has an idea, please leave the name in the comment section.
Image specs are 1/800 sec @ f/7.1 and ISO 200, focal length was 100mm (200mm focal length full frame equivalent). The photo was taken with my OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom a few minutes after takeoff in Seattle, on our way towards Canada, while we were still climbing to cruising altitude.
Raw- and monochrome conversion in Lightroom CC Classic
I finally got home from Portland at Saturday evening, in the middle of a little snow storm. And I made the birthday party with only one hour of delay. Next time I set a foot into an airplane it will be for a week of vacation in NYC with the Significant Other. Less than three weeks to go. Life is not too bad 😉
Wish you all a great week!
Marcus
Related Posts:
I made it safely to Amsterdam, where I will be stuck for the next eight hours due to my canceled flight to Nuremberg. I tried various options to get home earlier, but nothing worked out. I hope that at least my 16:45 flight is on time so I make it to the birthday party of a good friend the Significant Other and I are invited to.
But at least the heaven tried to cheer me up, and this with much success. I was kissed by a magic heavenly light show high above the Northern Atlantic, just as the Delta Airbus left North Western Canada (Baffin Island) for Greenland. And this time I saw the inflight Northern Lights sitting on the right side of the plane, the window facing south. For my how-to and more photos continue after the jump… Continue reading “Kissed By The Light And Happy”