“All Hallow’s Eve” is the eve before the religious feast All Saints (aka All Hallow’s Day), remembering the dead, saints and martyrs of christianity. Many of the traditions of Halloween are believed to originate in ancient Celtic harvest festivals and pagan traditions. It was mainly Irish immigrants to the USA who brought along the many more secular traditions like trick-or-treating, Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins into jack-o’-lanterns and lighting bonfires. The kids for sure haven fun with this, and so does the street photographer. And not all is lost, as sometimes the good magician seems to try to kill the monster.
I wish all of you a very creepy Halloween (stay safe noneless)
I wish all my friends a blessed, happy, marvelous, successful, beautiful, inspirational, creative, wonderful and especially healthy 2021! May all your wishes and dreams come true!
I wish all my friends a blessed, happy, marvelous, successful, beautiful, inspirational, creative, wonderful and healthy 2019! May all your wishes and dreams come true!
Christmas Season below Nuremberg’s Imperial Castle
Sitting in my office in far away Oregon, I swiped though my Instagram feed during lunch break. Somehow I was surprised to see all those images from the grand opening of the historic Nuremberg Christmas market. Being fully engulfed in my work on the other side of the world, it completely dropped off my radar that this weekend is the start of Advent season, the four weekends prior to Christmas. And traditionally, on Friday night before the First Advent, is the festive opening of Nuremberg’s Christkindlesmarkt, as it is called locally. And with that, the historic old town below the Imperial Castle turns on the lights of all the festive street decorations. Seeing the Instagram photos I’m feeling a bit homesick, but that comes with the job that pays the bills. At least I get to spend two days at the coast of the great Pacific Ocean, albeit with plenty of Oregon liquid sunshine forecasted, but I will make the best of it.
The photograph was taken with my Olympus PEN-F and the 12mm F/2 prime lens, image specs 1/60 sec @ f/2 and ISO 1600.
If you want to pick up your camera on the weekend and are looking for tips and inspirations around photography, visit my free Learning Center .
Wish you a great weekend and a peaceful Christmas season.
As the work week is finally coming to a close, there is a lot to smile about. After the passing of a cold front, the weekend is supposed to be beautiful again, with lots of sunshine and warm temperatures.
We’ll be spending the weekend in our nation’s capital to visit close friends and roam the Streets of Berlin, always one of my favorite places for Street Photography. Good that I spent a good part of last night giving my cameras and lenses a thorough cleaning. I also finally hooked them up to my Mac to do the firmware updates I wanted to do for quite some time now. So all is ready for a weekend of shooting.
Yesterday I also received the printed and framed photograph that I ordered to be included in a year long exhibition of the work of local artists. It opens at the end of September, and I’m really exited as it will be my first ever exhibit. The theme of the exhibition is “on the road” , and I submitted the image of the historic jetty in Swakopmund, Namibia, I took last year and blogged about in this post.
I didn’t even realize it when it happened, but sometimes last week the “Streets of Nuremberg” has exceeded the threshold of 5000 followers. When I started this little blog two and a half years ago, I would have never even dreamed about one day reaching this number. Then again, blogging for me is not about statistics. By sharing my photographic experiences and tips via my posts and my free Learning Center, I want to inspire and empower others to get more involved in photography and the visual arts. And I want to give back to the community that gave me so much over the years. And the best part of blogging is making all those wonderful connections with likeminded people all over this planet. So to all of you a heartfelt “Thanks” for being part of my journey.
The photo was taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the 12-100mm F/4. Image specs are 1/400 sec @ f/5.6 and ISO 200. RAW conversion in Lightroom Classic CC
Street Fun | 2018 | 1/640 sec – f/7.1 – ISO 200 – 100mm
I’m welcoming myself back to my own blog, after a small summer break I took after returning to Germany from our family vacation trip through the Pacific Northwest. I guess everyone needs a timeout once in a while. The transition from a splendid three weeks off work back to the job that pays the bills was just too hard, and in the evenings I was just too tired to get in front of my computer to blog.
But there is plenty to do photographically, I still need to edit and post-process most of my images from our trip, write the remaining “PNW Explored”posts about the Oregon High Desert, our trips up the volcanos Mount Hood and Mount St. Helens, and to wrap it up, a visit to the fascinating Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle, just hours before we boarded the flight back to Germany.
I dearly need to clean my camera equipment, the dust and dirt really took its toll after three weeks on the road.
And I really have to catch up with all the comments on this blog I haven’t answered, plus check out all the blogs I follow and I haven’t visited in the past weeks.
Last night, Big Girl has made one of her dreams come true. As kid, as probably all girls do, she wanted to be a Ballerina, but for one reason or the other, she never made it to join a ballet group. As teenager, she watched all episodes of the Australian ballet TV series “Dance Academy”, sad she missed the opportunity and stating that she’ll never be a dancer. Then, at the turn of being 20, she signed up for ballet classes at our local adult evening school, together with a friend.
And last night, after a nearly a year of hard work and endless rehearsals, she took to the stage in a production of Romeo and Juliet, all organized and played by the local adult evening school, featuring their ballet classes for adults, teens and children. Big Girl’s group played three supporting roles, first peasant ladies, then maids, and finally some court ladies of Juliet.
There were too many clouds in the southern sky. We were enjoying a great dinner with friends and family out on the patio on a warm summer night. Everyone was exited to see the total lunar eclipse. At 22:30, as announced, the International Space Station ISS appeared as a brightly glowing spot out of the North, passing directly overhead before vanishing behind the clouds. We almost gave up hope. But then, all of a sudden, the sky cleared and we had a perfect view of the eclipse. By the time I grabbed the tripod and my Oly, walked a few hundred yards to an open field and set up shop, the moon was already starting to move out of the Earth’s shadow.
The photo was taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the 40-150 F/2.8 Pro Zoom with the MC 14 converter attached, giving me a 210mm focal length (equals 420mm in full frame). Image specs are 1/8 sec @ f/4 and ISO 1600. Cropped, curve adjustments and slight sharpening of the RAW was done in Lightroom Classic CC.
Well, to be correct, last evening was not all that fair, but rather rainy. The summer is taking break in Nuremberg, before we are supposed to get another heat wave starting tomorrow. Still, we went to our local little summer fair, and I brought my (in this combination weatherproof) Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 for some shooting in the blue hour. Fairgrounds are great places to snap away, colorful and full of happy people. The person behind the camera can shoot fairly inconspicuous. You can experiment with various depth of fields and shutter speeds. For the rest of the photographs continue after the jump… Continue reading “Fair Evening”→
In time for the weekend here is episode 24 of my “Instant Inspirations”, my series for you if you look for something to overcome “Photographer’s Block” or simply want to shoot something that you have never tried, or at least not recently.
Today I want to inspire you to go on a safari. A fine art photo safari. Something everyone can do that has a zoo or wildlife park in the vicinity. All you need in terms of gear is a camera with a zoom. While enjoying a stroll through the zoo, look for wildlife in high contrast lighting situations. You are almost guaranteed to find such situations during any visit. Shoot with a wider aperture, to throw the background out of focus.
Thunder Night | Nuremberg | 2018 | 1/8 sec – f/2 – ISO 320 – 17mm
The hot summer weather came to a shrieking halt today, as a series of heavy thunderstorms passed over the Streets of Nuremberg. Nature is in dire need of the water after weeks of drought. And after spending the last evenings in the beer gardens of the Old Town, today people were rushing to seek shelter from the arriving torrential rains.
Time for me to work through my emails and catch up with blogging. There is an advantage to everything.
Taken with the PEN-F and the mZuiko 17mm F/1.8
For inspirations around photography head over to my free Learning Center.
I had a rough weekend and Monday coming down with a bad case of stomach flu. No photographic ventures whatsoever. And the job that pays the bills clouds the rest of the week.
Still I want to take the time to wish all my American friends a peaceful and happy Independence Day!
