A quick post with a street photograph in between. Isn’t this drive through shopping at it’s best? Driving a scooter through a market shopping veggies directly from a stall still sitting on the machine? Life as it happens on a greek Saturday market.
Image taken with the Leica M and the Summicron 50mm F/2. Image specs 1/125 sec @ f/11 and ISO 400. Postprocessing in Lightroom Classic.
Stay tuned for more posts of my series “Greece explored”.
Sure enough our vacation in Greece offers some opportunity at street photography. We spent the morning of last Saturday at the market in Argos, the town nearest to our holiday getaway. I brought along the Leica M (Type 240) with the Summicron 50mm F/2. Here are a couple shots from that outing.
Although there are quite a few more street photography from our evening in Bologna, I’m closing this series out with an image aptly titled “Ciao Bella”. Taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X and the mZuiko 12-100 F/4, specs are 1/160 sec @ f/4 and ISO 3200 at 86mm focal length. RAW conversion in Lightroom Classic.
The next posts will be covering our trip to Greece, where we are spending our summer vacation on the Peloponnese.
“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept” is one of my favorite quotes from the godfather of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004). Not that I want to use it as a fig leaf to cover up the fact that I wasn’t able to capture a tack sharp image of this couple being in a rush in a dark alley in Bologna’s historic old town on a late Thursday evening. Image specs are 1/15 sec @ f/5 and ISO 3200 with a 80mm focal length.
While thoroughly enjoying our days in Greece (and being busy filling my SD cards) here is some more from the streets of Bologna. This series is all monochrome (RAW conversion in Lightroom Classic). I loved the harsh contrasts the bright afternoon summer light threw onto the streets in the old town.
Back on the streets. Not only are The Significant Other and I on our way to Greece for the first proper vacation in almost two years. While spending an evening in Bologna in Italy on our way to catch the ferry in Ancona, this also was my return to street photography since the whole Covid thing started. And you know what? Not surprisingly I found out how much I had missed roaming the streets with a camera in hand and capture scenes of life as it happened around me…
Things are really improving. With the number of COVID cases steadily decreasing, Germany is slowly opening up. The Significant Other and I are having our first week of travel in nearly a year, with a week long trip to Austria, just South of the Bavarian/Austrian border. It’s so awesome to finally being on the road again. A true change of perspective. Today I’m passing the two week mark since my second COVID vaccination, which basically means I’m cleared to return to a normal life. A good feeling after 15 months of restrictions. If this isn’t a path to happiness…
Image taken with my Leica M (Type 240) and the Elmarit 90mm F/2.8. Image specs 1/8 sec @ f/16 and ISO 200. Despite being in dense woods on a cloudy day, I had to stop down o f/16 and dial in the lowest ISO of 200 to achieve the low shutter speed of 1/8 sec to create this effect using the ICM (intentional camera movement) technique by slightly moving the camera vertically while pressing the shutter.
Wondering about the story behind the image. This is what makes Street Photography my favorite genre. Reading between the lines. What was my subject up to? This example nails it. What does this taxi driver read? Is ist a letter? A handwritten contract? Just some notes? Definitely something unusual in the times of everyone only looking at LCD screens.
The next time you are out and about in your city, try to capture a photo that gets the imagination going. You can capture it even with your smartphone. Be on the lookout for those scenes wherever you are. It can be in the grocery store just as well as when you are roaming the streets. You can train your eye even when you have to camera or smart phone with you. Find your image that makes everyone try to find the story behind.
If you are looking for more tips and inspirations around street photography, check out my free Learning Center.
Good Friday is a public holiday in Germany. Time to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary. Time to unwind a bit, taking The Significant Other and the Leica and heading out for a little hike near Etzelsdorf, visiting the site were the golden headdress of a bronze age sun priest was found that I wrote about in this post about our last trip to a museum.
While today’s images still are on the SD card in the camera, I want to share a photograph taken with the Leica M (Type 240) and the Summicron 50mm F/2 during another recent Sunday afternoon hike around the village of Möning, a few kilometers from our house. We took a peak into St. Willibald church, where I was immediately hooked by the rays of light falling through one of the windows of the old church dating back almost one thousand years.
That moment I was glad I had brought the Leica on this trip, as none of the other cameras I own would have been able to capture the magic of this moment as the vintage full frame rangefinder. The tonal range, the softness of the light is special to this sensor almost ten years old now. A perfect image to share on this Good Friday.
If you feel like picking up your camera on this (hopefully for you as well) long weekend and are still looking for more tips, explanations and inspiration around photography, check out my free Learning Center. And then have fun hunting for those magic rays of light.
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Far in the distance, barely visible. Pessimists might even argue that, in all likelihood, it is the headlamp of an oncoming train. Well, Murphy’s law won’t happen in this tunnel. While indeed being an old railroad tunnel at the Ligurian coast, nowadays it belongs to bikers and hikers. So why I’m musing about a light at the end of a tunnel in Italy that, due to Covid restrictions in Europe, can’t even be reached these days from Germany?
With the third Covid wave rolling with full force through Germany, we are now facing a socially distanced Easter holiday. It’s been more than a year since the pandemic started. A year of failed promises from the countries leadership. People are worn out, it is visible everywhere. We are all in need of closeness, being able to able to physically embrace our friends when we see them. You remember the times when complete strangers stood in our pedestrian zones holding up signs offering free hugs? Instead we now only talk from a distance. But what is the photographic lessons learnt?
Anyone home? This would be the title to this street photograph. But it also would have been the right question to ask the “Streets of Nuremberg” in the past weeks, the last post already dating back to the end of February. No worries! I’m still here, alive and kicking (as much as the Covid restrictions allow).
I simply took a break from blogging. I needed it, after five years of continuous content creation. But now it’s time to be back and continue to share my photographic ventures. Will need a few days to answer all comments and catch up with all of your blogs. I hope that you all got through these pandemic time unscathed.
