The world’s a stage

Man walking past a comic mural - Street Photography Nürnberg
1/250 sec | f/8 | ISO 800 | 35mm

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women, merely players”, said William Shakespeare once. It’s also the motto of this blog. This monochrome street photograph is yet another example of it.

Roaming the Streets of Nuremberg with camera in hand, there is always a new background to discover, like this mural, a perfect backdrop for passing people. My stage on this Saturday morning. I did set up the camera and then merely waited. For people entering the scene.

I took quite a few shots. I rarely nail it with the first one. My favorite was this one, of the man passing with his white shopping bag. The juxtaposition of the funny face of the cartoon figure painted on the wall, looking up at the (smiling) bird, and the passing man with his bowed head, looking down. If he’d looked right instead of down, maybe the mural would have cheered him up a bit. All the world’s a stage….and we street shooters capture the stories.

Taken with my “leftover” Leica, the vintage, 13 years old Leica M Type 240 that I keep for sentimental reasons, after having divested the SL2-S that failed me so badly. The lens was a Summicron 35mm F/2. I’ve used zone focusing here, pre-focusing the lens at f/8 so that everything between 2 and 10 meters away was in focus. Increased the ISO so I got a minimum shutter speed of 1/250 sec to freeze the action.

If you are looking for tips and inspirations around street photography, check out my free Learning Center.

Have a great Wednesday

Marcus

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Wait and shoot

Work the scene

Happy Girl in front of fountain
Happiness | Munich | 2016

These days I’m revisiting some older posts to clean up some SEO errors I did in my earlier blogging years. Originally titled “Apocalyptic Fountain”, it very well describes my approach to Street Photography when I work the scene. When I see an interesting setting, just like a stage set. Then I wait for things to happen. Click below to see more street shots from that apocalyptic afternoon in Munich….

Continue reading “Work the scene”

Standstill

boy wearing a protective mask in downtown Nürnberg
1/350 sec | f/9.5 | ISO 1600 | 35mm

Public life has come to a total standstill on the Streets of Nuremberg. Bavarian state authorities have issued a 24/7 curfew for the next two weeks. We can leave our homes only to go to work (if we have a pass from our employer), to seek medical assistance or to buy groceries. Single persons (or people living in one household) can also go for a walk outside. Only grocery stores, pharmacies, gas stations and places selling take-out food are open. When things got bad in China and the government locked up 15 million people in Wuhan, we all said that would be impossible to do in our western democracies. Four weeks later we know better. Crazy world. Amazingly, the majority of the affected population is fully supportive of the measure. Including me.

Continue reading “Standstill”

All the world’s a stage

Man walking past a comic mural
1/350 sec | f/8 | ISO 800 | 35mm

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women, merely players”, said William Shakespeare once. It’s also the motto of this blog. This monochrome street photograph is yet another example of it.

Continue reading “All the world’s a stage”

Confined

Stuck in a window
1/2000 sec | f/2.4 | ISO 500 | 35mm

Took the Leica on a stroll into town on Saturday. There were noticeably fewer people on the streets of Nuremberg. Could have been due to the week of school holidays. But maybe it was the fear of getting infected with the new coronavirus that leaves people confined to their houses.

Continue reading “Confined”

Man at work

Man at work
1/200 sec – f/4 – ISO 400 – 100 mm

No, this is not me. But this is how the life of me (the aspiring photographer) has been the past two weeks. Almost literally.

Continue reading “Man at work”

The Look

At the end of yesterday’s photography coaching session we were also doing some street shooting where I captured this image that I really like for its high contrast, the shadow separating the two faces and the look I drew.

Live is in overdrive right now, between the job that pays the bills, a family function today and plenty of photography related activities: The two Instagram walks this week, the photo coaching session yesterday and a photo shooting session next weekend (I get to try my hands at a real model). Hardly time to blog or even do some editing or postprocessing.

But live could be worse – it could be boring 🙂

Have great Sunday!

Marcus

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Off topic – Studio Anywhere

She didn’t look up

Girl reading a book in a coffee shop
Coffee Shop Reading | Portland | 2019

Street Photography is about capturing scenes of every day life as it happens. Like this girl reading a book while sitting in the window of a coffee shop in Portland. I liked her style and the just so slight smile on her lips. I was standing on the sidewalk directly in front of her, snapping a few initial photographs. I always want to make sure to capture at least one good shot before the scene changes. Continue reading “She didn’t look up”

It has been twenty years …

img_7576

It was in the last millennium when I last loaded an analogue film into a SLR. Twenty years ago I bought my first digital camera. Since then I never shot another film photograph. But this is about to change.  Today I bought my very first roll of film in twenty years. And I’m looking very much forward to insert it into this 1970 SLR and take it onto the Streets of Nuremberg for some retro – decelerated photography. Stay tuned for the results.

If you are looking for tips and inspirations around photography, check out my free Learning Center.

Wish you a great Wednesday!

Marcus

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Want snow?

Processed with VSCO with b4 preset

You can have some. Send me your warmth and sunshine in return! Taken with my iPhone.

Wish you a great start into the week!

Marcus

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Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: In the Distance

 

 

AMNH NYC 01
On the Moon | New York City | 2018

Frequent readers of this blog know that, once in a while, I like to participate in photo challenges on Word Press, albeit less frequently lately due to the discontinuation  of the WPC from “There Daily Post”. And typically I try to enter a street style photograph into the challenge, that, depending on the prompt, is sometimes more and sometimes less difficult. When I saw the first post about Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge titled “In the Distance” , I immediately had one of my images in mind (many times the library catalogue in my mind works much better than the real one in Lightroom 😉 ) . Continue reading “Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge: In the Distance”

I can see clearly now…

Rain Day | Nuremberg | 2018
Rain Day | Nuremberg | 2019

…the rain has come. I know, the song by Jimmy Cliff has a slightly different title. But the snow on the Streets of Nuremberg has been replaced by torrential rain. It’s gruesome outside. The maximum you can do as street photographer is going for some puddle shooting. And then finding a coffee shop for some hot Espresso.

The photograph was taken with the Ricoh GR II, specs are 1/125 sec @ F/5 and ISO 1600.

RAW conversion and monochrome processing in Lightroom Classic CC.

If you want to pick up your camera this Sunday and are still looking for inspirations what to shoot, check out my free Learning Center.

Wish you all a sunny Sunday!

Marcus

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