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.
“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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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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”→
…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.
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The winter is icing the Streets of Nuremberg, forecasts are calling for double digit freezing temperatures. I’ve put on my hand knitted Scottish sweater I bought 20 years ago on the Isle of Skye.
This street portrait from one of my last outings into town was taken with my PEN-F and the mZuiko 25mm F/1.8, a perfect combo for street shooting. As m4/3 has a crop factor of 2, this translates to a “Nifty Fifty”, a 50mm prime lens on a full frame sensor.
During my last trip into the city I got myself a Hoya R72 infrared filter, just to venture a bit into infrared photography. Not that is the perfect timing, as we are still a few weeks away from lush green foliage. But stay tuned for some initial results, the first images are processed in my library.
This is the great thing about photography, there are so many creative possibilities we can venture in with relatively small efforts and investments.
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Day 8 of Cassia Denner’s 10 Day Photography Challenge gives us the theme “Old Photo”. So I went into my shoebox of old family photographs and pulled out some images from the late 60’s and early 70’s (you could also say “from the last millennium”) showing me as a baby with my Mom (who worked as a children’s nurse, just as my Big Girl is doing now), my Dad as a singer in a band, me as a flower boy at my uncle’s and aunt’s wedding, me on the arms of my Grandma and me holding my little sister.
Sorting through those old photographs, holding real paper prints in my hands, enjoying those memories associated, I wonder how looking at old images will be when my kids have reached my age. With all those recent family memories that slumber in the digital graveyards called a hard disc or even in more lofty places like the cloud. So in thirty years down the road, will we have a digital shoebox implanted on a microchip under our skin, and we can conjure images through a neural interface in our brains? Who knows, now that Elon Musk’s Tesla is orbiting our planet 😉
Talking about family photos and memories, I’m in the process of creating many new ones, as we are in the middle of the birthday celebrations for Big Girl (turning 20 yesterday) and The Significant Other (turning 50 today). All my love and best wishes to my two girls 🙂
