Nights can be creepy in the New York City Subway system. Once in a while, another one bites the dust. For the story behind continue after the jump… Continue reading “NYC Experience – Night in the Station”
NYC Experience – Night in the Station
Another step down the road
When I started this blog two and a half years ago, I intended it to be the diary of my photographic journey deeper into photography and to let interested readers participate in my learnings. Sometime down the road I started my two series “Instant Inspirations” and “Street Photography Quick Tips” to empower others to expand their photographic skills. As I wrote in the “About Me” of this blog, I had the hope to eventually one day generate some earnings from my photography to pay for my GAS (gear acquisition syndrome). While the GAS is pretty much cured by now, I finally did reach that other milestone.
Yesterday I held my first individual photography coaching session. We started with a two hour theory lessons around camera settings and controls and some photography 101, after which we roamed the streets of Nuremberg for a good 6 hours for a lot of practical photography exercise. We had a great time on a beautiful Mayday (May 1st is a public holiday in Germany) and I enjoyed myself passing on my knowledge of and love for photography. Doing this the first time, I learned myself so much about handling such an all day tutoring, which required plenty of on the spot adjustments, despite so much of preparation that I have put into this venture. I did get great feedback though, and in the end collected my very first ever photographic revenue.
With plenty of input to adjust and enhance my coaching concept, I will sure do this again once the next opportunity arises. It was another step down the road of my journey deeper into photography.
The photograph was taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 , image specs 1/320sec @ F/9 and ISO 200, 12mm focal length. Jpg out of camera.
Visit my Learning Center with all my free tips and inspirations around photography
Wish you a great Wednesday!
Marcus
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Happy Mayday from the Streets of Nuremberg
Weekly Photo Challenge: Lines
This week the weekly photo challenge (WPC) from Word Press’ “The Daily Post” has the theme “Lines“. So here is my “lineiest” street photo. For some more line items (pun intended) continue after the jump…. Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: Lines”
A Killer Week
The job that pays the bills is really giving me a hard time tis week in Portland. No chance to enjoy even a tiny bit of the record temperatures and summer sunshine that graces the Rose City in April, and no chance to pick up the camera for any kind of photography.
Instead I’m sitting in a windowless office solving all kinds of problems that came up in the last days. Tough luck…the glory of business travel.
At least I get to fly back home tomorrow, although need to go via Seattle to Amsterdam instead of taking the direct flight. Believe it or not, this is cheaper and we need to save travel costs. But also one more chance to miss a flight due to delays or whatever other reasons.
The photo above I took in the American Museum of Natural History in NYC the other week. Good example that you can shoot perfectly fine street photography in a museum.
Taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom. Image specs are 1/25 sec @f/4 and ISO 3200. Focal length was 35mm (70mm full frame equivalent). I needed to crank up the ISO as it was pretty dark in the Hall of Human Origins, where I caught this great juxtaposition of the prehistoric skeleton looking into the face of a visiting lady and vice versa. I wonder who is seeing ghosts 😉
Wish you all a great Thursday!
Marcus
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Travel Day (12)
Travel Day once again, but this one is special. To find out why, continue after the jump… Continue reading “Travel Day (12)”
Good Friday
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
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NYC High Contrast Monochrome
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
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Accidental X-Ray
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
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Travel Day (11)
My return travel to the Streets of Nuremberg got off to a bad start this morning, when just after 6am I got a text message from KLM that the flight from Amsterdam to Nuremberg tomorrow (Saturday morning) has been cancelled.
Well, let me guess, if KLM cancels a flight from their home airport 20 hours before it actually happens, it probably won’t be due to a malfunctioning aircraft or the weather (which will be fine, I already checked). Maybe because the flight to Nuremberg on a weekend morning had a low load, so it’s cheaper to cancel and cope with a few angry passengers?
Just speculating…..not the first time that happened to me…Lufthansa does that regularly with their short haul connections from Frankfurt or Munich to my city (but here I can get at least on a train). And we got already notified that Air France cancelled the originally booked morning flight Paris to Nuremberg in coming August when we return from our vacation in the Pacific Northwest on a Saturday morning. We get to wait an extra 10 hours in Paris before eventually being transported to Nuremberg on the evening flight….anyone seeing a pattern here?
Now you could argue that I shouldn’t complain as long as I eventually get safely home in one piece. But I’m just not looking forward to this 8 hour layover in Amsterdam when I could be home with the family. And to make things worse, I will need to go directly to an evening event in my clothes that I’ve been wearing for 28 hours by the time I land, because I won’t have time to head home to shower and change. Thanks KLM, much appreciated! And a platinum status card doesn’t help either….
On a brighter note, I got another nice view of Mt. Rainier while approaching Seattle. With the sun pretty much behind it, it was difficult to shoot, colors were dull, for that I already had a B&W conversion in mind when taking the photo at 1/2000 sec @ f/4.5 and ISO 200. Remember, when shooting out of an airplane window, make sure you use a wide open aperture to minimize degrading effects through a dirty or scratched window. Camera was my Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4 Pro Zoom.
Now I’m sitting in sunny Seattle waiting for my flight to Amsterdam to board. In the end all will be well. I hope!
Have a great Friday!
Marcus
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Snacktime
While standing on a parking lot trying to photograph a giant mural in downtown Portland last Saturday, I couldn’t help noticing this guy leaning on his car and munching a fully loaded sandwich he had just picked up from one of the food trucks across the street.
The reason I noticed him was because he had a good loud chuckle. So after snapping the mural, I walked up to him and asked him what was so funny. He pointed to a car still trying to maneuver its way into an empty parking bay, explaining it was his buddy who is just never able to properly park the car. I just replied that to some it is given, and to some it is not. And we shared a good chuckle together.
I thought he had an interesting face, so asked him if I could take his portrait. He thought for a second, than agreed without hesitation, and threw himself into this very serious pose. I just took two shots, and immediately liked this one with the tighter framing, after checking my camera screen to see if it was sharp. We wished us a good day and went our ways.
Just one of a few nice encounters I had with the people of Portland last weekend. More to come.
The photo was taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100 F/4 Pro Zoom. Image specs are 1/125 sec @ f/4.5 and ISO 200, 44mm focal length.
Wish you a great Wednesday!
Marcus
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It’s getting cold
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.
If you look for more inspirations and tips around photography, check out my Learning Center for a comprehensive link collection to all my posts designed to inspire and empower my readers.
Wish you all a great weekend!
Marcus
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10 Day Photography Challenge – Day 4
Day 4 of Cassia Denner’s 10 Day Photography Challenge carries the theme “Coffee”. Which is good…Coffee…Sunday….you get my point? I need to add a second coffee related photo though, as the “Streets of Nuremberg” have their own coffee mug 🙂 .
Check out the blogs of the other participants: Cassia (our host), Susan, Gracie, Ariana, Jenna, Arabella
After returning from my 3 day trip to the Pacific Northwest I’m really enjoying a downtime Sunday with the family….plenty of coffee, music, legs up….the night will be short, as I will be watching the Super Bowl, the game starting 30 minutes past midnight here in Germany. Let’s see if I will make it to bed at all 🙂 The Big Boy is organizing some hot chicken wings, beer is in the fridge…life is good 🙂
I wish you all a great Super Sunday!
Marcus
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