This is how it looks when you photograph the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in the moment a wave washes over your camera and the lens is half submerged.
Continue reading “Liquid Houses”Liquid Houses
In the air again
I’m back in the air, crossing the Northern Atlantic Ocean on my last trip to the Pacific Northwest. For this year, that is. I’m glad I’m flying directly to Portland from Amsterdam, saving me the hustle of a connection somewhere in the US, which would have been most likely problematic, given the winter weather that has hit many parts of America in the past days. We left Amsterdam with a ninety minute delay due to the late inbound flight from NYC, but will be catching up most of the time, which will put me on the ground in Rose City around noon and in the office around 1:30pm for a good half day of work, before I will hit the pillows after another 24 hour day. But there will be some incentives on this trip, like visiting a Blazers game tomorrow night and spending the weekend on the Oregon coast.
The photograph for this post I took with my OM-D E-M5 with the 14-150mm F/4-5.6. If you look at the image specs (1/100 sec @ f/5.4 and ISO5000), you can imagine that the image was taken in less than ideal light conditions, given the high ISO I needed to dial-in in order to generate the 1/100 sec shutter speed I needed to freeze the action. Can you guess what it is? Let me know in the comments. I will eventually post the solution there…
Wish you a great Tuesday!
Marcus
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Finally Weekend
You also have those weeks where the job that pays the bills gently surrounds you and gradually turns on the pressure in order to suffocate you? Like a majestic Ball Python (aka Royal Python)? Well, I did make it into the weekend, although barely. The Significant Other and I will head into the mountains to visit good friends. Looking so much forward to it!
The photo of the snake I took just the other week when visiting the Biosphere in Potsdam. I post-processed it in Lightroom Classic CC to a high contrast black& white image to be added to my fine art wildlife series (I blogged about the how-to here).
Hopefully I find some time on the weekend to catch up with blogging!
Wish you a great weekend!
Marcus
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Namibia Explored – Etosha Wildlife
Namibia Explored – Elephants of Etosha
Instant Inspiration (24) – Fine Art Wildlife
Instant Inspiration (24) – Fine Art Wildlife
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.
To find out how to shoot this type of scenes, a bit of post processing advice and some more high contrast fine art wildlife photos from my last “safari” continue after the jump… Continue reading “Instant Inspiration (24) – Fine Art Wildlife”
Mysterious New York City
I’m in a bit of a gloomy mood today, not only for yesterday’s depressing World Cup loss of Team Germany, that was well deserved and does not leave much room for any hope of going very far in this tournament.
I had this post on my launchpad for quite some time now. Trying to look at New York City in a very different way, I took a creative approach in post-processing. After monochrome conversion of my Olympus RAW files in Lightroom Classic CC, I played with selective blurring and darkening to create this moody series about some ironing NYC sites. To see them all continue after the jump…. Continue reading “Mysterious New York City”
A Photographer’s Easter Egg Painting
Approaching Easter Sunday, The Significant Other and the Kids diligently colored some Easter Eggs. I decided to work on a photographic Easter Egg for myself, trying a technique I read about on the web but have never explored so far. For a bit of how to continue after the jump…. Continue reading “A Photographer’s Easter Egg Painting”
Weekly Photo Challenge: Out of This World
“Out of This World” is the theme of this week’s WPC. A place where I always feel detached from the hectic and challenges of this world is at the seashore, taking in the ever present magic light and the roaring surf of the big ocean.
Shooting becomes something truly meditative, I set shutter speed to about 6 seconds and click, moving the camera ever so slight, creative experiments with the impossible mission to transfer the sights and sounds of an ocean evening onto the sensor of my camera…..
I wish all of you a great and relaxed weekend!
Marcus
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10 Day Photography Challenge – Day 7
Day 7 of Cassia Denner’s 10 Day Photography Challenge is something for the visual artist in me. The theme is “Art”. Instead of taking a photograph of a piece of art I decided to enter some art created by myself with my camera (Ricoh GR II) for this challenge. I’m not sure if anyone else considers these images of being “artsy”, but I like it and already envision it printed on acrylic glass on my living room wall (if cleared by The Significant Other of course). Do you have any idea what this might be? Try yourself in the comment section 😉
Check out the blogs of the other participants: Cassia (our host), Susan, Gracie, Ariana, Jenna, Arabella.
If you look for more tips and inspirations around photography, be sure to visit my free Learning Center. Take your camera, go out and create some art today!
Have a great Wednesday!
Marcus
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When life is grey make it colorful
Fogged In
As I find no time to hit the streets these days, another monochromatic landscape shot I took during the holidays when we visited the ruins of Lichtenegg Castle, not far from Nuremberg. The storied castle was built in early medieval times and already destroyed during the 15th century.
Just like today, it was a very foggy day and we didn’t see anything of the normally fabulous 360 degree panoramic view one enjoys from the ruins that sit on a spectacular hilltop.
But what I did enjoy was the sight of the silhouettes of the pine trees on and in front of the crumbled fortifications. Another example that there is no bad weather for photography. You just need to work with what Mother Nature gives you. You just need to be flexible enough. If the spectacular view you intended to capture isn’t there, look for details, interesting textures or silhouettes, as I did in this case. There is always the opportunity for an interesting photo, trust me. You just need to learn to see.
I took the photo in the high contrast monochrome mode of the Olympus PEN-F and my 12mm prime lens. Image specs new 1/400 sec @ f/5 and ISO 2oo.
The photo is of a certain calmness and serenity, something I already miss again, as the job that pays the bills has taken over my life again. Next Monday is my first travel day of the year, as I head once more across the pond to Portland.
Have a great Wednesday!
Marcus
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Serene
Rarely has the theme of the Weekly Photo Challenge from Word Press’ The Daily Post hit a nerve with me more as this week with “Serene“.
I’m totally in need of some serenity. The job that pays the bills has completely taken over my life, add in some special topics as the upcoming move of my big girl and the typical pre-festive season stress, another upcoming ten day business trip across the big ocean, and you can imagine why I would absolutely love to jettison myself out of reality and to a serene place like the lagoon of Walvis Bay in Namibia with its Flamingo swarms. Obviously bringing my camera.
Getting to some photography and even blogging has been a bit of challenge the past days, as well as answering comments and checking out posts from the blogs I follow, so apologies for not being present as much as I want to be.
The serene scene above was taken with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom. Image specs 1/1600 secs @ f/5.6 and ISO 200, focal length was 150mm (300mm full frame equivalent). The photo is pretty much out of cam, aside from slight cropping.
I wish everyone a great Thursday!
Marcus
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Namibia Explored – Sandwich Harbor
Instant Inspiration (16) – Dusk at the Ocean
High Key Wilderness
Somehow I have a hard time transitioning back to Street Photography, so here find another Africa post. While sorting through my Namibia photos and selecting the ones I want to include in the photo book of our vacation, in a calendar etc…. I was also playing around with animal images I could convert to monochrome. I have a high key preset in Lightroom that I wanted to try out on panoramic groups of animals I photographed in Etosha National Park with my Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 with the MC-14 Tele-Converter that increases focal length by factor of 1.4 . The Lightroom adjustments basically include increasing exposure and playing with the grad curves, were I increased the light midtowns and turned down the dark midtowns, to get that high key effect. I also increased the contrast and the clarity. To see more monochrome Etosha wilderness photos continue after the jump….
Sunset at the end of the road
Driving on African gravel roads is tiring. The landscape around you is fantastic, bit keeping the car steady on the gravel or sandy roads takes a lot of effort, you can never drive on “autopilot”. After a 380 kilometer and 6 hour trip on unpaved roads we arrived at the coastal town of Swakopmund. After checking into our B&B we went straight to the historic jetty to experience the African sunset behind the Southern Atlantic Ocean.
Despite having a coastline of 1400 kilometers, Namibia has only two natural ports, Luderitz Bay in the south and Walvis Bay just 30 kilometers south of Swakopmund. As Luderitz was limited to the diamond mining operations and had no real access to the rest of the country due to being isolated by the Namib desert, and Walvis Bay was British, the German colonial authorities founded Swakopmund as a city that had at least some access too fresh water and decided to built a Jetty in 1905 to help the unloading of cargo from ships and support the settling activities. At the Ocean end of the Jetty is a great restaurant where we enjoyed a great fish dinner after getting the obligatory sunset pictures first.
The Ocean waves where impressive, as was the colors of the sky after the sun went down behind the great Oceans waves. I wanted to create a long exposure image of the waves, creating that dreamy effect. In order to achieve the longest possible exposure time I set the PEN-F to its smallest aperture of f/22 and the lowest native ISO of 200, resulting in a 6 second exposure time, long enough to create what I was after.
To keep it simple, I did not attach any filters, and neither I used a tripod. I simply set the camera on on of the rocks between the road and the beach and used a 2 second self timer to avoid any camera shake after pressing the shutter.
The photograph is a jpg out of camera, no postprocessing was applied.
Have a great Friday!
Marcus
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