I wish all my friends a blessed, happy, marvelous, successful, beautiful, inspirational, creative, wonderful and healthy 2026. May all your wishes and dreams come true!
Have a great year!
Marcus
Happy New Year from the Streets of Nuremberg
Working with a Whistle
We are wrapping up 2025 with a little family vacation in the Austrian mountains. Actually it is the first time in what seems ages that the four of us spending off-time together. Actually we are 4+1, as Big Girl’s boyfriend has joined us for the trip. Using the downtime to go through the year’s images, I found this photograph of a teenage boy I took in one of Tashkent’s markets. He’s framed by a butchery stall that looks almost sculptural—piled high with pale pink bones, cut clean and stacked with casual precision. And there he is, calm and completely at home, perched behind the counter like the quiet conductor of controlled chaos.
What caught me first wasn’t the scale of the meat or the gleam of the blade resting nearby, but his expression. Lips pursed, a whistle clearly forming—maybe already sounding—he looks as if he’s passing the time with a tune only he can hear. It’s a wonderfully human detail in an otherwise raw, visceral scene. While customers come and go, while orders are shouted and cleavers rise and fall, he whistles.
There’s something timeless about it. Markets like this have existed for centuries, and so have moments like this one: a young helper learning the trade, standing knee-deep in the everyday reality of work, still finding space for playfulness. The whistle softens the sharpness of the setting. It turns a butcher’s stall into a stage, and the boy into its most memorable character.
Street photography is often about contrasts, and here they sing—quite literally.
Taken with my Nikon Zf with the Nikkor 40mm f/2. Image specs 1/60 sec @ f/7.1 and ISO 1250.
If you are looking for tips and inspirations around street photography, check out my free Learning Center.
Have a great Monday
Marcus
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Bubbly Happiness
This one is from the archives. What is more refreshing than seeing kids having fun? All the more when they seem to enjoy themselves with something as traditional as soap bubbles (aka rainbow bubbles or Seifenblasen in German)? Look in their faces and you see bubbly happiness!
Soap bubbles have been used for entertainment purposes for at least 400 years. There are Flemish paintings from the 17th century that show kids blowing soap bubbles with clay pipes. According Wikipedia, more than 200 million bottles of bubble solution are still being sold annually. I think this is an amazing factoid when these days I see children entertain themselves with their smartphones.
The thing is, they could even play with soap bubbles on their smartphones. Don’t believe me? Check the app store, there are various apps about the bubbles. How crazy is that? I much prefer the analogue ones, no doubt.
To see these kids having a blast with something my kids loved when their were younger and that I had fun with as child really made me feel good. Although I don’t recall bubbles of this King Kong size back in the days. It seems there are also innovations in the field of things like soap bubbles.
I stood there watching this guy blowing his magnum bubbles for a good 20 minutes. Plenty of children came, had fun, their parents in the background smiling, then giving some coins to the guy. I don’t think though this is a sustainable business model. But he looked happy when he got some donations, and he made the children lough. Life can be good, also in the simple things.
If you still want to go out shooting today and are looking or tips and inspirations, check out my free Learning Center.
Have a great Tuesday
Marcus
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Happy New Year from the Streets of Nuremberg
I wish all my friends a blessed, happy, marvelous, successful, beautiful, inspirational, creative, wonderful and healthy 2025. May all your wishes and dreams come true!
Have a great year!
Marcus
Collision Course
Street Photography is not necessarily about capturing human beings on the stage of life. It is also about seeing those little things that happen out in the streets, the little stories that make us smile about life happening in front of our lens. When I saw this 90 degrees bent bollard behind that car parked in Quimper, France, I had to laugh, I thought this was hilarious. I have captured that snapshot dubbed Collision Course with my iPhone.
So take your camera (or smartphone), hit your local streets and look for this little funny scenes that also tell the stories of the streets.
If you are looking for more tips and inspirations around street photography, take a look around my free Learning Center.
Have a great Tuesday!
Marcus
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Believe
To believe in what you do should give you a clear direction to pursue your dreams. Smoking weed, though, might just leave you circling the parking lot wondering where you parked your ambition 😉
It seems this Brooklyn weed shop seems to take it with humor….a street shot captured the other week with my iPhone during a short father/son trip to the Big Apple.
Have a great Tuesday!
Marcus
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Pardon the Pun
I momentarily debated whether to post this image I took today in Cannobio on Italy’s Lago Maggiore. But Street Photography may be controversial, as is the life it depicts. And it may be funny, as is the life it depicts. It invites the photographer to roam the streets and watch life as it happens, to find an interesting scene, a story happening on the stage that is our world. Were all the humans are merely players.
Continue reading “Pardon the Pun”Hunger Games
How do you call it, when you are sitting hungry in a bus, trying to decipher big red letters on a brown paper bag? Right….the hunger games…..
Have a great Sunday!
Marcus
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The young have fun
Grey days? Who cares! Freezing temperatures? Comfy and warm clothes. The young have fun on the Streets of Nuremberg, and don’t mind the dull weather.
Continue reading “The young have fun”Me, the geese and myself
Some times, the photographic opportunities fly to you. Literally. After all, this is the wild Pacific Northwest. And after three days stuck in a meeting room, with not so much of a chance to take the camera downtown Portland for some street shooting, I got my chance at a fun photoshoot with a family of Canada geese that passed the glass front of our meeting room.
Continue reading “Me, the geese and myself”Street Photography – Color Therapy
Since arriving in the Rose City Monday night, it has been pouring down. It has been cold and miserable. There is nothing but grey outside the office windows. No chance to grab the camera and go out and shoot some street photography. At least we were spared the snow-induced chaos that has hit the Seattle area and the Columbia River Gorge just East of Portland and led to massive travel problems. Colleagues that booked flights via Seattle did not make it to PDX due to cancellations. I instead had booked a “Southern arrival route”, flying to Portland via Zurich and San Francisco, thus avoiding any weather induced problems. Continue reading “Street Photography – Color Therapy”
Say Cheese
No, “say cheese” is not what I say when taking a candid street portrait of a complete stranger. Actually it is much simpler. Walking up, smiling, raising the camera, taking the shot, smiling again, maybe waving “thanks”, walking away. That’s standard street photography. About half of the people put up a smile and actually like having their picture taken, the other half doesn’t react much, and then there is maybe one in fifteen tries where the person signals they are not in agreement to have a stranger take their picture. In those cases I smile “thanks anyway” and walk away. No big deal. No reason to be anxious taking portraits of strangers.
Photograph taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1 and the mZuiko 12-100mm F/4. Image specs 1/60 sec @ F/4 and ISO 250, 29mm focal length. I was standing directly in front of this guy, you can see my reflection in the window of the ice cream parlor.
Wish you a great Saturday
Marcus
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