The day was too beautiful not to use it for some shooting in town, so I escaped for an hour into Nuremberg’s Old Town in the late afternoon of this last day of September. It was surprisingly warm, and everybody enjoyed what was potentially the last warm day of summer. Inspired by the atmosphere I was consciously looking for scenes of kids and their parents having fun together. I like giving me these small photographic assignments, it helps me to quickly focus and get into the flow (especially when I have only limited time for shooting) and to train visual awareness. I was with my Olympus PEN-F and the mZuiko 14-150mm F/4-5.6 travel zoom. For the rest of this series continue after the jump… Continue reading “Late Summer Family Street Fun”→
Another week, another photo challenge from Word Press’ “The Daily Post”. The theme this time is “Windows“. And after being late with the challenge last week, I’m early this time 😉 . I can’t really show what was in front of my window this morning, as I was sitting next to an airplane window. And when, after a seemingly endless night, I opened the blinds this morning while we approached Amsterdam there was…..nothing. After some splendid warm and sunny late summer days in the Pacific Northwest I’m back to the European rainy autumn weather. But in a few hours I will be back home, so the weather will be not something I will overly care about the next days.
So coming back to the “Windows”-Challenge, I need to revert to some monochrome photographs from my archives. To see my variety of “windowed” shots continue after the jump…. Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge – Windows”→
This week’s Weekly Photo Challenge from Word Press has the theme “Layered“. I submit some of my street photography images that all are “layered”, signifying they have at least two layers of action, adding interest to the photograph by creating depth. To see more examples of “layered” street photos, continue after the jump…. Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: Layered”→
After just three days in the office, Namibia seems to be a distant dream. Amazing, how fast a three week vacation can pass, when you are fully focused on making the most out of your family time while traveling through a truly magic country in Southern Africa.
Besides being back in the treadmill of the job that pays the bills, looking out the window is truly frustrating. Photographically speaking, instead of focusing about playing with the light in the great sand dunes of the Namib Desert, or dialing in a wide aperture to throw the background behind the lion’s head properly out of focus, I know need to start thinking again about making use of puddles to capture nice reflections.
Well, know worries, there are plenty nice memories of Africa in the raw files on my MacBook’s SSD that still need sorting and working on. So you can expect a few more post as I finish up my “Namibia Explored” series in the coming days.
But outside it is cold, grey and rainy. Back on the autumn Streets of Nuremberg.
Check out my Learning Center with all my free tips and inspirations on photography, including puddle shooting 😉
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.
Today I received a surprising e-mail. The “Streets of Nuremberg” have been selected by the panelists of Feedspot as one of the Top 75 Street Photography Blogson the web. I made the list ranking 30th, which is all the more humbling as this list really features the “who’s who” of renowned Street Photography blogs, many of which I visit frequently.
Since I started the “Streets of Nuremberg” in January 2016, this blog has grown to 2.765 followers with an average of 160 views a day.
This would not have been possible without my readers, many of whom have become friends. And it is an obligation to continue bringing you my experiences and tips around Street- and Travel Photography.
Make sure you also frequently check out my Learning Center with all my free tips, tutorials and inspirations around photography!
Who says Street Photography can only be done in the streets? Check out these photos from Manzanita Beach at the Oregon coast that I took during my coastal road trip last weekend.
Obviously, beach life in Oregon is quite different from beach life in SoCal or Florida, even in August. The northern Pacific has no more than 13 degrees celsius, so swimming is more a challenge than a refreshment, even on a nice August day.
I had the Olympus OM-D E-M1 with the mZuiko 40-150mm F/2.8 Pro Zoom with me while I sat in the warm sand and observe the beach life around my.
Remember to dial in a bit of positive exposure compensation. The bright light and white sand tends to suggest the meter in your camera there is too much light in a beach environment, leading to underexposed photos.
Street Photography Quick Tip 11 – Using Color Accents
My Street Photography Quick Tips are short, easy to read and easy to use tips that I think could help you while shooting in the streets. Today’s post is about using color accents to add interest to a street photo.
Working with accentuated colors can really help to make an image pop out. In this example the bright red of the lady’s dress is picked up by the bright red flowers decorating the window sills of this historic guest house in Nuremberg’s neighboring city Fürth, and continues to the upper part of the photo with the red beer advertisement (I have no clue though why in the motherland of local craft breweries someone needs to advertise with Spanish beer). So the red color accents guide the eye of the viewer through the image.
Try it yourself! Take your camera, hit the streets and have fun searching for motives with accentuated colors.
The photo was taken with my Olympus PEN-F with the mZuiko 14-150mm F/4-5.6 travel zoom. Image specs 1/60 sec @ f/5.4 and ISO 1600 (it was already getting dark, thus the high ISO). Focal lenght was 60mm (equals 120mm full frame equivalent). Raw processing in Lightroom CC.
Find all my other (free) Street Photography Quick Tips in my Learning Center.
This week the weekly photo challenge (WPC) from Word Press’ “The Daily Post” has the theme “Textures“. Without questions there are innumerable ways to photography textures, both man made and natural. To meet the challenge I decided to post a small collection of textures from the surface of our planet that I took from airplane windows, both natural and man made. To see more continue after the jump…. Continue reading “Weekly Photo Challenge: Textures”→
Window in the Sky | Germany | 2017The summer has been wild here in Germany, with scorching hot days being interrupted by massive thunder showers causing flooding and heavy damage all over the country.
This photo of some distant cumulonimbus clouds visible between two cloud layers I took with my Olympus PEN-F with the mZuiko14-150mm travel zoom. Image specs are 1/320 sec @ f/6.3, ISO 200 and 135mm focal length.
Raw conversion in Lightroom CC. I cropped the image to 16×9 format. After increasing the dynamic range by manual setting of the white and black points I reduced the highlights and opened up the shadows. After increasing saturation and contrast a tad I played with the tone curves, further bringing out the details in the thunderstorm clouds. Finally I increased the luminance of the reds and oranges in the HSL panel.
I’m thinking of getting a large print from this. Haven’t made up my mind yet.
So my Round the World trip has started. Right now it is not very exiting, as I’m spending the first four days in our Portland office fully tied up in work, not able to benefit even a bit from the splendid summer weather the Pacific Northwest has been enjoying the past weeks.
But whilst flying the first leg of my world tour I was treated to some spectacular views of Greenland’s east coast that I want to share with you today. For more photos and details about the flights continue reading after the jump…. Continue reading “Around the World in 12 Days – Greenland”→
After two more abstract challenges in the past weeks we have a more hands on theme for this week’s Weekly Photo Challenge from Word Press’ “The Daily Post”: “Collage“.
When reading the motto of the challenge I immediately had these street photos in my mind, that I always wanted to post but never found a right context to do so.
Take a seat | Lisbon | 2014
I’m also glad I for this challenge because it provided me with an opportunity for a quick an easy post. If you’ve read my last post you know that I’m currently on a 12 Day – Round the World – business trip. The first leg took me to my usual project site in Portland, Oregon. During the flight across the Atlantic Ocean I was treated with some spectacular views on Greenland and North Canada and I was able to shoot some very nice photos, but the last two days in Rose City were really kind of crazy work wise, so I didn’t get to process my images from the flight yet.
So owing you some views of the Arctic North I leave you with this photo of a real Portland collection. So, even if under stress, little photo opportunities are everywhere, you just need to train your eye to see them.
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