A quick post with a street photograph in between. Isn’t this drive through shopping at it’s best? Driving a scooter through a market shopping veggies directly from a stall still sitting on the machine? Life as it happens on a greek Saturday market.
Image taken with the Leica M and the Summicron 50mm F/2. Image specs 1/125 sec @ f/11 and ISO 400. Postprocessing in Lightroom Classic.
Stay tuned for more posts of my series “Greece explored”.
I probably never mentioned that I have lived in Greece as a boy for three years. That said, I have grown up with the ancient sagas telling the stories and adventures of the heroes of Greek mythology. One of the greatest was Agamemnon, the king of Mycenae and victor of the Trojan war. “Greece explored – Mycenae” takes you on a trip through his legendary castle on Argolian hills of the Peloponnese.
I’m much too busy taking photographs and vacationing (as in being down at our private beach) than downloading and editing what I already captured on the SD cards during our stay in Greece. Or writing blog articles. But when I saw this one of The Significant Other I couldn’t hesitate throwing out a quick Sunday post after all. Classic Beauty is all that comes to my mind, as she stands in front of the ancient temple of Apollo in Corinth. Can anyone understand why this beautiful woman always gets a panic attack when I point a camera at her?
Taken with the Leica M and the Summicron 35mm F/2. I was really pushing the settings here, did already consider putting an ND filter on the camera to block out some of the light. But with a fast 1/4000 shutter speed and slightly stopping down to f/4 I still got the shot in the bright afternoon light with shallow enough depth of field to blur the background, but still have the 2500 year old temple clearly recognizable.
If you are looking for tips and inspirations around street photography, check out my free Learning Center.
Sure enough our vacation in Greece offers some opportunity at street photography. We spent the morning of last Saturday at the market in Argos, the town nearest to our holiday getaway. I brought along the Leica M (Type 240) with the Summicron 50mm F/2. Here are a couple shots from that outing.
One of the first sightseeing trips in Greece had The Significant Other and I heading to Epidaurus, one of the prime Hellenic tourist destinations. Primarily known for its ancient theatre, Epidaurus is the most important ancient place of worship for the god of healing Asklepios. For more of its history and a few images click below…
It’s been a week since The Significant Other and I arrived in Greece for our summer vacation. Time to share a couple photographs from our holiday happy place between Xiropigado and Astros on the Peloponnese.
Although there are quite a few more street photography from our evening in Bologna, I’m closing this series out with an image aptly titled “Ciao Bella”. Taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X and the mZuiko 12-100 F/4, specs are 1/160 sec @ f/4 and ISO 3200 at 86mm focal length. RAW conversion in Lightroom Classic.
The next posts will be covering our trip to Greece, where we are spending our summer vacation on the Peloponnese.
“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept” is one of my favorite quotes from the godfather of street photography, Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004). Not that I want to use it as a fig leaf to cover up the fact that I wasn’t able to capture a tack sharp image of this couple being in a rush in a dark alley in Bologna’s historic old town on a late Thursday evening. Image specs are 1/15 sec @ f/5 and ISO 3200 with a 80mm focal length.
Back on the streets. Not only are The Significant Other and I on our way to Greece for the first proper vacation in almost two years. While spending an evening in Bologna in Italy on our way to catch the ferry in Ancona, this also was my return to street photography since the whole Covid thing started. And you know what? Not surprisingly I found out how much I had missed roaming the streets with a camera in hand and capture scenes of life as it happened around me…
Good Friday is a public holiday in Germany. Time to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus and his death at Calvary. Time to unwind a bit, taking The Significant Other and the Leica and heading out for a little hike near Etzelsdorf, visiting the site were the golden headdress of a bronze age sun priest was found that I wrote about in this post about our last trip to a museum.
While today’s images still are on the SD card in the camera, I want to share a photograph taken with the Leica M (Type 240) and the Summicron 50mm F/2 during another recent Sunday afternoon hike around the village of Möning, a few kilometers from our house. We took a peak into St. Willibald church, where I was immediately hooked by the rays of light falling through one of the windows of the old church dating back almost one thousand years.
That moment I was glad I had brought the Leica on this trip, as none of the other cameras I own would have been able to capture the magic of this moment as the vintage full frame rangefinder. The tonal range, the softness of the light is special to this sensor almost ten years old now. A perfect image to share on this Good Friday.
If you feel like picking up your camera on this (hopefully for you as well) long weekend and are still looking for more tips, explanations and inspiration around photography, check out my free Learning Center. And then have fun hunting for those magic rays of light.
What looks like a scene from the arctic is actually just a few kilometers from my house, on the Dillberg. With 600m (2000ft) above sea level it is one of the higher elevations in the area. A perfect place to for some sportive activities in the snow, properly socially distanced. Or as I call it, snowsolation.
Once in a while I do stray away from my usual street-, urban- and travel- photography and do some commissioned work. Like yesterday, when I did my first ever pregnancy shooting. While I’m still busy editing a load of images, this is the one The Significant Other liked the most. Belly in Red – remember the Chris de Burgh song from the 80’s with a very similar title?
The photograph was taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X with the mZuiko 12-100 F/4. Image specs 1/250 sec @ f/5.6 and ISO 200, 31mm focal length. Shooting indoors (it was a home shooting), those settings (I was using manual mode) eliminated all ambient light in the living room. The only light source was a Godox AD200Pro strobe on a lightstand to the right, firing through a large strip light softbox at 1/8 power (also in manual mode). The strip light prohibited stray light from the flash falling on the background, illuminating only the front of the lady in red. Another perfect example that photography is essentially playing with light and composition.
Once I’m done with editing I’ll do a post with my faves and my approach.
