March is upon us, and spring is coming to the Streets of Nuremberg. And it’s really time for it. Albeit, how much we will be able to enjoy it will also depend on how things will continue with the new coronavirus. And it doesn’t look good these days. The latest company directive is to avoid all travels, and everyone who can work from home should work from home for the time being (affecting me as well). And I just learned from TV news that Italy has put the entire nation under lockdown, that means 60 million people. And who’s to decide if that’s insanity or necessary precautions. But, coming back to the Streets of Nuremberg, well into the fourth year of existence of this blog, I thought it was about time for some needed personal spring cleaning.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women, merely players”, said William Shakespeare once. It’s also the motto of this blog. This monochrome street photograph is yet another example of it.
Took the Leica on a stroll into town on Saturday. There were noticeably fewer people on the streets of Nuremberg. Could have been due to the week of school holidays. But maybe it was the fear of getting infected with the new coronavirus that leaves people confined to their houses.
Last Sunday, together with good friends, The Significant Other and I visited the exhibition of contemporary German painter Christopher Lempfuhl in the Museum Würth in Künzelsau-Gaisbach. Frequent readers of this blog know that I love shooting street photography in an exhibition. Taking my recently acquired used Leica M for a spin, I gave myself the challenge to shoot a small reportage with only a 35mm prime lens. One exhibition, one lens.
Shooting street photography with a Leica produces what I call “the rangefinder effect”. While people in the streets have a tendency to find it disturbing having a big ass DSLR pointed at their faces, their reaction is definitely quite different when they see the casually wandering photographer working the manual focus and the aperture ring of an almost anachronistic looking small black camera.
Obviously, shooting with other retro looking cameras like the Olympus PEN-F or the Fuji X100F is also much less intimidating than using a big DSLR with a huge lens attached. But those cams use autofocus and thus the process is often reduced to a simple point and shoot. The point and shoot approach would also work on a rangefinder using zone focusing (the systematic pre-focusing of a lens at specific distance and aperture to achieve a sharp image), but to get the hang of using a rangefinder I mostly take the time to set up the shots individually. Which, as totally unusual these days, draws curiosity and often a (probably pitiful) smile, the rangefinder effect. Especially when you are close to your subjects, what you have to be when you shoot street photography using a 35mm lens.
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Yesterday was my first day back shooting on the Streets of Nuremberg after the passing of my mom. The past four weeks have been tough, both emotional and physical. The two weeks being daily at her side, when it was already clear that her life will come to an end. Sitting at her bedside the last hours. Then, coping with the loss and with all the tasks that come with it. I didn’t feel like picking up a camera. Neither I was up to do any blogging. But now it is time to get back into the light. I missed going out to play with the light. It’s the best therapy one can ask for.
Sometimes it is important to revisit your work. This image from The Significant Other climbing up the staircase of Nuremberg’s Schauspielhaus I posted already back in early 2019. While putting together our photographic yearbook of 2019, I was looking again at this photograph I took with my iPhone, and it still is one my fav images from last January.
As I have written many times on this blog, capturing gesture is what makes a street photograph. Like the wave of this boy standing next to a Coke machine in a village in Jordan. I was photographing him out of a moving bus – hence the slightly degraded image quality, because of me shooting at an angle through the bus window.
The last day of 2019 is upon us, and so the last episode of my five-part series looking back at my photographic ventures during the past year. And as the “Streets of Nuremberg” are principally a street photography blog, here are my fav street images of 2019…
We’re almost there, Christmas is nearly upon us. Together with The Significant Other, Big Boy and Big Girl plus the grand parents I headed downtown for a last visit to the market. A quite traditional visit, as every year on the last evening before Christmas (remember, we Germans celebrate on the 24th), the wife and her trombone choir perform on the stage in front of the Church of our Lady at Nuremberg’s Christkindlesmarkt.
Who says that Christmas photographs have to be all colorful and bright? Here is my version of a moody Christmas tree. Taken on the walls of the Imperial Castle Nuremberg with my Olympus PEN-F and the mZuiko 25mm F/1.8.
Image specs 1/60 sec @ f/1.8 and ISO 1600. Heavily desaturated (it is not a B&W conversion) in Lightroom Classic. I also introduced some grain and burned (brightened) the heavy rain clouds around the tree.
I felt like being moody today.
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When Friday night the wheels of my KLM flight from Manchester via Amsterdam back to Nuremberg kissed the asphalt of the runway of my hometown’s airport, another crazy work week came to an end. And, fingers crossed, this should have been the last air travel of this year. Coincidentally, Friday night this year’s Christmas season kicked off with the grand opening of Nuremberg’s famous Christkindlesmarkt. While I arrived much too late to make it to the opening ceremony last night, this evening I grabbed my camera and the Significant Other and headed to one of the many local Christmas markets for our start into the Season of Lights.
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