A good day

A good day

Just as I thought I had lost the "street magic" that had accompanied my Sony and me through Stuttgart these past two years, it reappeared on a hot, sunny day earlier this week. In town with an old Minolta 100-300 APO lens, Julia (in her stroller) and I (with my gear) strolled through the Schlosspark and up the Königstrasse and back down through the park, resting on brown benches and stretches of green grass to watch (and photograph) the day unfold before us.

In the park we watched the pigeons bathing in the fountains. At 14 months, Julia is still pleasantly fascinated by the flying rats. This proud mama pigeon - or should I call her a dove? - was apparently waiting for her partner...

...who joined her on a neighboring fountain, came and left again.

When we walked past the train station into a back alley where the scaffolding was being taken down from a building that had just been refurbished.
About scaffolding: somewhere around 15 years ago my good friend Mil told me in passing that she had been having dreams about scaffolding (her house needed some repairs, but who knows what the deep-psychological reason for the dreams was). I latched onto that thought, bought a little Ricoh camera (back in the film days, I usually used a Nikon 4004s, which was too heavy to carry around everywhere I went in Freiburg). For about six months I took pictures of scaffolding all around town and made a calendar for her, interspersing haiku and other verses among the pictures.
I presented it to her at Christmas and as she saw the first two pages, she said, "Did I ever tell you I have dreams of scaffolding?" Well, as she continued to turn the pages, she finally figured out she had. End of story: the calendar cured her. She never dreamed of it again.
The lines and composition seem to work well in this picture.

Moving up the main drag (Königstrasse), I noticed some young men throwing heavy old windows into a dumpster. Anticipating the next toss, I paused and caught them in action. In a different setting, you'd think they were cheering for Dirk Nowitski - as the pretty boy in the background looks on.

Since I hadn't been to the middle of town in a while, I walked past my favorite camera store and up to a city block that is being torn down. The following picture somehow reminds me of all those 9/11 pictures we've all seen.

Strolling back through town after picking up the latest issue of "Luftballon" (for which I am the photographer), I saw this man taking refuge from the sun under a cardboard box by his fountain (for he is always there), where the words "too late" on the side of the font seem a fitting caption for this scene.

We ended our walk four hours later back in the park, where I thought these chaise lounges near the beer garden would serve as a nice background for the silhouettes of the two resting bikers.

So the thrill of street photography has returned, which makes me very happy. Tonight I'm going out on a photo walk with friends in Ludwigsburg. Pictures will follow!