Second shooting 

After the euphoria that followed the first shooting, I wondered if it could get any better. I spent many happy hours at the computer re-touching the pictures, giving them the aesthetic tweaking I thought they deserved. Each RAW negative contained a treasure that I felt had to be dug up, polished and protected. I actually felt protective of the pictures! It wasn't that I thought someone would use them somewhere without my permission; I was afraid I might lose them. I didn't format my CF card for a week!
Well, it did get better. I would dare say perfect. The universe sent my best friend down from Lübeck on the day I had my second appointment to meet with Pia. He's a very experienced portrait photographer and has all the gear necessary for guiding the light where it belongs.
Christian and I got to the meeting point early. Pia was on time and looked great. We set up outside the Varieté at Friedrichsbau, where there are interesting rock formations being held in place by huge chains. The sunlight fell into the cavernous underground area in interesting, if challenging, ways.
Christian played the part of my lighting assistant as I shot away. Then we switched roles.
After a while we had enough of the hard look with the metal chains and moved over to the red entrance to the theater. Christian had his white balance set to "cloudy" so he didn't have any problems with the colors. I had mine set on "automatic", so the red wall appeared yellow in my pictures and Pia was blue. I learned a lesson there about the AWB and about how to fix the pictures quickly in Lightroom.
Then we wandered over to the row of bamboo trees in front of the restaurant a few feet away.

Now my sister, who has a great art blog detailing her work on nudes and other figures that catch her eye, thought Pia had on too much make-up. I'll leave this question up to debate. As I said, I was trying to capture a certain ideal of beauty that has been with me most of my life. Susan constantly questions this ideal in her work and on her blog. Right now I'm following my nature, which may well change later. After all, two weeks ago I considered myself an available light photographer, proud to not rely on artificial light sources (including reflectors, diffusors, etc.). Now I finally understand what fun it is to place the light, work with its interplay with the shadows, and challenge myself to create beautiful lighting situations. The only downside to this new realization is that it is awfully difficult to look at the first 30,000 pictures I took!

It is simply amazing to me how someone can look so different by simply tilting the face one way or the other, by brushing the hair back, by standing in front of a background of another color!

After about an hour in the pit, we moved into the adjacent park and looked for a suitable location. Some drunken young men (one with a broken nose) were sitting on the amphitheater-like bleachers, so we moved along to the backside of a big old tree. There Christian set up his softbox and flashed away, working to get the foreground light to match that in the background. His pictures came out beautifully. One day he'll get his website up and running and you will see some real gems.
With the two of us out in the park with all that gear taking pictures of this beautiful woman, people walked by suspiciously slowly and watched what we were doing, but that didn't seem to bother Pia, who kept her eyes focussed on us.

But often she had to rest her eyes from the blinding "California sun reflector", which we shined in her face. We taught her the old trick I like to use when taking pictures of groups: close your eyes until I count 1-2-3, then open them - click!

OK, now I'm going to admit how obsessed I've gotten with photography. It started last April when Thomas lent me one of his Leicas. It had a f1:1 Noctilux lens on it, which means you can take pictures in the dark. As a matter of fact, you practically have to. "It's not fun to take pictures of flowers in the sunshine with this," he said. Unfortunately, that is what I was having fun doing last April. So the Leica stayed in its case in my office for a month.
But then I dreamt a picture. It was night but there were a lot of lines that were lit up. The next day I went out to the Frühlingsfest at the Cannstätter Wasen. That's a folks fest that tops even Munich's Oktoberfest.
There I saw what I had dreamt. After the sun had set around 9 p.m., I put away my Sony with its Minolta f1:1.7 lens, which had done a great job around the lit-up tilt-a-whirls and go-cards. Then I pulled out the night-vision (film) camera and my eyes focussed on the roller coaster and the ferris wheel. I opened up the aperture and found a good composition and filled the roll.

The night before the second session with Pia, I dreamt three pictures. Two will have to wait for another day. One is shown here: a pirouette at the mouth of this underpass (you Freudians just shut up!). I was fairly pleased with the results, though I hadn't really reckoned with the splotchy shadows where she was standing.

After a good two hours, we were just warming up, but we were also getting hungry. Before lunch sitting outdoors in the sun at a great Italian restaurant, we took a few more in our last sun-drenched location. You let me know which of these last two portraits you like best; I can't decide.

First model shooting

This was naturally not the first time I had ever photographed a person. Nor was it the first time I had ever photographed a beautiful woman; I have hundreds of pictures of my wife. But this was the first time someone had posed for me who also wanted the best results from the pictures and was patient enough to sit still and look into the sun until I had the camera settings right. We tried various poses, backgrounds, lighting effects and moods. In a nutshell: If fun is worth anything in life, I've found my calling.
I love the pastel color combinations in the first photograph. The lighting also turned out lovely.

Out on the balcony we tried to take advantage of the back-lighting that the morning sun provided. A flash angled in her direction provided the catch-light in her eyes and the fill-light on her face.

A large soft-box would have provided a bigger catch-light in her eyes, making them look even more attractive. Otherwise, I don't see much to complain about here.

I must say that the movie-star look becomes her very nicely.

And the close-up profile with a f1:1.7 50mm lens caught her at her best while looking out the window.

Stay tuned for future postings!

Martin Levac and his eight-piece band were in the Liederhalle's Hegelsaal here in Stuttgart on Sunday evening for The Ultimate Phil Collins Show. You might think that Phil's stage presence and magic ability to interact with the audience - not to mention his musicianship - are impossible to imitate. You'd be wrong.
Several years ago I first noticed Martin Levac as he put on a white jacket over the white overalls he was wearing behind the drum kit, on which he was supporting the Canadian band, The Musical Box. He walked up to the microphone and sang "More Fool Me", the first song Phil Collins sang for Genesis (back in 1973). Martin had perfected all the mannerisms, the accent, the voice and the charm of his idol.
Now he is on tour with his own ensemble, after having played the Peter Gabriel-era Genesis music longer than Phil did (including 153 performances of the Lamb Lies Down on Broadway!).

During the show in Stuttgart he introduced three members of his band as having been born here, the guitarist, the saxophonist and the trumpeter. A couple of their mothers were even in the audience, so "Phil" said a special hello to them.
This reminded me of the first time I saw Phil live with his own music. It was in the Phillipshalle in Düsseldorf on Thanksgiving Day, November 1982. I was there with Waldemar and Nancy. Half of the hall was curtained off because he hadn't sold more than about a thousand tickets. I believe he played everything he had ever recorded, introducing the various songs in his humorous way. Between songs he said, "Today is Thanksgiving Day in America. Are there any Americans in the audience?" Nancy and I yelled from our seats in the 15th row, "YEAH!" Then he - personally - wished us Happy Thanksgiving. We really felt special!
We had spent a lot of money on the tickets and train fare, so we couldn't really afford to take the train home. After the concert we went out into the parking lot and looked for a license plate with MS on it that might be heading our way. The closest we got was a car headed to Dortmund. We knocked on the window and a young couple grudgingly took us with them, dropping us three foreign midnight hitchhikers at the DO train station. From there we pooled all our coins together and bought tickets for the rest of the way home. Feeling high from the concert and quite certain that a conductor would not come by at 1 a.m., we sat ourselves quite comfortably in the first-class section.
Five minutes later, there he was, the conductor asking for our first-class tickets. Nancy and I did our best dumb American act when we realized he wanted to charge us for a first-class ride all the way from Düsseldorf! "Aberrrr wirrr zint errrrst in Dorrrtmoond zugestogen!" He looked a bit confused, told us to go back to the second-class section and went on his way.
When we got to Münster, Nancy was riding home on the back of Waldemar's bike (which was/is illegal, especially, I guess, at 2 a.m.) when a police car started chasing us. We took a short-cut between some buildings on the university campus and shook them off our trail! Quite an experience for one night!

Luckily, the light show at Martin's concert was interesting enough to provide some good shots, no matter where I was standing. I ran all over the balcony and around the lower level, and even ended up in the front row for a couple of songs. The management was very gracious not only in allowing me to take pictures, but they even gave me a free ticket. Of course, they'll be getting these pictures as soon as they are all developed.

Martin is a charming man. He talked to his fans after the show, signed autographs, sold CDs of his own music, and even had his picture taken with a couple who were celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary that evening. Both were wearing Genesis T-shirts.

This was the set-list for the Stuttgart show:
Hang In Long Enough
I Missed Again
Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)
Can't Stop Loving You
Something Happened on the Way to Heaven
One More Night
Saturday Night And Sunday Morning
Don't Lose My Number
Wear My Hat
Drum Duet
Another Day in Paradise
In the Air Tonight
You Can't Hurry Love/Two Hearts
Dance Into the Light
Easy Lover
Sussudio
And the encores:
A Groovy Kind of Love
You'll Be In My Heart
Take Me Home

Saturday he and his band are playing in Mannheim, which is only about an hour from Stuttgart. I think I'll be going again (with my cameras!).

One might think by looking at this picture that the flash at the top of the stairs lit the picture. But the process was much more complicated than that.
Accepting the challenge of starting with a dark room and creating a photograph (from Latin: light writing) from the darkness, I took a flashlight and literally painted light in streaks through the still life.
This was my first experiment with "light from dark" pictures - but not the last.

 The next day, after receiving this excellent book by David DuChemin from Christian, I tried capturing some other motifs with the help of just a flashlight. The book was written for advanced amateurs who need to be reminded that a photograph is interesting if it is about something (rather than just of something). In other words, you should ask yourself, "What do I want to make a picture about?" rather than "What do I want to take a picture of?"

Like most enthusiastic amateur photographers, I got caught up in the thrall of my equipment. With the SonyUserForum's lens database (and others such as the Digital Photography Review), I constantly tried to get slightly better lenses (and cameras) over time for prices that seemed affordable. However, it wasn't until I laid out a good amount of money for an excellent lens (Tamron 2.8/70-200) that I felt I had met my match and had to stop blaming my "glass" for any weaknesses in my pictures. Besides, I had photographed Paris last year with a Sigma 18-200 and felt fine about the results!
But the searching (and wanting) was a process I had to go through. Now I'm concentrating on finding ideas and feelings to photograph, which is a much richer task.

(Nevertheless, I must say I am damned pleased with my Sony Alpha 700. I'd buy it again and again.)

Slowly but surely, I feel I no longer have to hide behind my camera. My next step along this artist's way is to find the light that will give my pictures the expression I have envisioned for them.

Karneval im Rheinland

We were not in Cologne for the big Rosenmontag-Umzug this year. We did that once and learned that it is too crazy for us to try to do with small children. After all, we aren't all Rheinländer. But we went to two smaller parades, one in Overrath and one in Rösrath. It snowed on both days, but at least it didn't piss on our parade as it did last year! The only drawback was that the candy that was thrown from the floats ended up in the slush around our cold feet.

 

The other day a neighbor's child was trying to tell us about a piece of music by Saint-Saens that she heard in concert once. She called it "Fasching der Tiere", confusing the Rheinland word for Carnival (Karneval) with the southern German term Fasching (or Fastnacht/Fasnet).

In any case, Karneval (and Halloween for that matter) is the wrong time of year for kids to dress up so that others can see their costumes and yet still be warm. Here you see a couple of attempts. About all that remains are a hat and some face-painting. It takes a great amount of experience and cajoling to find a costume for a child that he likes and that he will be warm in during a two-hour parade. The parents of the child below did a good job, although I don't think the little Pippi had much to say about her costume. She was riding in a wagon that served to tote all the extra candy as well.

 

Aside from "Kamelle" (candy), you can also call for "Strüßje" (Strauß, a bunch of flowers). I felt a bit like a loud beggar every time I yelled "Kamelle", especially since I didn't really want the Turkish chocolate or bags of sweet popcorn. The kids and other real Rheinländer had no problem calling out to the people in the parade.

  

There is a type of light beer that is drunk a lot in the Cologne area, "Kölsch". As with most types of alcohol, the glass from which you drink it has a special shape. As fate would have it, the glasses are small and fit nicely in your hand - or in a little holder that you can attach to your saxophone!

  

This boy threw down at me six little pieces of hard candy, two packs of gummi bears, a Mars bar, a piece of unidentifiable Turkish chocolate and a pack of Kleenexes to clean up with. In southern Germany, this would have been an average haul from an hour-long parade!

  

These witches and warlocks threw calendars and handfuls of Nippon chocolate-covered rice cakes and other goodies. No wonder we came away with 18 bags of sweets from the two-day spectacle!

 

The "Dreigestirn" (three stars) of the parade ride in the last float, the virgin, the farmer and the prince. Traditionally, they are all three men because they have to have a lot of endurance during such long parades and during the intensive weeks leading up to Karneval. If you look closely at this picture, you will see some interesting details. First, the three stars throw lots of flowers. Bianca learned the hard way when we were in Cologne 10 years ago that if you dress like an evil witch, you don't receive many flowers; they are reserved for the princesses. Second, the three stars are surrounded by boxes of chocolate samplers which they throw down to people they know. They wouldn't be elected to their positions if they didn't know a lot of people in their towns; thus, they need lots of big boxes to share among their people. Last but not least, I saw several people this year use upturned umbrellas to catch the goodies. Great idea? When I did that in Villingen (southern Germany) 13 years ago, Bianca told me that wasn't done ("Man macht das nicht!" - the sentence most used in disciplining other people in Germany).

 

Of course, politics play a large role in the themes chosen for the floats. I saw one about Tiger Woods shooting a hole in one. And there were lots about communes not having enough money. The upcoming World Cup in South Africa was also a big theme, with a song "Africa here we come" being blasted from speakers all day long. This woman has a little goal with a pendulous soccer ball on her head.

  

This torero may not have heard about the ban on glass bottles at the parade. There is no ban, however, on drinking alcohol at the parade.

  

 

And when you've drunk a lot of beer, you have to get rid of it. We were standing at the edge of a building that many people ran behind to relieve themselves. Some costumes were not cut out for a quick drop o' drawers.

On a gray day it is nice to see such bright colors lining the streets.

This little Pippi Langstrumpf was standing next to us in Overrath. She didn't seem to be been affected by the jolly spirit that had infected the other onlookers.

The snow has all but melted in Stuttgart. It was well above 10 degrees Celsius this afternoon. It was actually what you might call mild. Coffee drinkers were sitting outside the cafés. Others were sitting on the sun-warmed steps of the opera house.

Meanwhile, on the surface of the pool in front of the opera house, the ducks pecked away at the ice floe near their nests.

On this pond exactly one month ago, it also looked as if spring had sprung as the ice began to crack.

The gulls still pretended they were Jesus and walked across the pool as if they had been doing it all their lives.

Now that the lovers' season seems to be nearly upon us, we can look back with nostalgic fondness at the snow we swept, the salt we strew and the ice we slipped upon.

 

Far removed from the medieval altar triptychs of M. Grünewald & Co., the digital age offers easy access to interesting photo sequences. In this case, I sensed that the increasing volume of the laughter I heard from across the schoolyard at this year-end party might lead to some good photo ops. This beautiful woman started dancing as the mood struck her.

Sometimes it is difficult to choose which picture you like better. The easy way out might be to offer both, as I have done here. I feel that the first picture shows more empathy for the girl in the foreground since her focus is probably also not on the singers. In the second picture, however, the singer on the left appears to be looking at the girl, bringing her into focus for the observer, too.

And then there are the more involved - yet perhaps less involving - triptychs which share too much information at once and challenge the viewer to pick a place to rest his or her eyes. Whither does your glance gravitate?

Children and sparklers go together like peanut butter and jelly but they make for much better pictures!

These pictures were taken on my birthday at the celebration of a friend's 40th. It was a great amount of fun for children and adults.

I enjoyed experimenting with a second curtain flash and long exposure zooming. You photographers out there know what I'm talking about! Try it out yourself!

 
Here are more pictures from the service in which Fynn's third-grade confirmation classes celebrated their parting. Five mothers took on a handful of eight year-olds once a week for three months and taught them something about the meaning behind the church's most important symbols.
At the final church service they took communion with bread and grape juice.

 

Fynn liked the grape juice. But he enjoyed even more the afternoon meetings with Yvonne and the five girls in his confirmation group.

This is the whole group of kids from the confirmation classes. Of course, they won't really be confirmed until eighth grade, but these afternoons with the mothers served to lay a foundation for their future religious instruction.
The blonde woman in the middle of the back row was in my first theater group at the PH in Freiburg. It was nice seeing her again here in Stuttgart!

Tomorrow is 2/2/2010, a day that means the beginning of the end of Stuttgart as we know it. For the next X years (fill in a number you are comfortable with between 10 and 100), our city will be home to the largest construction project in Europe. If that and the €4bn price-tag aren't enough to brag about, we'll have a tunnel dug right under our house! I can't wait to step out of my basement office and hitch a ride with the Eurostar to Bucharest!
A collection of signatures wasn't enough to stop the project, nor were protests from citizens and even from the descendants of the train station's architect. No one knows what the city will look - and feel - like when it is done, but the plans show an underground train station with a thriving residential business park on the land where 16 tracks now enter the terminal.
Please stay tuned for more updates on this monumental project.

If Warhol were here, he might have had this to say about the project:

Or perhaps this: