Für eine barrierefreie Stuttgart

Don't mess with me!

As inhabitants of Stuttgart, we all get visitors from out of town whom we want to show the sights. It is part and parcel of living in such a culturally enriched town. In the evening you can choose among 10 concerts, 10 plays and probably 10 discos before taking the late-night bus back home.
Nearly every weekend this past November a lot of out-of-town visitors came to see my photo exhibit. Some haden't been to Stuttgart since we moved here in 2002, so they naturally wanted to see "the sights".

"Well, what do you want to see?" I ask.
"How about Stuttgart 21?" So we get out of the U-Bahn at Staatsgalerie, walk through the Schloßpark (which did not disappoint!) and on over to the exhibition at Charlottenplatz.

On our way over, a friend asks, "What are those?"

Landscape I

 "Oh, those are barriers that the police put up when the protesters threaten to storm the parliament building," I reply.

"Uh-huh. And what's that over there?"

Kunstverein

"Oh, that's the Kunstverein, one of my favorite art galleries," I say. "They had a great photo exhibition this past summer!"

"And that round tower over there?"

Musikhochschule

"Oh, well you can't see it very well from here, but that's the music conservatory. In the summer they have concerts up on the roof!"

"And is that the world-famous Staatsgalerie next to it?"
"Yes."

Many colors, one function

"Are those colorful barriers part of an exhibition? Or are they part of James Stirling's architecture?"

"I'm not sure."

"What does 'Plenum' mean?" These questions are becoming increasingly difficult.

Plenum

"That's a Latin word that means a meeting of a group where all the members are present."
"So can anyone go in there, even though there are barriers outside?"
"Well, not any time you want," I explain. "Only when it is open."
"And when there aren't any barriers outside?"
"Well, they are always there now."
"Oh."

State Parliament building

"And what," asks my foreign friend, "does Kein Winterdienst mean? Does that mean there's no outside service during the winter?"

"Yeah, sort of. It actually means they don't clear the sidewalks in the winter."
"But," my friend protests, "how do the people get into the restaurant safely? Snow and ice can be treacherous for elderly people. You could slip and fall!"
"Well, I guess you could always hold onto the barriers like a handrail."

Landscape I

"Yes, that's probably why they are there. Or for handicapped people."
"What do you mean?" I ask, not following her line of thought.
"Yes, I think they probably move them out of the way for handicapped people, right? I read in the tourist guide that Stuttgart wants to become what is known as a barrierefreie Stadt!"

Landscape II

A cold winter's day

Here's a quiz. What is this?

  The answer is at the end of this blog post.

January 5 it was cold-cold in Stuttgart. So of course I took off on a walk through town. Across the busy road near our house a new fancy-shmanzy car wash is being built. At this point it is just an empty industrial-style building with a cathedral ceiling, but when the sun shines through it, you can get some stunning shots!

Do you like the tilt? I decided to add an off-kilter angle to shake up the image a bit.

The gritty door and windows next to the big ride-up door also served their photographic purpose that day.

And this is what it looks like from the outside. You can see how well it blends in with the existing architecture!

A few steps further up the path leading to the Neckar River, I discovered numbered heating (or cooling?) units outside a huge storehouse. This is located at the heart of the wholesale district, so there are probably perishable flowers or fruits in there.

On the bridge the sun created wonderful shadows for me and the man headed my way.

The topic of one of the recent DPReview challenges was barbed wire. That got me shooting the stuff surrounding the gardens near our house. The pictures were interesting with the snow and clear sky in the background, but nothing great. Then these images popped up as I headed down into the underpass near the Mercedes Museum.
In the image above I like the contrasting colors and textures, the loopy razor wire and the smooth square tiles.

In the two photos above I tried to show how focusing on either the branches or the wire would make a difference to our perception of the image, but I don't think it makes much of a difference, does it?

Time out

The beach volleyball courts look oddly inviting to me even with a half a foot of snow on them.

Another DPReview challenge was called "Aftermath" and was set right after Christmas and New Year's. I got these two shots, though didn't enter either one because I didn't think they were that strong. The one with the cups was taken at the snowboarding competition where the sponsor, Relentless, was giving away its energy drink (perhaps because no one would buy it?).

And this shot was taken right after the sign was destroyed. It is one of those scrolling advertisements that had not survived a drunken pedestrian's fist.

It is wet. It is cold. It doesn't matter. (Ad for a four-wheel drive Mercedes)

That was it for a cold day's walk. Join me soon for other interesting topics!

Drum roll, please!

The answer to the quiz:

Snow blowing off the bridge railing

My pictures, your story

Here are a couple of pictures from the week before Christmas. This time, however, your creativity is called for, OK? I'm providing you with the pictures and you put the story together. I'll try to make this first one fun. Ready?

Go!

One

 

Two

 

Three

 

Four

 

Five

 

Six

 

You may, of course, put the pictures in any order you like. Just refer to the numbers when you mention the illustration. I'll post your stories here if you like. Send them to my e-mail address. I will also be writing a story to accompany the pictures. Have fun!

Magic moments (sometimes after the shot)

Hundertwasser in Stuttgart

This does not happen very often. Yesterday I transferred the day's pictures from my memory card to my computer and looked at the thumbnails of a handful of what I thought were loser images. Then I sent one image through a post-processing preset that I like a lot and - bam! - magic happened. Finally, I played with the above image a bit to get it to look just how I wanted it.
I like how the reflections of the buildings in the background look like Hundertwasser architecture. This was a case of discovering something in a photograph that I had not foreseen. Nowadays I often know exactly how I'm going to process a picture that I take. In this one, I knew the reflection was interesting and I wanted the old woman in the picture (so I only had time to take four shots), but the possibility of drawing out the buildings in the background (by increasing the blacks and the contrast) was a nice surprise.

Esslingen reflection

This is another reflection, but one I had a bit more time to prepare because the buildings weren't going to walk away anytime soon. What I like about this one is the frame effect of the broken glass and the appeal of the contrasting architectural styles. The yellow contoured glass from a bar in Esslingen is typical of the late 1970s. Juxtapose that with the bay window of the building from the early 20th century and you get a nice contrast.

During the same trip to Esslingen (with my friend Christian) I took a shot through a round window looking into a parking garage while I was waiting for him. Using the new lens correction feature from Lightroom 3, I made this one look like a super wide angle shot. This shows what can be done with post-production to make everyday shots more interesting.

Corruption

Taking the advice of Chase Jarvis, I tried to get some good shots within a few meters of where I was sitting (in my office) one evening. While some photographers will tell you that if you want to get more interesting pictures, you have to become a more interesting person (that could take a while!), and others will tell you to put something more interesting in front of your camera, Chase suggests you can take interesting pictures wherever you are, assuming you have a camera with you (he is a fan of the iPhone's photo capabilities) and that you have a good eye for images. I always carry my big camera with me, but you can take great shots with a small one, too, if you have your eyes open. My friend Jim Palik says there are a lot of people out there taking great pictures but 95% of them don't know what to do once they've taken it. In other words, their post-processing skills are weak and/or they don't know how to share them.
So there I was in my basement taking pictures one evening. I took a lot of pictures - one too many pictures, as it turned out. I was recording to a 2GB Memory Stick (originally developed and now exclusively used by Sony, of course) and it filled up before I noticed that it had counted down to 0. When I copied the pictures to my hard drive, the last 50 pictures were corrupt and had purple tinges and stripes in parts. The picture above is almost interesting in a technical, never-seen-that-before way. It is not too frustrating to have corrupt pictures of your CD collection. However, I had this problem at a friend's 40th birthday and again one day when I was visiting my father with my children.
The problem is that the pictures look fine on the camera's monitor, but when you copy them onto the computer, you have either gray parts or stripes with either a purple tint or white noise. I've only had this problem with the Memory Stick, but perhaps that is because in each of the cases that was my back-up card and it, too, filled up.
So - never shoot a card until it is totally full (unless you like purple stripes)! The little computer processor in your digital camera needs a bit more room to write the files to the card than you think it does.
Remember the lovely analog days when accidents could also happen to ruin your pictures? The film didn't catch when you loaded it (happened to a friend of mine before he went to meet his idol John Williams the conductor. [Now he's making movies with him in Hollywood, so things worked out in the end!]). Or you ripped up the film forcing it back into the spool (happened to me more than once). Or the back of the camera opened and exposed your film (happened to everyone).

By the way, the picture above is more of what I was trying to do that evening. I used a slow shutter speed and moved the camera once while the shutter was opened. It is sort of like a double exposure. Some DSLRs can take multiple exposures, but mine can't. Of course, you could simply place one layer over the other in Photoshop, but I don't to that (yet).

I'll end with one more bit of magic. Walking back home one evening, I used a slow shutter speed (about 2-3 seconds) and let the streetlights capture my gait. It appears that I walk like a cat!

City sidewalks

If I've learned one thing about blogging, it is that you can't wait until you have the perfect collection of pictures to post or else you'll rarely get something up and online. So I'm going to let you, dear reader, put the pictures together in your own mind. The following photos were all taken within two hours of one another.

This first picture is a left-over from a challenge called "Windows" which I entered on Digital Photography Review. I'm fairly addicted to these challenges. In the end, I think I missed the deadline on this one, but since there is no daylight left when I leave work, I am forced to look for the light in the shop windows. And there is a lot going on there at this time of year! Year-end offerings for the adults...

German Christmas clothes

And enticing offerings for the children...

There are a lot of buskers out on the streets of Stuttgart braving the cold with their fragile instruments. This young woman was playing particularly well on Königstrasse down near the train station.

On Schlossplatz, where the Christmas market is first put up at the beginning of November - including a skating rink - there are several stands that sell Glühwein and assorted goodies for the after-work crowd. These blue hooded helpers seem appropriately dressed to sell their blue packages of nuts.

Am I blue?

A large clothing store on the main shopping drag has two life-size mannequins on either side of the entrance. I thrilled to have time to get a good shot of this shopper unconsciously assuming the pose of one wooded figure.

Jay Maisel would have loved this gesture

 Then it was time to go home and pick up my little girl, who was playing at a friend's after school. Little light rarely stops me from snapping away. At 1600 ISO, I was able to capture the most important features clearly enough. The rest blurs with action, adding a nice feeling to this shot.

The Visit

 We had a very nice visit this past weekend from friends we met in Freiburg a couple of years ago. Yesterday we went to the Christmas market and let the kids ride the little Ferris wheel, which I believe is there so that fathers can take pictures of their children as they go around eight times. Fiona and her friend Emily saw what I was up to!

What a great photo op! (All the better with three good looking kids!)

On the way home, I surrendered my camera to Fynn and Emily. What those young eyes see is unbelievable! This was Fynn's snapshot.

And this was Emily's.

Fiona caught her brother in a Klitschko fighting mood!

Sunday was a bit quieter. All three played the piano for us. 

First Emily played a Tango for us.

Then it was Fiona's turn to play her "Flohwalzer" and a couple of Christmas carols.

And finally Fynn played some songs he has been learning the past couple of weeks.

The highlight for little Emily was getting to hold and even feed Julia April. As an only child, she appreciated the fact that she could be the big sister for once. And for us it was nice having four children in the house!

Back on the street

It gets dark early here in Stuttgart in mid-December, but that can't stop me from hitting the streets after work. My eye just has to look a bit harder for light. Yesterday I discovered the treats waiting for me in the street-level shops and restaurants downtown.

Technical stuff (you may skip):

After I watched Jay Maisel and Scott Kelby walk around Manhattan with 70-300mm lenses on their (full-format) cameras, I bought a Sigma 50-200, which is about the same thing. It's OK, but now I've picked up a Sigma 70-300 and it rocks on the street! With my Sony A700, a 300mm lens puts me at the equivalent of 450mm, which is where your super zoom bridge cameras put you when they are totally maxed out. 

What that means is that you can get super close to people across the street from you or on the next corner. It also means you have to hold the camera very steady. The 50-200 has an optical stabilizer built into it, which Sony Alphas don't necessarily need (because they've got the Super Steady Shot built into the body), so you turn off either the OS on the lens or the SSS on your Sony.

On the way to work that morning, I just had to test out the new lens. What crossed my aperture but the perfect frame for "man and his car" scene. Judging from the other cars in this picture, you may not think it snowed much, but I had just finished scraping the ice and snow off our car and can tell you the middle car was, like ours, out all night. In any case, I think the "No parking" signs add a nice frame to this winter work-out.

Two Santas

If you haven't been to Stuttgart's Christmas market, you should go just for the smells! The food never tastes as good as your ol' olfactory makes you think it will. With frozen feet standing at a chest-high wooden table with a smoker, a blabber, a tweeter and a Glühwein drunker, your food will be cold before you get half of it down. But go and smell. If you are lucky, there will be some good brass players like my friend Christof playing delightful arrangements of Christmas carols. This is a good place to go with some colleagues or friends after work. It probably isn't the best place to go after a hard afternoon's shopping because where are you going to put all the bags? Come back when you have some time on your hands!
Now when it gets cold, homeless people obviously have it hard. 

The sellers of "Trottwar", a newspaper written, published and distributed by homeless people, are present at the Christmas market, hoping to catch some people in a cheerful, generous mood. Often, however, they go about their business of looking for cheap presents in the well-stocked bargain stores.

And then there are the people who come into town to be amongst the masses in order to forget their loneliness. You can read it on their faces and in their body language. Wouldn't it be great if the two men here felt free enough to talk to one another? It would take a great leap in the rules of German etiquette for that to happen.

The young people always have someone to talk to - or chat or skype with or text or tweet. This member of the multi-tasking generation was doing it while his hair was being dried. There were a lot of young people getting their hair done yesterday evening.

Wishing you all a cheery Advent!