Capturing the essence

On Rosenmontag (the Monday before Mardi Gras), there is a huge parade in Cologne, rivaled perhaps only by the parades in Rio de Janiero or New Orleans. This year as last, I went into the city to get a feel for the day and make some pictures that exemplified it.
This man seems to have just stuck on a red nose in order to watch the parade from the grandstand. He's wearing a very modest costume: red jacket and nose, little black feather hat and a colorful scarf. The red nose and the cathedral in the background - along with a hint of a costumed friend near him - tell us where we are and what day of the year it is.

Once again I chose the cathedral as a backdrop for this couple who were having a very nice time up in the bleachers.

As I walked past these two lovers, I took several shots of their long kiss, my 100-300mm lens pushing the low end of its reach.

This group of teenagers seems to have had enough already - and it was only 3:30 p.m.

Another tell-all picture: I like the way the vertical lines of the cathedral's facade are repeated in those of the grandstand.

I love the way this woman has to concentrate on drinking her beer because of the big nose she's plopped onto her face.

I love the light and the expressions on these faces. I couldn't have gotten a better picture of them if I had had them in a studio for an hour! This is the type of facial gesture you can't get by saying, "Now pose for me!"

Here is the Deutzer Brücke from the other side.

After the party is before the (next) party for these two couples.

This man is wearing a hat typical of the people who go to the Sitzungen where political jokes are made for hours at a time. He seems to have caught many "Strüßje" (flowers) at the parade.

This may be my favorite shot of the day. I like the way the telephoto lens seems to make the cathedral appear close to the people on the steps. As tempting as it is to process this one in B/W to make them all blend in better, I like the colors too much to do away with them here.

I waited to take a picture of this "king" until I could get the umbrella in the background, too. I just now saw the lipstick left from the kiss on his cheek.

I followed these two lions along the Rhine for a while until they were aligned with the two spires of the cathedral came behind them. When I pointed that fact out to my son, he said, "Yeah, and the apartment house has two peaks and so does that round building." What an eye!

In the train station, the sunlight was streaming in nicely after 5 p.m. I think that's Justin Bieber (in the background!).

Got it!

Sometimes when I'm out on the street photographing the world as it goes by, I get a shot and think to myself, That was the shot of the day! That's going to be a good one!
A few weeks back I was in the Rhineland for the Carnival parades and had that feeling on several occasions. Here are those photos and my thoughts on them after the post-processing.
First to catch my eye was the guy in the lion costume in Forsbach. The parade had not even begun, but he looked as if he had already had enough.

In Cologne on Monday I saw this sign ("Repent") with a witch standing in front of it. I got into position and waited for her to turn around (as I knew she eventually would), then got three quick shots of her with the poster behind her. I couldn't have wished for a better expression from her.

Last year before I drove up to the Rhineland for Carnival, I was in the LUMAS photo gallery with my friend Jim Palik. We were talking with the gallery's director, Ursula Moll, who is from the Rhineland. When I told her where I was headed, she asked me to bring her back "a good picture of the Deutzer Brücke with all the locks on it." I didn't manage to get a good one last year, but the picture below is framed and ready to be delivered to her at the Brisky gallery in Esslingen. I took it while travelling into town on the train. The light was great and the charm of the love locks, put there by couples to acknowledge their bond, was emphasized by the kissing couple and the other costumed pedestrians.

Another shot I got on the way in was this one which somehow reminded me of a scene from a World War II movie. In order to concentrate more on the light and composition (and not only on the colorful costumes), I had set my camera on B/W, so this is what I saw. The dark clouds, the hot-air balloons and the overhead power cables appeared to be from a different era.

By the way, you can set your camera to B/W to help you concentrate on lines, light and shadows, too. If you are shooting in RAW, the images will appear B/W on your camera display but will be in full color once you process them on the computer.

Bubbles

Recently I was downtown with some fellow photographers in the evening, when we happened upon a couple of men making some money by letting people blow big bubbles in the pedestrian zone. Now, anyone with small children knows that bubbles are an awful lot of fun. Photographers should also know how much fun they can be.

Granted, nighttime is not the greatest time for shooting randomly moving transparent globs, but I found that if you stick with it, you can pull some interesting pictures out of the event. As I've written here before, you can reduce the negative effects of high-ISO noise by converting the pictures to black-and-white. (All but one of these photos were all taken at 3200 ISO.) Yesterday I learned from Vincent Versace at Kelby Training that there is a plethora of ways to turn color pictures into black-and-white. However, these pictures here were desaturated using Lightroom's one-click B/W setting. Then I went back in with the adjustment brush and added selective color here and there to recreate the rainbow effect of the bubble.

Here, too, I used the same tools to recreate the bubble, but this time I framed my friend Renee Cizek in the loop. The background is, after all, nearly as important as the foreground.

Here I wanted the glow from the streetlights to accentuate the bubble. This picture did not see much post-processing.

Although there were some adults enjoying this event, this boy seemed most intent on blowing a huge bubble. This picture seems to tell his story as I saw it.

Sony A77, Minolta f1.7/50mm, f2.5, 1/125 sec, 3200 ISO

Selective color(s) and selective focus help direct our eye to the important part of a photograph. Here I was lucky to get such sharp definition on the bubble.
Thanks again to the men with the bubble juice! Don't forget to leave a tip for such street performers if you enjoy taking pictures of what they are doing.

Sony A77, Minolta f1.7/50mm, f3.2, 1/125 sec., ISO 1600

Cuddly Primates

Most of us don't think of gorillas as being very cuddly animals. But when a bunch of children hug the glass, it's hard to imagine how distantly we are really related. It may be only a few chromosomes, but when is the last time you saw a monkey driving a Mercedes?

"Beauty and the beast" comes to mind when I see this little girl's arm seemingly stroking the gorilla's fur.

This would probably be very easy to mock up in Photoshop, but after getting a few shots with my 90mm lens yesterday, I screwed on the 28-75mm today and waited for the right moment.

Sometimes the dual faces that appear in the reflections are better than one could imagine. This reminds me of the cowardly lion's face from The Wizard of Oz. And what I especially like about such reflections is that you have to look away and re-focus your eyes to see the other face.

Another day at the zoo

Trying to practice what I preach, I went back to the zoo and focused on details, composition and beauty.

An unusual perspective can help the viewers see things they hadn't focused on before.

Matching the foreground and background can result in a pleasant picture. Here the subtle shadows develop unobtrusively from the highlights.

If you wait long enough, you can get some good detailed shots of the fish...

...and some interesting reflections.

Goodbye! Until next time!

New Year's Eve at our tree farm

...and the photographer said, "Let there be light!" And there was light - and it was good. And the weather was great considering it was a winter day in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Due to an unexpected flat tire - aren't they always unexpected? - I didn't get to the party in the hills until around 4 p.m.

But I was still in time to relax and go up to the newly built platform to view the last sunset of 2011 with my sister and her family and friends.

And as we sat around the campfire, telling stories and making good things to eat, I looked up at the towering trees, the majesty of which caused my father to call our cabin and its surroundings "Chartres".

After the sun set, thousands of stars appeared that I hadn't seen in years. The light smog in Stuttgart doesn't allow for such wonderful night skies.

Three of us were playing with our cameras in the dark, so I decided to show the others about painting with light, using the flashlights that are so important to us out there in the dark (if you need to find something or go to the outhouse between 8 pm and 6:30 am). Jane held nice and still, so her facial features - especially her eyes - came out fairly sharp in this 35-second exposure. 

35 sec., f13, ISO 400, 50mm

This next portrait looks strangely Middle Eastern. Kate's hair band looks like a turban and the fact that only her eyes were illuminated by Jane's flashlight makes the rest of her face look strangely secretive as if it were wrapped in a scarf. It's the opposite of the type of lighting you usually want for a portrait, but this image has stuck in my mind. That shows me that rules are made to be toyed with.

50 sec., f13, ISO 100, 100mm

Now it is up to you to guess how we made this next picture. Kate's flashlight shadow reminds me of Friedrich Schiller's profile.

Now we've got a very dramatic looking scene. It reminds me very much of a scene from an expressionistic drama. Wanna guess how we made that?

Finally, we did the type of light painting that some of you may have also played with. Kate stood still while her friend traced around her with a flashlight pointed at the camera.

Even in the dark it is possible to take pictures, ones that you can't take during the day!
The first day of the year we walked over our tree farm. Pictures from that hike will follow.

Tips for taking portraits at home

Senior portraits

While I was in Virginia last week, I took some pictures of my beautiful niece Jane for her "senior pictures". That genre had escaped my notice, except for having seen her elder sister's pictures last year. I still don't really know if they are supposed to express something in particular. I just wanted to get some shots of her in her familiar surroundings and since I was staying with my sister that week anyway, we had time for two sessions.

Every experienced photographer will tell you that it's much easier to get pleasing pictures if your model is pretty. Well, that was the case here. The only stumbling blocks we occurred were 1) the cold weather, which pretty much precluded our shooting outdoors for extended periods of time; and 2) my limited equipment. For all the tutorials I've watched on one-light portraits, I still wish I had had a second one and my good Lastolite Trigrip reflector set. My umbrella and flash tripod would also have been helpful, but I was travelling light, so I had to improvise. One light only!


So as you see in the picture above, I wanted to capture her in settings that were important to her. Since practically everyone in our family is an artist - Jane included - we got a shot of her with her great brushes.

The nice mirror on her wall seemed like it would make a good frame for a photograph, so I set up the flash and a piece of poster board to the right of the mirror, the flash pointing into the large white surface to create a soft light and nice big catch lights in her eyes. But the light isn't what I like best about this picture; it's her pose!

Jane learned very quickly about looking into the light, keeping her eyes open and chin down. We were shooting with very little ambient light, so her pupils look large in the pictures.
For the next shot I put the flash behind her. I wanted a dreamy look, so backlighting seemed to be the way to go. The flash had enough power to light her face as well. Again, the natural pose here makes the picture what it is.

For some of the poses, she chose to smile sometimes and close her mouth for others. What a difference that makes! Here I prefer the nice, big smile!

Another big part of Jane's artistic and athletic life is dancing. She will graduate with honors in dance from the Culver Academies in June. So we took some pictures of her as the ballerina she has become. I like this introspective pose.

And here I put a snoot on my flash to create a line of light along her extended leg and her arm. It was also important to get some light on her left arm, too.

These last two pictures and the following one looked better in b/w than in color because you concentrate on the person and composition rather than the surroundings. The following picture shows Jane brimming with confidence, which is what a full-front portrait does.

Finally, here's the picture which Jane has chosen as her facebook profile picture. It's full of confidence, glamour, beauty and kindness. What more could you want in a niece?

Why am I so in love with this image?

Who can tell me why?