Up on Rubble Hill

There is a hill outside of Stuttgart where the rubble left over after the WWII bombing was piled up. The Germans call it affectionately Monte Scherbelino ("Scherbe" meaning shard, as in piece of broken stone or glass). At the top is a huge cross and a great view of most of Stuttgart and the surroundings.

 I was up there recently with the U.S. Photographers in Europe group. We always inspire each other to experiment with our camera settings to try for unusual shots. HDR is in fashion, so we try it out.

Stephen showed us a trick with steel wool and a whisk which creates a circle of sparks that looks great with a 30-second shutter speed.

Laura climbed up on the rocks to get a shot and I couldn't resist capturing her pose. It'll grace the cover of my next book.

After having a bite at the Schweinemuseum, we walked over to the Mercedes Museum and used it as a backdrop for some more light paintings.

On the street with the students

Friday morning I accompanied my students on a walk through downtown Stuttgart. The purpose of the exercise was to make them aware of all the motifs one can see and capture in town. In preparation for the walk, we had discussed both the theoretical and practical aspects of photographing urban landscapes and of doing street photography. We agreed that the pictures would probably end up saying more to the viewer if there were people in them, first of all so that there was someone to identify with and, secondly, so that one could quickly see the scale of the buildings in the landscape.

Using a super wide angle lens in town results in a rewarding experience for the photographer. You capture so much in one frame that you usually end up cropping something out in order to not make the picture too busy. Early Friday morning there wasn't too much going on near the station.

First we went through the train station and found this old ticket hall empty except for the lovely streams of light coming through the large windows.

We were concentrating on taking pictures from unusual perspectives, so putting the camera down behind the wheel of a bike was part of the game. I just waited for the right moment to press the shutter release.

While I was trying to take advantage of the converging lines in this building's structure, a man asked if I had permission to photograph it. Although I was standing on the sidewalk (public property), he felt he had to make me aware that there might be rules against it.

By the time it began raining, most of us had already reached the modern art museum at the Schloßplatz. Before going inside, we observed the goings-on from just outside the building. This man was enjoying the sun's last rays with his hazelnut ice cream. Obviously, by then I had changed over to my 70-300mm lens.

"Find a good background and watch the drama unfold in front of it." I love these steps.

During the brief rain shower, we went inside the museum to continue making pictures. Is this still "street photography"? I like the way it looks as if Jannis were wearing a suit made of dark green leaves.

After it rained, the pavement was slick and just perfect for pictures when the sun came out from behind the clouds!

Teaching photography

I'm blessed. That's all I can say. This semester I was given the opportunity to teach visual design/digital photography at the Media University here in Stuttgart. Word had gotten out that I was pretty fanatical about digital photography, lighting, Adobe Lightroom, photowalks, studio sessions, models, kids, photo challenges and competitions, etc. Now I am passing on my knowledge to nearly 60 students for the next three months.

One way I've learned a lot is through informative websites. Here are a list of some of the sites I visit most often:

http://www.dpreview.com/
This professionally run site has up-to-date information on new developments in the area of photography. It also has a great database and thorough reviews for any equipment you might consider purchasing. I also enjoy  participating in the challenges, which pit my imagination and photographic abilities against those of the thousands of other members.

http://www.sonyuserforum.de/
Since I use Sony Alpha cameras, I look for information about the camera here in this forum. I've joined a "SUF" (Sony User Forum) Stammtisch and have been able to learn quite a lot and share my knowledge here. It also is a good place to buy, sell and trade Sony (and other) equipment. Unfortunately, the tone of many of the "know-it-alls" gets on my nerves, so I've stopped reading this forum as closely over the past few months.

http://photography.alltop.com/
For a collection of "the top photography sites on the web", you can start here. So many websites are listed (even this blog!) that it will take you a month to click through them all. However, once you have found some you like, this is a good place to go to catch up with your favorites.

http://www.beyondmegapixels.com/
If you want to read a well-written, unpretentious photo website, this is the one for you. The two main writers share with the readers their experience and pass on what they've read elsewhere. They also answer your comments!

http://digital-photography-school.com/
Created and maintained by one of the world's most successful bloggers, Darren Rowse, this blog specializes in passing on tips from photo enthusiasts and professionals. It features a forum and weekly challenges/contests and can be sent to your inbox if you subscribe. I end up clicking on several of the stories in the newsletter every week.

Now, as an assignment aimed to help everyone in the class, I've asked my students to search the web for answers to their individual questions concerning digital photography and to post their findings here in the form of a comment. Good reading!

Life's little surprises

Why do I like this picture? The staring bulbous eyes, the straight face coming through the clown's make-up, the sharp lines made by the pole and, finally, the little drawing on the pole that looks a bit like him.

Along with the shots you hope to get while out on the street shooting, there are always the surprises that await you around every corner. That is the great thing about street photography. It helps to keep your eyes open and looking around (and not always pinned to the little display on the camera!). I'll repeat a few rules here for up-and-coming street photographers:
1. Keep your camera on. Carry an extra battery pack.
2. Keep your lens cap off. A lens hood will protect your camera nearly as well as the cap.
3. Notice what's going on around you so that you can anticipate the action and be prepared for it.
4. Keep your camera's ISO speed high if you want to capture the action (and not just the blur).

 At a small Carnival parade in Forsbach outside of Cologne, I got this shot because I noticed the Red Cross jackets gathered just off the main route. For me, this sums up the parade atmosphere perfectly. The drummer has a bad cut on his hand and will have to be sewn up. The first-aid worker is calling in the information but still holding onto the bag of candy which she has caught during the parade.

Near the Rhine this couple was sitting and talking about something apparently fairly serious. The expression on the man's face is priceless. The various patterns make for an interesting photo.

A shot for background fans: I waited for a couple of costumed people to walk in front of the House of Cologne's Artisanry. The annual parade is an important part of the city's trade status.

Here I was shooting for the spots of color within this frame. "Toi, toi" means "good luck" to Germans in certain situations. Here it means "porta-potty".

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!