Because of his enormous popularity, here is a another picture of "the smoker".
So what's the story?
I participated on a music video production for a reggae song. This was one of those low budget Craigslist things and definitely something interesting to do. We first met for a rehearsal in a studio in New York and did an outside shooting in Chinatown very early on a Sunday morning. It was actually not that early anymore when I took the picture. Nothing was really organized and took very long. That's why I had time to interact with people who were standing around. So this man was staying there with his cigarette and apparently very excited to watch us. I liked that and started to photograph him. Then I signalized him that I want him to smoke his cigarette, what he immediately did. So that's basically how it came to the photograph on my front page.
Yes, you got the headline right. American innovation brought us the Drive-in Christmas Story.
I actually wanted to post this on time, but it seems like it's already over. Anyway, I have been there last year and took this picture.
How does it work? You get a CD (or tape) for your car stereo. All you have to do then is listen to the friendly voice which tells you the story while you watch people in costumes doing little plays. Sometimes the voice asks you to pause the tape and to go on listening after arriving at the next scene.
Anyone remembering this posting about my submission to a photo magazine?
It was in the November issue. I have a copy at home since weeks and didn't see it...how strange. Cagil just noticed it. You can find it on page 101. The section is called "Weltenbummler" (globetrotter).
I'm also in touch with a local newspaper which is designing a wall calendar for 2007 right now. The calendar will show pictures of the Princeton area. Occasionally I shoot in my local neighborhood and had some pictures I remembered being very happy about, so I just send four of them as down sampled previews. The Calendar people liked them and requested the original files yesterday mentioning that they might take one or two. The only thing I know is that it goes into print tomorrow. I'm curious which pictures will make it...
I just received the flyer for next week's Passion Tuesday. Surprise surprise...it's one of my pictures on it.
CMYK is organizing this monthly event. Models and Photographers are welcome to join an open shooting which usually takes place in the lower level of the club.
Here is a statement by CMYK:
“Our aim is to provide an alternative outlet for young people who are looking for a sexy and unique atmosphere to express their passion, whether it be fashion, music, art or film.” Passion Tuesdays is a monthly Tuesday night party, where the dress code is sexy and passionate. Film makers and photographers submit their work to be exhibited during the event, while DJs provide an eclectic soundtrack for our guests."
Last Tuesday was the second time I went to a shooting at Katra's Passion Tuesday. This time it was for the RIX magazine. I actually haven't heard about this precious magazine before. But I remember being quite fascinated about the KING magazine which is mostly about rims and half naked ladies. So whenever I did some shopping in my local supermarket and passed by the magazine section, I started wondering how the male mind comes up with a relationship between car tires and women. I have some theories, but still don't get it.
However, I find shooting at Katra quite challenging with the gear I have. So this was a good chance to concentrate on the flaws I had in the previous pictures and do it better this time.
Last week was Thanksgiving. I remember last year. Cagil and I went to the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade. Very early, very cold. I didn't know that there is not much more going on than clowns and big balloons. At the end it turned out to be fun, but this year it even rained all morning so I simply stayed at home. These photographs are from 2005. I like clowns as long as they don't try to be funny.
I was getting a picture ready for printing for someone in Germany when I browsed through some other pictures I took back at that day. I looked at this one for a while and found it actually not that bad. Here it is.
...last week's show.
I chose the opposite position from all other photographers. First of all, I wanted to have them with their cameras as an element in the pictures. Second, I thought that their flash lights might bring some nice light effects. It turned out okay. Here are two examples.
I've just received the look book for Donna Loren's fall/winter collection. It's all the pictures I took on the Brooklyn Bridge. I cannot believe they put the picture with the cops in there, too *lol*
I won't scan all the pages, but everything I posted about it is still here:
Story
Photo series with Ivy
Today, one of my customers (Carol) wants to share with you what she experienced when looking at one of my pictures exhibited in a church:
I think I need to share the reason I wanted to buy the picture in the first place. I was walking down the hallway in church where your beautiful picture was displayed. When I passed the picture, I stopped dead in my tracked and my mouth fall open. You see, at first, I did not see the messy sheep. I saw a close-up of the face of Christ. The hay in the sheep's face were the crown of thorns on His head. Simultaneously, I could hear the words in my head, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world" from John 1:29.It was one of those moments that leaves you breathless. After such an experience, I knew I had to have the picture. It will always be very special to me. Thank you so much.
Hey photographers!
Here is a good chance to do some fashion like shooting. It takes place at Katra in New York from 9-10pm and I'm pretty sure it's gonna be fun. I heard there are also some of my pictures on display...I'm feeling honored.
Here is a little Halloween add-on. First I wanted to call it "Feminine Halloween", but then I noticed that this rhyme only works in German language :-)
Finally I got a picture of the gallery window in Limburg. I think they have seven or eight pictures now. What you see here are four of them. Interestingly three of them are not on my page yet...the Chicago series is definitely overdue.
Photo by Dieter Fluck
What's going on with the weather these days? It's fooling everybody pretending it's spring.
Skate session, Philadelphia:
Unfortunately it came out of my camera very blurry, so I oversharpened it.
Here is the first series of Halloween shots. Don't ask me why, but I somehow tend to categorize pictures all the time. As you can see, these are all male. And I promise to show pictures of females very soon. Actually, some of them I'm not sure if they are really female, which makes it hard to categorize them :-)
I'm a bit excited about this Halloween stuff. It's such a good shooting opportunity and I put some efforts in it. I think it turned out well.
I'm a bit lazy when it comes to printing and framing, but I believe that exhibiting will become a part of my little hobby. From now on you will find a link to an exhibition overview on the (now more organized looking) sidebar of this blog.
RealNewYorkersKnow.com used one of my old pictures for a story about Halloween. It's actually interesting to read. Here is a link.
Well, then let me introduce your new neighbors to you:
Doesn't it look like a montage? I shot it with a 85mm lens from far away.
For those who were thinking about buying one of my pictures, you have the chance to do this now. Starting today I have an exhibition in Limburg, Germany. The name of the gallery is "Galerie auf der Treppe" which means "Gallery on the stairs" and is located in the (very) old part of the city, which has a lot of historical sights and is a hotspot for tourists. Right now you can find five pictures there and it's going to be at least two more. Special thanks goes to my father who came up with the idea and worked with me on this.
The latest news are:
The pictures were in the shopping windows starting this morning and in the evening they were sold out. A person came in and simply bought them all. He agreed to wait with picking them up until new prints are ready, so the shopping windows won't be empty. I'm flattered!
Could someone take a picture of the windows for this BLOG? That would be great.
This is regarding the studio shoot I talked about earlier.
I think I spent the first hour doing nothing than experimenting with the lights and kept improving the lighting almost till the end of the shooting. As a total newbie I was apparently challenged - don't expect anything close to perfection. It's so different from street photography which I always compare to hunting. You walk a lot around, you explore, and you also need to be lucky. In the studio everything is set up and there is no parameter the photographer can not adjust. Very powerful, very commercial, very not so exciting.
I got an email from Jeanne Flemming today. Since I'm receiving a press pass for the Parade (I wrote about it earlier), I got press information, too. Let me use this to put you a bit more into Halloween mood. But first my German readers need to learn some uncommon vocabulary. At least this is what I had to look up. You cannot get into Halloween mood when searching a dictionary, you learn this first! :-)
ember - gluehende kohle
hearth - feuerstelle
rekindle - wiederaufleben
gourds - kuerbisflasche
This year's theme is:
------------------------------------
The Village Hearth
In Celtic times, folks celebrated the last night of Autumn by gathering around a communal fire and then carrying home embers from that fire to rekindle each hearth in the village. Villagers carried the glowing embers in hollowed gourds. From this rite of renewal was born the enduring symbol of Halloween, the Jack-O-Lantern.
Today, the Villagers of the Halloween Parade still take their coals from its communal fire, The Parade, to rekindle its spirit in their own hearths throughout the year. Each improbable story, each other-worldly mask, costume, and each spontaneous step of the dance is an ember, a piece of the collective made personal.
------------------------------------
The Official Village Halloween Parade Puppeteers--Superior Concept Monsters- have created a Giant Cauldron attended by Jack-o-Lantern Giant Puppets and hundreds of smaller Lanterns to enact this ritual of the communal made personal.
Another picture from last year.
Yesterday I got a call from Donna L'Oren. I will put my foot into a photo studio for the first time this Sunday. The mission is to shoot pictures which will be used for the packaging of their products. I'm very happy about this opportunity. Even I read a lot about it and considered already getting some lighting equipment myself, my practical studio experience equals zero. I'm sure afterwards I will have a better understanding of things. This will also help me to decide what lighting equipment to get for myself.
Another retro color experiment.
I'm very happy about having my last name as a domain. But even I'm proud owner of fluck.de, I kept an eye on fluck.com which was (if I got it right) something like a stud farm in the Netherlands. So on very rare occasions I checked this site out to see if it's still around. Guess what, I was very lucky that I went on this site right after it was expired. The previous owner didn't renew his contract and snapnames.com was ready to start an auction in case more than one person would be interested in getting it. Naive as I am, I was silently hoping that nobody noticed that fluck.com became available so I could get it for just 60 bucks from SnapNames *sneaky sneaky*. An auction lasts three days and right after it started I saw a list of 35 people participating the auction. The price went up to $410 after the first hour. The whole thing turned out to be a battle between two parties and none of them was me. The fact that the auction time gets extended for another five minutes whenever a new bit comes in, made it quite entertaining to watch. I don't know yet what you will see when visiting fluck.com in the future, but I can tell you already that the owner paid a thousand dollars for it.
The Princeton Photo Club opened an exhibition at the Princeton Alliance Church last Friday. We have 68 pieces hanging there right now and most of the work is available for purchase. Everybody is welcome to stop by and browse through the photographs and biographies of the exhibitors.
You already know the story of this new series of pictures. I have nothing to add about it except that this obviously is a very urban style which luckily hit the designers nerve. What I would love to do next is shooting beautiful women in the latest winter fashion in a snow covered Central Park - something more fairy-tale like. Sounds kitschy, huh? Anyway, let it snow!!
Recently I was wondering what my answer would be if a designer would ask me: "Where and when can you take pictures for me?" My hypothetical answer was pretty clear to me: "Meet me at the Brooklyn Bridge at 7am right after sunrise." What I didn't expect was, that this would actually happen. I also didn't expect that people would be excited to do that. Neither did I expect that this would turn out to be so much fun. And the thing I would have expected the least are police officers who would hang out with us having a good time.
Things I expected were very good morning light, a freezing model, whistling workers, curious pedestrians, and cell phone cameras everywhere. That's pretty much what happened. I think I will bring music next time and we will have a little party :-) Thank you guys, this was a great morning! Or to say it in our models words: Fuckin A!
Contemporary Issues In Photography was the topic of the club meeting yesterday night. Speaker was Joel Smith, curator of photography at the Princeton University Art Museum. I was pulled back in time looking at a variety of famous work and unconventional techniques. A thing I found interesting was a question during the Q&A session afterwards. It went something like this:
Q: Where do you think photography is going in times where people take millions of random pictures every day even with their cell phones; sending them around the world in seconds?
A: I guess people asked themselves similar questions when the first Leica came out. I don't know.:-)
More or less in the last minute I realized that a model invited me to come over for a Donna Loren fashion show in New York City last night. I jumped in my car and managed to be early - I even had enough time for dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant :-)
The show took place in the Cain in Chelsea, which is a stylish Africa themed club. At the location I got to know the designers, hairstylists and makeup artists who contributed to this show. Very nice people who all mentioned their interest in doing some more things together in the future. I guess I wouldn't deny that.
I had a pretty exact idea of how to shoot this, but as usual in practice things look different. For what I had in mind the available light during the show was not enough and people constantly ran into my field of view. However, it was pleasure to be there and it might be your pleasure to browse through the latest Donna Loren lingerie. So here is a link.
From time to time I see pictures that seem like weird snapshots in a retro color look. Those things catch my eyes these days and make my mind come up with thoughts. Don't be surprised when you see more of such things here in the future.
The new series is the result of some Photoshop experiments. Of course I photograph every animal whenever I have a good chance to approach one. These ones are taken in the Bronx Zoo and Brooklyn Zoo. Except the mean looking gull which I crossed way with in Santa Barbara. Credits for this Photoshop technique and textures go to Anita Schneider. You can get her tutorial by ordering this issue of DigitalPhoto. I actually don't think I used her method very gracefully, but I liked to put the animals into the limelight this way.
Something tells me that I left work yesterday at the right time. This is what the New Jersey sky looked like at 7:30 pm.
I flipped through this British photo mag the other day when this toy came to my attention the first time. Now I'm proud owner of a Holga 120N - my very first not-digital camera. It's all plastic (even the lens) and very cheap. Those cameras are built with many mistakes and almost no functionality, causing effects you usually try not to have in your pictures. However, the results are very unique looking. I bought it with some professional black & white film and I'm looking forward experimenting a bit with it.
- Check out Dave Nile's website to see some very nice Holga shots. He uses this camera since a long long time.
- Toycamera.com is another great place to get inspired.
I made an interesting observation: Somehow the majority of my male friends become daddy this year. Congratulations! A somewhat natural reaction once the baby is delivered is grabbing a camera and go crazy with it. So I got an email from a friend who played with his camera asking: "what is 'white balance' all about?" He asked me to answer this shortly and in clear words. I will try:
A camera is not as smart as a human eye. Your camera is like a person suffering from Alzheimer's disease. You have to say: "hello camera, this is white". Then the camera says: "well, if this is white, than this must be red, this dark red, and this light red, and then this is blue...". If you don't do this whenever the lighting situation changes, the camera gets confused.
Imagine the following: You take a nice landscape picture where the sun is your light source. You have green grass in it and a white sheet of paper somewhere in the picture. If you set the white balance correctly, the paper appears plain white and the grass green.
Now you take this sheet and bring it inside your house. You lower all the blinders and the only light source you have is a bulb. Now the same sheet appears rather yellowish (warmer), due to the warm color temperature of your light source. What you have to do now is, show the sheet of paper to the camera and tell: "The light in this room has a different color temperature than the light outside and white looks now like this." If you don't do this, the colors in the final picture will appear very warm, so that the sheet looks very yellow and people's faces even more yellow.
Fortunately, almost all cameras can be set to automatic so they figure this out by themselves whenever you take a picture. Some cameras are good in this, some are less. Most cameras also have presets for different situations.
In case you want to know what I do: I don't take pictures in JPEG format but in RAW. The RAW format allows me to set the white balance after taking the picture.
My roommate Alex working in the darkness. Looks kinda cool.
I became a member of the Princeton Photography Club yesterday. This is a good chance to get in touch with other local photographers. So yesterday was the first meeting after the summer break and people were showing what they did during the summer. It was impressive and entertaining. The club is preparing an exhibition right now and I'm thinking of contributing one or two pictures. Most likely things you haven't seen on my website yet.
...for the upcoming Chicago series.
One thing I liked about the Chicago trip was that I ran into a number of talkative people. One of them was Pia Torelli, a photojournalist from San Francisco. We had an interesting little chat and later on I checked out her portfolio online. The diversity of the pictures is nice. Here is a link.
Yesterday, in the Art Institute of Chicago I found these little miniature rooms. These are basically very little and highly detailed models of rooms. Mostly English drawing, dining and bed rooms from different time periods. So what I did was using my wide angle lens on 12mm pressing it against the window (to avoid reflections of the light behind me) and make these rooms look huge. Besides many little details, the artificial sunlight shining through the little windows make it look even more real. I'm very curious how those pics turn out. There is a book available showing all the rooms photographed. On the pictures you can see the models very well, but they didn't excite me much, since they are all taken with a standard focal length and the light appears too balanced. It would be nice to create the illusion that the photographer was actually standing in the room on a sunny day. I hope my ISO 100 pictures turn out sharp. If not I have a backup in ISO 3200.
Two days and nights of constant walking and exploring. This is more hiking than I did in Yosemite last year. Maybe because there is no Starbucks on every other corner waiting to refresh me. Actually, there are not even corners in Yosemite. So far ㅑ ㅗㅁㅍㄷ 내ㅡㄷ what's going on with this keyboard??
So far I have some nice shots with plenty of concrete, steel and glass, this might turn out well in black and white.
I'm looking at four more days here in Chicago and the weather is supposed to be rather unfriendly tomorrow. For those who are looking for me: You'll find me in the local museums.
Hey Ho!
I'm in Chicago!
This city is much friendlier and cleaner than I expected. Definitely an eldorado for people who admire skyscraper architecture.
What could I tell about this place you couldn't find on any Chicago related website? Not much so far. I prefer telling silently by taking pictures anyway.
...from last weekend.
Francesco just asked me if I have a new series in the pipeline. The answer is yes. But there is only a single pipeline and it has to be totally empty before I stuff in new pictures. The time till a whole series went through takes about a month depending on my motivation and inspiration - you do the math Franz :-P
I recently strolled a bit though the world wide web and planted some links to my page here and there. It's fun to watch the effect it has.
Good "morning" everybody. Isn't that a beautiful day? What I need now is my skateboard, my camera and I need to get on the streets of New York. Let's have some fun time...
Humans like pictures of humans. Am I right? For all the humans who visit this website: Here is a new series.
For all the spambots hanging out at my page: SCREW YOU!!
:-)
...was a lot of fun.
I don't wanna go too far off topic, but SIGGRAPH is really a special conference. Many outstanding computer science presentations, computer animation and a lot of other interesting things. I attended a course called "The Art of Story Telling" by some Hollywood script writer (just for the fun of it) and enjoyed a course by Stephen Burns, who masters the art of teaching Photoshop pretty well.
My personal highlight of the computer science part was a crowd simulation presented by a group of the university of Washington. I recommend to go on their website and watch the demo video. It's really cool. Those algorithms will be integrated in future video games by Electronic Arts.
To come back "on topic", here are two pics of Boston. I'm very happy with the first one, which was a hopeless shot against the sun which led to underexposed buildings. I guess, this is the first time I'm using HDRI the way it's supposed to be used. I know many people don't, but I like this little unreal look. I should do that more often.
I have some more street photographs as well, but I will keep hiding them for a future black & white series :-P
I'm leaving for Boston in a few minutes. I have the pleasure to present some work of of mine at SIGGRAPH. SIGGRAPH is all about computer graphics, interactivity and the computer science of the entertainment industry. I will be there for about a week and believe that this will contribute to the photographic part of my life as well. Not only that researchers will present interesting results on the theoretic side of digital photography, the city of Boston is quite photogenic, too. Let's see if I can find time to torture my camera.
"...Your Series III black and white images in particular are absolutely spectacular..."
This time it's a British company with a very interesting concept. People can order photographs on their website (paintingsfromphotos.co.uk) and have it painted on canvas. Customers cannot only choose canvas size, but also among different techniques the picture will be painted with. On this website, photographers can set the price for their work individually while paintingsFromPhotos adds a fixed amount depending on size and technique.
I award this with 3 golden Olis for originality. I might dare to do the experiment and upload something.
I just got contacted by a German company which produces and sales large digital art prints on canvas. Especially interested in photographs of New York and other big cities, they asked me to work with them. This company works with interior designers, galleries and interior stores. That sounds very good. I guess next week it will turn out, if it will come to a deal or not. For now I just take it as a compliment :-)
Today I found my name on a website I never visited before, written down by someone I don't know.
And what is "the untalkative bunny"? - Sounds pretty cool.
During the last three years of autodidactic journey through photography, there was one website I always kept an eye on. You can really learn from the fotocommuniy by studying the pictures people submitted and the comments others give. Now I finally decided to join the community as a full member. Besides seeing many amazing photographs you also have the chance now to see some of my pictures in a higher resolution (a high resolution version of www.fluck.de is in planning, too).
Here is my profile :-)
Pixmantec's Rawshooter is a great piece of software and cost only 70 bucks. I couldn't find anything better for working with pictures in RAW format. But now it turned out that some other people liked it a lot, too. Adobe systems (the makers of the famous Photoshop software) simply bought the whole company. As a result, Rawshooter will not be developed anymore and its technology will be integrated in a new Adobe product called Adobe Lightroom. Let's see where this leads to. As a Pixmantec customer, I'll get Lightroom 1.0 for free, but from then on, it might become way more expensive to stay up to date. I don't like the idea.
I have some pictures of you I would like to share with you. Click here if you are curious what you look like through my eyes. It's late now - see you tomorrow.
The Magazine:
Even I'm living in the states, I don't wanna miss this German high quality photography magazine called DigitalPhoto. I really appreciate this mix of hardware reviews, interviews and little tutorials, so I got a subscription of it. One section of this mag is called "Augenblicke" which basically means "moments". At those pages, readers can see a handful of pictures taken by other readers, selected by the DigitalPhoto team. A couple of days ago when flipping through the "Augenblicke" section I had the idea of submitting a picture myself. I thought it would be very nice to contribute something to this magazine and to see an own photograph printed there. Not speaking of the curiosity whether it would be accepted or not.
The Picture:
The tough part was to decide which one to send.
I decided for the one I took from atop the Rockefeller Center. The observation platform was reopened for the public recently, after it was closed for about 20 years. I haven't been there till this point, but was waiting for the right moment to do so. I guess photographers think a bit differently from the way the tourists' minds work. The right moment for me was the moment I noticed these incredibly deep hanging clouds. So it happened that I was the only person on the roof of the Rockefeller Center on this cold Wednesday evening. Anyway, you might know this photograph from the wall in my living room or maybe Gallery II. I'm happy to announce that you can also see it printed in a full page format soon. Either in issue 9/2006 or 10/2006 of DigitalPhoto. I'll keep you updated about which issue it will be :-)
I just decided that I will prepare a series of black & white street photographs soon.
Have you heard about Loretta Lux? She does extraordinary digital photography with children. I noticed her about a year ago at the fotocommunity website. I was astonished by those weird looking images, but didn't keep her name in mind for some reason. When I visited the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco last winter, I surprisingly found myself in front of some of her pictures again. Since then I'm aware of that name and took the chance to see more of her pictures last Saturday at the Yossi Milo Gallery.
Speaking of fascinating digital portraiture, I don't wanna miss referring you to Andrej Dragan's website. These pictures simply freak me out every time I visit his page. He invented the technique called "retouch of light" he processes his pictures with. As a Photoshop newbie, I simply emailed him and asked for a hint about how this works. He offered me a tutorial for (I think it was) 300 Euros. I don't doubt that it's worth the money, but I know that those images are not only processed in a great way. The actual photographs are of high quality, too. Not speaking of the challenge of directing a person to look a certain way. My conclusion: There are so many things one can experiment with and it's all for free, let's first dedicate our little spare time to that.
Here are the links. Enjoy!
Loretta Lux
Andrzej Dragan
New York is a crazy place and so are the New Yorkers. What happens when these people walk in a Halloween parade, you can see every year in October. The NYC Halloween Parade is a lot of fun with two million spectators and thousands of participants. Last year I squeezed myself into the crowd to take pictures from the side line. I gave the results to the organizers as a contribution to their official website and taataaa! yesterday they assured me a press pass for this year. This will allow me to be inside the parade and move freely, which should improve the quality of my work significantly. Here are two of my last year's pictures. The NYC Halloween Parade is listed in the book "100 Things to Do Before You Die". Don't miss it!
I met my old fellow Stefan and we figured out that we both started to have the same hobby, even our equipment is pretty similar. So Stefan came up with the idea to go on a little afternoon photo safari and shoot whatever is available in our area. We decided to go for a medieval ruin which is a five minute drive away from the place I grew up. Now I have this nice little castle in my blog and you can be sure not to see something like that here again in the near future - I'm back to the new world.
The long awaited arrival of the summer and this great soccer world cup turned Germany into a huge party place. Due to historical reasons, waving a German flag was considered something weird to do since a long time (I personally never had a flag in my hands). Now it seems like the time has come and especially the younger generations got back some self confidence. Black, Red and Gold are the colors of the season and a hearty celebration goes through the country. It's nice to be at home.
What El Arenal is for the Germans is Palmanova for the English. The funny thing is that these places are on the same little island (Mallorca), but if you go and check both out, you might notice that it feels like visiting two different countries, due to the straightly separated "populations". So here I am. Palmanova, Saturday June 10th, 3pm, England vs. Paraguay on a large screen and a hungry British mob in front of it. It was a good event for some freaky head shots, but at the same time the ugliest (not "the most ugly") mission of my young Photography "career". My camera drank some beer and I lost some blood*. However, we both survived.
*Finding first aid can be challenging sometimes :-)
I was advised not to ask too many questions to my readers. So this one is without :-)
I'm finally visiting my hometown Limburg in Germany. Limburg is a cute town on the Lahn river almost exactly between Cologne and Frankfurt. Here I had the chance to hang out at a little freestyle session of "Stille Wasser" last night. You cannot miss these guys, if you are living in that area and you like Rap music. The MCs are very energetic and the DJs have a good hand for beats. At least I liked the choice very much. Here are my favorite photographs of that night.
Have you ever walked around in Central London on a Saturday night? If not, please do so and let me know what your impression was. I was pretty convinced that the whole city is drunk and Big Ben and I are the only sober guys around. Don't get me wrong, I was highly entertained by that. However, I walked around there and my mission was to catch some beauty with my little camera. Yes, it feels like it sounds, it's just like hunting. Different from all the other people around me, I didn't numb my visual perception, which apparently lowers the chance of being satisfied with your catch. But I scored. I stared at Big Ben for about ten minutes, and I think I stared so hard, that I caused the lights to turn off just by looking at it. The fact that I just did that, made me stare like a meerkat for a while without moving. It took me another ten minutes and then I was fine with the idea of having supernatural powers. I had a big question mark hovering over my head, wondering if the other tourists next to me realized that I did that and started to feel a bit uncomfortable in the role of the spoiler. You can imagine what that looks like: My head is still staring up, while my eyes are rolling carefully from one side to the other observing disappointed tourists.
Okay, let's come to the point. Here is the beauty I was talking about. I felt very attracted by the wasted look of these lanterns in front of the cloudy London sky. Of course there were plenty of wasted looking people around I could put in front of the sky instead, but the lanterns seem much more mystic to me. What happened to them? Do the people shoot at them? Or are there other supernatural beings around who are more into damaging small lanterns than turning off big lights? If yes, thank you guys, it looks just great!
Why? I'm going to Europe today. For three weeks. But before I leave this place behind me, I want to post some pictures of it. I hope you enjoy the New York shots.
I think the next series will have people on it. Buildings and bridges might become a bit boring after a while.
My next stop is England. Talk to you later :-)
Last weekend my Craigslist activities brought me all the way to Brooklyn. I met Ashley O'Neal, an artist who lives and works in the City. Because I was so curious, I took plenty of headshots of her while she answered all the questions I had regarding her life as an artist. The results are numerous images of different facial expressions. I also took pictures while she was working on a large scale painting.
Afterwards, starting from Atlantic Avenue, I walked up Smith street and found a little piece of Cologne in the heart of Brooklyn. Gosh, I sound like a cheap tourist guide. Anyway, what I found was a German-style beer garden beneath huge Gaffel Kölsch umbrellas and (as I learned later) Kölsch beer on tab...kind of unexpected.
Sandy Hook is a national recreation area here in New Jersey. That's the place where I met up with Jon Pearson, a 52 year old Yogi who lives in that area. Jon replied to my ad on Craigslist and gave me the chance to shoot pictures of his Yoga routine. Even though my mother is a yoga teacher since many many years, my knowledge about it is quite limited. But even if you don't know anything about Yoga, you can sense what it's all about just by watching someone like Jon.
I've never been to this little island before and must say that this is a really nice place. I don't wanna know what's going on there on a summer weekend, but on a warm weekday evening, when no people are around and little thunderstorms are coming and going, this might be your place to be. I hope I'll find time soon to go through the pictures and keep you posted.
I met this guy under a roof last night. It was raining like crazy and we were both looking for shelter. I found him quite photogenic so we ended up having a spontaneous photo shooting.
Last weekend I got an idea for a new series. I started a search on New York's Craigslist for people who are interested in expressing themselves in front of my camera. I'm open to whatever people are up to and let them choose the location as well. The replies I got so far seem promising - let's see where things go...
I'm not sure, but I think this page was without content for almost two years now. The surprising part was that - even after such a long time - friends kept asking me when it would be online again. That kind of motivated me to finally do something :-)
Anyway, what you see here are my latest adventures in digital photography. I hope, I will be able to please your eyes with a new series of pictures every couple of weeks. In return I would like to receive your critics. If you have ideas for improvements or even don't like my stuff at all, if you want to tell me about your thoughts and feelings triggered by a picture, please go ahead. I would find that very interesting.
