emulsion on silver gelatin
These are the last two taken on holiday.
The first one shows the lovely fishing village of Polperro which was just down the road from Looe (Cornwall) where we spent the second week of our England and Wales round-trip.
The second picture was shot on the way back to Harwich at Stonehenge.
f/14 1/125 ISO 400 @17mm
f/14 1/250 ISO 400 @30mm Pol. Filter
The Economist was recently titled “The man who screwed an entire country” accompanied by a picture of Silvio Berlusconi. In Potsdam it isn’t a single man but more a political morass of people who were on the payroll of the regime before the fall of the wall. One of the latest victims has been the local public services company which hosts the annual music festival in Potsdam. This year’s roll call included Simple Minds, Robin Gibb and Kim Wilde.
The first shot was taken as a candid during Kim Wilde’s “Cambodia”. My covert skills obviously leave a lot to be desired as my subjects quickly spotted my intentions. The second shot was taken with their kind permission.
My thanks go to these unknown siblings on a bench.
f/4 1/25 ISO 800 @50mm
f/5 1/8 ISO 1250 @30mm
This is Oma (Grandma) in the Stadtpark in the beautiful city of Hamburg.
She says “the best years were my thirties”,
My reply “unfortunately mine are all but gone!”
“You’ve still got your forties to come!”
That’s all very well but if the thirties were the best years, where do we go from here? They say the old thirties are the new fifties. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
P.S. she’ll be ninety-three this year so she ought to know (she’ll kill me if she reads this).
f5.6 1/100 ISO 400 @44mm
This was taken early in the morning whilst on my way to work on that “sit up and beg” style Dutch bike of mine that I have mentioned previously. The view is from the Havelstrasse across to the Hans Otto theatre in Potsdam.
I’ve finally gone full frame, albeit analogue. This was shot with a Pentacon 50mm f1.8 (effectively a Meyer Oreston 50mm f1.8) lens on a Praktica MTL3 camera which were last produced around 1984. The MTL3 is completely manual with the only electronics being an inbuilt TTL light meter. It is pure East German precision engineering even if the technology used is over five decades old.
I’m really enjoying shooting film at the moment so be prepared for more in the coming weeks. This shot is OOC as they say, meaning straight out of the camera with no digital development whatsoever.
If I remember rightly:
f11 1/500 Ilford HP5 (ISO 400) @50mm
…… tune in again next week for the sequel, you won’t be disappointed!
Thanks to Peter for his patience trudging around Bremen city centre on a cold damp winters evening.
f1.8 1/25 ISO 800 50mm ambient light
(P.S. I really do love that cheap 50mm 1.8 piece of glass)
I think you may have to get used to a number of these banks being within the boundaries of the city of Potsdam, as well as being taken at the last possible moment during the week.
The more observant of you will have noticed that this was taken on a Sunday, hence it was taken on the first day of the new week. This is correct, unless you live in Germany, where the first day of the week is a Monday. Although I always mutter that this custom is incorrect and probably goes against some international (most probably European Union) law, it certainly worked to my advantage this week.
To those readers used to my rants on this subject and the mixing up of commas and full stops in the German numerical system I have this to say:
“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern.” Konrad Adenauer (First German Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany)
This roughly translates as:
“Who cares what twaddle I have spoken in the past” A rather novel admittance for a politician I think.
That does not go to say that I will in future condone either of the above errors.
The image was taken on my Sunday “Bread-Roll-Run” with the kids, whilst their mother idled, well deserved I might add, in her warm and cosy bed.
We’ve had mild weather with rain over the past few days, which has brought the remnants of the New Year’s celebrations to the surface as well as preserving patches of dirty snow.
A picture fitting for the time of year I think.
“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary.” – David Bailey – In “Face,” (London), Dec 1984.
It is with this in mind that we set off on our 53 week photographic journey. There are few things more ordinary than a bank, so in the hope that not all the images presented are just ordinary, let’s get started.
It was one of the those wonderful Winter afternoons that you get when the easterly winds blow across the North German plains making the air dry, crisp and very cold. We were out with the kids to see how the wild bison, horses and reindeer fared in the conditions. As the winter sun started to set I came across this makeshift bench.
It was my first bank of the year.
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