Like A Tourist

Since a long time I wanted to get more into documentary photography. At the beginning I felt uncomfortable photographing my hometown like a tourist, but I also learned to appreciate living in such a beautiful city.

Some photographs of the center of my hometown:

(consider yourself warned; they're not edited)

in the background the mountains are just visible

the ceiling of a building

coffee is always a good idea

BYE

Explore. The. World.

Shining Into the New Year

Each year commences with a bright spectacle, nobody wants to miss. Several towns consider themselves competitors aspiring to surpass each other.

As a photographer irrespective of your level, you question yourself how come that someone who owns a camera wouldn't immortalize these breath-taking moments by taking pictures.

That's when we come to my New Year's Eve. I was invited to a friend's house and only took my camera with me. This was a grave mistake because before I'd seriously wanted to photograph exploding fireworks I googled some instructions online. If you've done so as well, you surely haven't missed an equipment that's mentioned in every instruction besides a camera. It's a tripod and this year I attempted to photograph fireworks without using a tripod. Let me say, this wasn't fun at all. I was desperate watching the beauty of fireworks while being incapable of capturing it.

I felt incompetent and disappointed in myself, but as soon as I viewed the pictures on my computer I was positively surprised. I was so relieved that there were a couple of acceptable pictures at least.

In conclusion, use appropriate exposures which means they should neither be too long nor too short. The setting of your aperture is up to you. I personally prefer a medial aperture because it gives character to the images from my point of view. I hope I haven't discouraged anyone from photographing your next New Year's Eve, so trust me it can be fun but also a torture if there's no tripod around.

Here are some of my shots:

I'll soon complete this post, but for now here are merely shots I took with my phone.
Almost done. :)

(p.s. I also used my phone, because no camera I have remains unused)

Using my DSLR:

Bye, Marcel

ETW

by the way, a happy new year! :)

Autumnal Atmosphere

Autumn is incontrovertibly beautiful. The loss of chlorophyll gives great variety to the apparent monotony. As if the colored leaves weren't admirable enough, the light turns even more red during dusk. Therefore, autumn is doubtlessly my favorite season of the year.

Most importantly, I love how photographs turn out when being shot in autumn. Here are some of my latest nature shots involving that reddish light.

Gadgets I used:

Canon EOS 550D
EF 50mm f1.4 USM

If you have questions pertaining to my techniques, leave a comment below. Thanks for visiting.

Bye, Marcel.

Explore the world.

Photoshooting 30-09-12 Fairytales

Photoshooting: Fairytales

As counterproductive as usual Sundays use to be, this time I put my time to a good use. As opposed to spending my time on not doing anything, a friend of mine drove me to a particular forest. Surprisingly, she also loaded up her car with medieval costumes.

I can't await getting the driver license myself.

When we arrived I was amazed by the forest's atmosphere. It looked truly mythical because it was quite foggy.

(Red) Riding Hood

Snow White

Medieval Times

The Black Witch

Gadgets I used:

Canon EOS 550D

EF 50mm f1.4 USM

I hope you liked the shots. It was fun to shoot. :)

Bye, Marcel.

Explore the world.

PhotoShooting 23-09-12 Baking & Photographing

Last Sunday was amazing. I spent the entire day baking and photographing with my aunt. Admittedly, she was the one who baked while I was taking pictures. I'm unfortunately not as talented as she is in terms of baking. Anyway, I guess I'm better off than her because I merely take pictures and get to eat the cupcakes as well.

Anyway, who would I be if I withheld you the deliciousnesses my aunt had baked?

Gadgets I used:

Canon EOS 60D (my aunt's)

Canon EOS 550D

Canon EF 20mm f2.8 USM (my aunt's)

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM

Canon EF 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 IS

I hope you could recognize how delicious the cupcakes were. I'd love to be able to bake that well..

Bye, Marcel.
Explore the world.

How to put EXTRA in front of ORDINARY

Sooner or later, all of us encounter photographs seeming to have been taken in daily life, which is true in the majority of cases. However, when we try to reconstruct such pictures they rarely end up as desired. These alleged failures often make us despair or doubt our ability to photograph.

At first, you should never doubt both your abilities and yourself in any way. Anything's possible which numerous people have proven enough times and you're just like them a human being.

Anyway, if you want your pictures also seem interesting, although they deal with daily things, you need to alter something that makes people be under the impression there's something special about them. The best and easiest opportunity to accomplish this is to use editing programs. By using such programs you add your personality to your pictures, because you edit them how they'd appeal to you which represents you.

Here's an example of my previously taken pictures I slightly edited:

As you can see the right picture is more impressive than the other one. I merely applied some simple effects and filters that I liked and found appropriate.

If you like to know the way I processed here's the history:

Raw file and unedited:

Added it to an editing program and proceeded with simply corrections as you can see at the right of the editing program surface:

Afterwards, I did some lighting corrections:

Then I changed the temperature of the colors:

And also altered the wight balance:

Toward the end, I added some additional light sources that brightened the top of the picture:

Ultimately, I cropped it and regarded the rule of thirds which implies that focus points should be set where two lines cross each other:

Thereby, this is my result:

Gadgets I used:

Canon EOS 550D

EF 50mm f1.4 USM

(for editing purposes: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4)

I hope you liked my way of processing and I also left you under some impression. For questions or suggestions, I'm happy to read them, comment below.

Bye, Marcel.

Explore the world.

Projects To Improve Your Skills

Last year, I commenced the 365 Days Project on flickr. It's meant to challenge a photographer in its both creativity and flexibility, because if you start this project you have to upload a new picture everyday. They needn't be connected with each other, because it's more important to come up with new  ideas.

Amazingly, I've already got quite far. This is day 296 of 365

Admittedly, I haven't uploaded a picture strictly everyday because sometimes I was terribly stressed by school or I was simply on vacation and during these days I was impeded from uploading new photographs. I actually started in April, 2011.

There is also a 52 Weeks Project you could try out, which works similarly. However, as the name already gives away you only need to upload one picture per week for one year, ergo 52 weeks.

I highly recommend you to commence such projects, because when challenging yourself you will soon perceive how fast you improve your photography skills. Due to being continuously challenged coming up with new concepts and ideas, you will equally fast improve. Sometimes, it doesn't even take to reflect on new concepts. Simply go outside and photograph what seems interesting to you. Try out new angles, other system preferences, other filters, another environment, etc. Believe me, you're pretty unlikely to run out of subjects for new photographs.

If you feel like being uninspired, I urge you to check out Flickr and Tumblr. On both pages, you will find amazing photographers. In order to find great photographers on Flickr, you merely need to go to the groups section and search for relevant ones such as groups about portraiture, macro photography, etc. and on Tumblr it's even easier, you simply type in a tag. After typing in, abundant relevant photographs will appear.

Bye, Marcel.
Explore the world.