day 19: poor abandoned education
poor abandoned education © Verena Fischer 2011
Yesterday’s picture was taken at a school nearby. They kicked me out of their gym hall the day before. Obviously I wandered in there to take pictures.
I graduated from high school about 7 years ago. However, I still sometimes have this dream that I am back in school and that I am called to the black board to solve a maths problem. It is an easy one, but I can’t read the numbers and I am utterly lost. The other kids get impatient with me, start laughing and the teacher says: “Well, at this rate you’re never going to amount to anything!” And I start saying “Hey, I already have a university degree, I don’t even know why I am here … and who are you to judge me?” – “If you can’t solve this simple problem, then your degree probably isn’t worth anything, right?” and so on and so on.
Maybe the dream doesn’t mean anything, but after I have it I always end up questioning whether the problems I seem to be dealing with in real life are really all that difficult to handle. There is a film by the Coen brothers called A Serious Man where the protagonist has all these problems with his job and with his family and his son is being bullied in school. In the end the doctor tells him that he’s seriously ill and there is a tornado coming towards the city on the horizon. What I’m trying to say is: Are we not all making a big fuzz over nothing until we’re facing the real big stuff? Are we dealing with the adult equivalents of silly maths problems that we used to take so seriously before we went to university and discovered that there is always a harder problem out there?
In the end it is all not that important. And this is a good thing to realise for me just before the final deadline push of my MSc dissertation. It’s all just the things we do, because we’re supposed to do things. There is this notion in society that really bugs me: Who won’t work also won’t eat. This notion is what is driving us to worry about education and jobs and simple maths problems as if they were the really important things in life. The real problems are not as easy to deal with as a deadline at school or in your job.
Yesterday in a conversation with my friend Sarah we realised that if life was ideal I would be an artist and she would be a comedian. And we both wouldn’t be staring at the screen worrying about whether our simulated robots move or not. Well, sadly life isn’t ideal, so I best get back to my experiments.
And I best also stop wishing that I’m in 5th grade and my biggest problem is figuring out fractions …
day 18: making the best of it
making the best of it © Verena Fischer 2011
I was in a fairly monochrome mood yesterday when my camera drove me out of my warm and comfortable flat. It was a rainy day, even a bit stormy in the morning and I went out when the light was already fading. Monochrome days, i.e. days that are all grey in grey, are the best for black and white photography. Already before going out I changed the colour settings of my camera to monochrome and I was not intending to change it back. Obviously, when you’re shooting in RAW it doesn’t make a difference for the final file whether you’re shooting monochrome or in colour mode. However, at least you can see the pictures in black and white on the internal screen which can give you an idea whether your picture will look good in black and white or not, and keep you in the monochrome mood.
Keeping the mood is in my opinion one of the most important things, since it is what guides your eye. If you’re in a bad mood you’re not very likely to take pictures of smiling people. Similarly if you see colours everywhere then you’re definitely not in the monochrome mood that it needs to take great black and white pictures.
Yesterday I found it a bit difficult to stay in this mood, since I brought myself into a situation that could only make me laugh out loud. Following my new practice of seeing my camera as the best excuse to be in places where I’m not supposed to be I walked straight into an open building and took a couple of pictures. Then I realised that there was a fairly interesting patio. So, I went through the next door to go outside into this patio to take pictures there. What I didn’t realise was that the door had locked itself automatically when it shut behind me and a key was needed to get back into the house. However, I needed to go through the house to get back out onto the street. I checked the doors to the side and back buildings, but they were also locked. In the end I actually had to climb over a fence to get outside, how ridiculous! At least I didn’t shut myself into a patio that was all surrounded by buildings or my little mistake could have turned into a major wait.
In my monochrome mood from before this incident I had planned to take pictures of empty spaces that are normally crowded. I did that too, but I guess my little fence climbing adventure fits way better to the happy childhood moment I witnessed by chance. These kids were also making the best of the rainy weather.
day 17: taking the plunge
taking the plunge © Verena Fischer 2011
The other day I read in a book by David Hurn and Bill Jay called “On being a photographer” the tip that your camera is the best excuse to go to places where you’d feel uncomfortable without it. Hurn describes the situation of a ballroom dancing competition where he’d feel very out of place if he’d just walk in there without his camera. He wouldn’t know the culturally appropriate things to do or to say; he wouldn’t know any people and someone might ask him what he was doing there and all of this would disconcert him greatly. With his camera however, he can be out of place and be accepted easily by people.
Yesterday I had the perfect opportunity to put this tip into action when I was taking pictures of the building housing a public indoor swimming pool in Berlin Wedding. The building had lots of really strange and creepy graffiti on it, so I was walking around the building taking pictures of it. Then I noticed quite a few young people standing in front of the building and they didn’t exactly look like the usual swimming pool crowd. They were trendy kids with piercings and strange alternative clothes, smoking cigarettes with a certain “cool”. And since when is it cool to hang out at a public swimming pool in a city like Berlin? My curiosity was aroused.
Still, I was hesitant to go inside since I didn’t know anyone. I just stood outside near the entrance taking pictures of a door that was marked with the sign of a space travel agency – another indicator that this was no ordinary swimming pool – and listened to the conversations of these kids to find out what was going on. Apparently there was some sort of exhibition. And then the penny dropped: the building is now used for exhibitions and young artists have their studios in there! Indeed, my camera was my ticket to get in. I just walked in there as if it was the most normal thing, looked around as if I was looking for someone I knew and then (still slightly hesitantly) walked past some people following my instincts. I didn’t look at the exhibition and just took pictures of the building, walked around and even looked at the studios of some artists. It all felt very adventurous and if anyone had asked me what I was doing there I would have had an excuse “Oh, I’m just taking some pictures, do you mind?”
Keep in mind though: if you want to take the plunge, check whether the pool has water first! Especially if you want to do things like venturing into abandoned buildings. You don’t want to end up all alone in a building that is unsafe!
day 16: stairway to love
stairway to love © Verena Fischer 2011
Thanks to my fiancé Ezequiel I was reminded yesterday that it needs an open mind to really subscribe to the title of my blog. Real experiments in experience should push you out of your comfort zone and make you do something you would not do otherwise. This doesn’t necessarily mean eating insects, like my dad did over the last Christmas holidays, or walking around haunted houses alone in the middle of the night. It can start with little things, like eating mango ice-cream with fresh strawberries on it although the idea seems absurd to a traditional girl like me. It’s almost as crazy as mixing leek and basil! Ezequiel recommends these sort of things to me and I say “No way!”, but then end up trying it anyway.
If I’m not brave in the food sector, then I won’t be brave about anything and just stay at home. That’s not like me though, since it has always drawn me out into the world. I can’t remember any moment when I really had such a strong urge to stay that I really stayed in the end. I might have had the urge, but every time that happened I told myself to man up and face the world since only exciting new experiences could come of it. Well, that’s not quite the whole truth though. After all everyone makes mistakes and some experiences might be exciting but certainly not nice, and I had these experiences too over the last few years. However, largely the spirit of this attitude agrees well with me and I recommend it strongly.
Yesterday, apart from eating mango ice-cream with fresh strawberries (definitely nice) I also went out into the grey weather with my camera and my friend usch who happened to be in town. We went to a building in Wedding in which one of the tango places is located and which I knew to be an interesting spot for taking pictures. The weather was really awful and we got drenched on the way back, but I managed to take some interesting pictures. Someone had attached a paper heart to the window in the stairway and I had been wanting to take a picture of it for a while. It was very dark in the building, but one of the shots turned out wonderfully.
One needs to take the challenges in life one step at a time. If I can be brave enough to go out into the rain with my camera to take pictures of stairways, then I might also one day be brave enough to eat insects. Who knows?
day 15: tree making out with building
tree making out with building © Verena Fischer 2011
A couple of days ago a car was sounding its horn when I was driving by a church on my red bike. The reason was because I had my eyes on the building and not on the street and was starting to drift off the bike lane! Not paying attention to the traffic is not exactly the best idea in a city like Berlin. There are many taxi and bus drivers who just seem to hate people on bikes, so normally I’m really careful when I’m going on the street. Well, if a view makes me not pay attention in the middle of traffic, it’s probably worth photographing I thought and came back to the church yesterday.
What’s interesting is that I’ve only noticed the church then, although I had been going past it on the bike regularly. Probably the light was never good enough to let me notice all the intricate details. A great detail is the ivy that is growing on the building. It is thick like a regular tree and really adds to the atmosphere. I was trying to take a few pictures of the Ivy trunks on the side of the church facing Perleberger Straße but then had to realise that the trunks are too far down in comparison to the leaves and it would never make a good picture. However, red brick stone churches are worth photographing on its own and I got some great shots out of it. The church is on a street corner so I went around it to see the rest of the building and found the spot for yesterday’s picture: The kindergarten of the church.
I don’t remember much from my own time in kindergarten and I couldn’t remember details of the building if my life depended on it, but I remember that the playground had painted car or bus tyres half buried in the ground. I remember also that another kid. out of carelessness or malice, I don’t know, hit me in the head with a heavy metal door. And foremost I do remember the reason why I don’t eat beans today: My kindergarten teacher forced me to eat a whole plate of them, because “We eat what is on the table”. She came to regret it, because the beans made me sick. Ah, the joys of growing up in the German Democratic Republic, i.e. East Germany before the reunification. And beans do make me feel sick to this very day thanks to that lovely lady.
day 14: reflecting trees
reflecting trees © Verena Fischer 2011
Years ago I took a picture of a ladybug which was sitting on a leaf that was full of holes. With the reds and greens it was perfectly discernible what it was, but I wanted a different expression. I altered the picture so that the leaves were a faded plasticky white with violet borders and the ladybug turned blue. It looked utterly weird and still, I could perfectly see what it was. However, other people would just say “What is THAT?” and pull a face trying to it see better. As soon as I told them what it was there was this moment of recognition and their faces relaxed.
Sometimes it is important to take a different angle and try to see things from a new perspective. In photography this is in my opinion an important aspect of taking interesting pictures. In fact when people cannot figure out the perspective and position from where a shot is taken it unsettles them and they spend a lot more time looking at a picture if they want to “understand” it. If they don’t want to, well, then they’re probably not my target audience anyway.
Yesterday’s picture is one of those experiments with perspective and angles. It is actually the reflection of trees in a puddle taken in black and white.
In fact yesterday I definitely was in a monochrome mood and therefore took lots of pictures meant to be in black and white. At home I then had a little surprise when transferring the pictures from my new 8GB SD card: I had taken the pictures in the RAW format and not realised that iPhoto wouldn’t be able to understand my Canon’s colour presets. Next time I will have to shoot both in RAW and in JPG to figure out which pictures are meant to be in colour and which were supposed to be monochrome. Well, it’s all a big learning experience …
day 13: when a door closes, a window opens. or maybe not
when a door closes, a window opens. or maybe not © Verena Fischer 2011
I have realised a long time ago that I’m a creature of habit. Once I’ve found a quick and nice way to get to a certain place I will not try another way “just to see”. I am not someone to roam the city for no reason and I will not go on long extended walks just to see what is on the other side of a hill. Sometimes I would like to be a person who does that, but then I’m usually too busy or too caught up in other things to just drop everything and go for a long walk.
My favourite book is George Perec’s A Man Asleep and it is about a young man in Paris who decides on the day of his final exam to just stay home. He starts this strange journey of walking and walking for hours through Paris and he begins with curious exercises, like reading every word in a newspaper, without any explanation of what he is trying to achieve. Closer towards the end of the book he gets the feeling that whatever he was trying to achieve has failed and that he has to find new methods of getting there. It’s a very moody interesting book and I just love the fact that the reader can only get a hint of what this man is actually trying to do. I think that’s also what’s so fascinating about this book: this man does nothing that would have any meaning for the reader but I myself was captivated by it and really wanted to find out what the man is aiming at. In the end only your own imagination of what the man is doing can fill in the blanks.
This man is not the only character in literature who roams the streets of a big city without aim and I always wonder why I am so fascinated by the thought of walking the streets for no apparent reason. What’s interesting about this is that my camera is what transforms me into a person who roams the streets with no destination. My camera will let me find out what is on the other side of the next hill and whether I can take a picture of it.
Yesterday my camera took me to an industrial area which is only about 10 minutes from here. For some reason my daily routine has never brought me into that direction before. I found beautiful brick stone industrial buildings from before the war and the old Turbinenhalle from 1909 by the architect Peter Behrens. From the name you can guess that it’s a factory that produces turbines. Today’s picture doesn’t show this building though, but another nice old building that is right next to the coolest wood carved playground for children.
By the way, there are no hills in Berlin …
day 12: girl in blue skirt
girl in blue skirt © Verena Fischer 2011
I read a blog post yesterday (see below for a link) that gave the tip to delete all the pictures which you’re not going to use. The reasoning behind it was that in the digital age we have lots and lots of storage which means that we keep everything and end up never wanting to look at our pictures again. In the end, who wants to look at all the blurry failures that didn’t make the final cut? Right, nobody! And 10 years down the line with thousands and thousands of pictures that you snap without thinking since “you can always delete them” you will never want to look at all this stuff again. Well, that’s not what we take pictures for, right?
The post also reminded me of a very good friend who is always months if not even years behind in editing his pictures. This includes just deleting all the blurry ones. That’s what the digital age has given us: A possibility to become the person with the stacks of paper ceiling-high in their flat who have problems even taking out the rubbish. We’re messy! There is something about collecting things that makes us obsessive and we collect more films than we could ever watch in a lifetime “just in case” and we keep all the blurry pictures of people whose names we don’t even remember “just in case”. Well, yesterday after reading that post I was thoughtful while taking pictures and quick with my delete button afterwards. And I keep wondering whether that’s not the key to taking good pictures. See, think, shoot and even delete. Maybe deleting is necessary so that we develop an eye for what’s good and what’s bad.
Yesterday’s picture was taken at the church across from my driving school, the Johanniskirche in Berlin. While I was taking my pictures there I was mostly alone, but then a girl walked through towards the back. I had about 5 shots of her walking through the frame, but I only kept this one which in my opinion captures her determination in walking nicely. In the future I will also try to delete with determination.
day 11: into the light
into the light © Verena Fischer 2011
In the last couple of weeks I have been trying to get my head around my camera which I got for my birthday last year. It’s a Canon EOS 450D. Before this camera I had a HP Photosmart C850 and a Canon PowerShot A420. The first one is already very old and a bit clunky for its limited capabilities. The PowerShot is great for snaps, but has only automatic modes, so you can’t really do much with it. And one thing is for sure: You can’t take pictures at night with either of them. With my EOS however, it’s even possible to take night shots without a tripod which I tested thoroughly yesterday. I took my camera to a very nice open air tango spot at the Strandbar next to the river in the Monbijoupark. It was difficult to take pictures of the people dancing since there were no spotlights on the dance floor and just a disco-ball illuminating the scene. One picture turned out reasonably ok, but with the high ISO it’s just a little too grainy for my liking. However, I also managed to take some nice shots of people standing and talking, and also of a few places that had enough light, like restaurant entrances and shops.
Today’s picture shows the entrance of a Hotel at the Zunfthalle just around the corner from where I live. It reminds me of the cheap hotels my mum and me stayed in whenever we made our yearly journey together. This would happen every year when I was a teenager and we went to many different places including Berlin, Vienna, Salzburg and Florence. My mum always dragged me through one too many museums and for her liking I on the opposite was not “active” enough. She always asked me “Did we come here to lie in bed in a hotel?” and I answered “Well, I did”! However, in the end it was good for the both of us to be influenced by each other.
To come back to today’s picture though: I had to remove a little red pixel which recurred in all the night time shots I took yesterday. So, I thought there must be dust on the lens, but when I googled it I had to realise that my EOS has a dead pixel on the sensor! Oh the horror! The only way to get it removed is to send my camera to Canon for repair. You can imagine how I feel about this …
day 10: I’m not addicted, am I?
I'm not addicted, am I? © Verena Fischer
For the first time since I started taking pictures I took my camera to tango. I have been dancing tango argentino for 4 years and I am passionate about it. Well, not to say ‘addicted’! The tango scene in Berlin is quite big in comparison with the rest of Europe and people are friendly and open in most places, so it’s a great place to meet people and have a nice evening out, even just to have a drink and watch people dance. There are many different locations and it’s possible to go tango dancing every evening of the week. And there are classes with many different teachers all week long too. People even say that it’s impossible to make money in Berlin teaching tango since every second person here is a tango teacher. Maybe that’s a bit exaggerated, but definitely there are many good dancers and lots of opportunities to learn. And I also never had the intention of earning my living with tango, so I don’t really care whether it’s true or not.
I said that I am probably addicted to tango, but I usually pretend that I’m not. Sometimes I go dancing every day and sometimes I don’t go for several weeks, like in the last month. It varies. However, I always come back to it and it makes me unhappy if I have to be in a place where I can’t dance. That is because I know that if I have some great tangos it never fails to make me happy! Like yesterday when I was just trying to take it easy and take a break from the feeling that I seriously need to work on my MSc dissertation.
Traditional tango music is so lovely too. It’s often melancholic, but one shouldn’t take the lyrics too seriously. In fact, I think that tango as a whole is only fun if one doesn’t take it too seriously! Sometimes that’s difficult because it can just suck you right in and you suddenly become entangled in tango politics and maybe also some tango drama, but then it’s usually time to take a step back and not go dancing for a few weeks. However, I’m also looking forward to finishing my MSc dissertation so that I can just go dancing and take some tango lessons together with Ezequiel.
Yesterday’s picture was taken at the Tangoloft in Berlin. It’s a nice place with a great atmosphere and a black cat walking the premises. The music is 50% traditional, 50% neo, so for me there are lots of opportunities to have nice conversations too, since I don’t like neo music for dancing. However that’s the only negative point about the location and I always enjoy going there anyway.
day 9: self-portrait with mirrors
self-portrait with mirrors © Verena Fischer 2011
It makes for an interesting change of pace when you decide to take pictures every day. It means that you have to get out into the world a little more. You see new places, do new things just to get close to an opportunity for a decent picture. Yesterday this relatively new project got me to do something I almost never do: I went to an exhibition alone! Ezequiel is not in Berlin at the moment and I have to admit that lately I stay away from people to concentrate more on my work (well, it doesn’t really help, but that’s a whole other story). This also means that if I want to do things and go places to take pictures I have to do it alone. The exhibition I saw was a photography exhibition with pictures of André Kertész, a hungarian photographer who lived in Paris and New York. He took beautiful melancholic photos which looked at things in a new and exciting way. He also seemed to be fascinated by reflections, so strange mirrors and reflections on windows make an appearance in his photos too. I definitely liked his style and already ordered a book about him.
The exhibition was in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, a building in the Italian Renaissance style that was erected between 1877 and 1881 by the architects Martin Gropius and Heino Schmieden. It’s a beautiful building with lots of sculptures and it’s worth a visit in its own right. Martin Gropius was the great-uncle of Walter Gropius by the way who was the founder of the Bauhaus school. I visited the Bauhaus archive about a week ago (read about it here) so it’s one of these moments where I realise that everything is connected.
Today’s photo I took on the first floor of the Martin-Gropius-Bau where there are two long mirrors on opposing walls. One of the mirrors says “West” and the other “Ost” (German for east). I found this to be the perfect scene for a self-portrait since I have a confusing relationship with west and east Germany too. Can you figure out at which mirror I was pointing my camera?
day 8: where is mr fox?
where is mr fox? © Verena Fischer 2011
Yesterday for the first time since I started this blog I was too tired to write a meaningful post to go with the picture. I shot during the day. Maybe that was due to the fact that I walked more than 6 km while taking pictures! I walked all the way to the Plötzensee, a lake where you can also go swimming in summer. It even has a little sandy beach. I then went back on the other side and discovered a very nice bike path that almost avoids Seestraße altogether. I was walking around almost 2 hours and filled up my 1GB SD card too which hopefully taught me a lesson so that I will take my second 1GB card with me the next time. I made sure that I took pictures at the S-Bahn stations Beusselstraße and Westhafen too since I wanted to try to make a Tilt/Shift picture in Photoshop. With this effect you can make a real picture look like a picture of a model. I will put a link to some first attempts at it at the end of this post.
On the way back from the Plötzensee I was incredibly lucky. A fox just appeared in front of me! I took many pictures of it, but I think it was already getting a bit too dark and the spot where we crossed paths was surrounded by trees, so there was not a lot of light. I managed to take the shot above when a jogger passed the fox slowly because he was afraid that it might have rabies. I managed to take the picture just before the guy startled the animal and it ran off into the little patch of forest on the side of the path.
I also tried out a new gadget I got yesterday: A GPS logger. With this I can import the geo-location of where the pictures were taken into my photos and I also set up flickr to show the information. Ezequiel said that it takes away the exceptional meaning a picture has when it is the only link to a certain moment in time. I partly agree with him, but when I look at my iPhoto library I would love to go to certain places again and I can’t since I don’t remember where I took the pictures! What’s your opinion on this?
day 7: curiosity killed the cat
curiosity killed the cat © Verena Fischer
Today, sunshine, 26°C and what did I do? I sat inside, writing my MSc dissertation. Well, I have to admit that I made some very good progress, but it still seemed like such a waste considering that the summer this year didn’t even deserve that name! And just when I finally wanted to go outside to take some pictures Ezequiel comes online on skype. In the end I rushed outside after a very nice conversation to catch the last evening light. I was already worried that it would be too dark, but obviously I hadn’t considered that I have a way better camera than some years ago when I last tried to take pictures in the twilight.
In the end I just walked a few blocks and took pictures of just about all the things that caught my eye, since I didn’t have much time until it really got dark. There is almost nothing obvious to take pictures of around here, so one has to keep the eyes open for things that go unnoticed under normal circumstances. After all this is just a “Kiez”, a neighbourhood which isn’t that fancy, so one runs out of interesting pre-war buildings to photograph very quickly. I also tried to sneakily take some pictures of people, but without a proper zoom lens it’s almost impossible to do that without them noticing. And you never know what reaction that could provoke! However, as you might have noticed already, today I was lucky with that! The two girls in the photo were trying to see something through a window and weren’t paying attention, so I quickly turned around and took a picture. Shots like those are good training since there isn’t much time to get the camera ready. Already when I was walking past them I smelled the opportunity and put the camera in the right setting almost automatically.
Although I am still very fond of the idea that only the best picture of the day should be featured on this blog, I also realised that picking just that one picture is really hard. I therefore reactivated my flickr account and will put some of the pictures which I also like on there. You can also find many of my old pictures on it.
day 6: the third door
the third door © Verena Fischer
After 14 times 1.5 h mind-numbing driving theory lessons I am now finally finished! Today I had my last lesson and after it I felt so relieved! Since I moved here every week I went to at least one of these lessons on my bike although it was dreadful and boring enough for my brain to attempt to vacate my skull (it never did, but I would have totally understood …). Well, it’s finally over!
This also means, however, that I now have little reason to go to Charlottenburg where some of the theory classes, including today’s class, were held. I’m not particularly sad about it, since most of the buildings in this particular area are rather ugly modern blocks, but I certainly wanted to use the opportunity to take some picture of the town hall of Charlottenburg which rather impressed me when I saw it for the first time. It was built between 1899 and 1905 and Heinrich Reinhardt as well as Georg Süßenguth were its architects. Like so many buildings it was badly damaged in WW2, but it was rebuilt after the war and now it’s one haunting building with Gargoyles and all sorts of ornaments in the midst of rather modern looking boring blocks.
I had a look inside too and the building convinces with interesting wall decorations and strangely lit corridors that give the place an interesting character. Today’s picture is again of a strange door. I found it in the entrance of the library which is part of the building. The door has a sign on it that says “Reinigung” which could either mean that it’s a laundrette or a cleaning cupboard. After a quick look through the little window in the door I realised that neither the sign nor the view from this little window could give me any clue as to what’s going on behind that door. It’s the third mysterious door since yesterday …
day 5: two doors down
2 doors down © Verena Fischer 2011
Today in my practical driving lesson I saw a building that I would have liked to photograph. My camera was in my bag on the backseat and I kept wondering for a few blocks how my driving instructor would react if I would say to him “Look, Herbert, I need to take a picture. Wait here for one moment …” Well, after pondering this for a bit I thought that he probably wouldn’t be very impressed. I took a mental note of the street though and will probably go back there on the bike one of these days. Learning to drive in Berlin is not so much fun by the way, because it is a big city with lots of traffic and lots of strange things like the roundabout at the Siegessäule which is probably no real roundabout and the Stadtautobahn which is no real Autobahn since you’re only allowed to drive 80 km/h there. And who needs a car in Berlin where there is exceptionally good public transport?
Living in the city means for me: Having the option of *not* taking public transport though. Did you ever notice that big cities are full of crazy people? I don’t mean people with wild hair and funky clothes, no, I mean people who have disturbing conversations with themselves on the subway and scratch their head with a knife on the bus (that was once on a night bus in London). Also: people can be so annoying! Street musicians, junkies, kids mistaking their mobile phone for speakers and so on. Well, to sum it up, I don’t like taking the bus! Instead I have a shiny red bike that I bought second hand from a nearby bike shop and I can go everywhere I need to go in only 20 min. Of course Berlin is big and sometimes it’s still necessary to take the public transport, but in my daily life I don’t really need a bus pass.
So, why do I want to get a driving licence then? Well, because it’s convenient whenever you have to go places at night (and I dance tango mainly after 10pm). Additionally and maybe more importantly Berlin has also very cold winters! -10°C are not exactly comfy on a bike or waiting for a bus! And maybe, secretly I also feel that having a driving licence will give me the naive feeling that I’m a “grown-up” and not a student who will never be able to afford a car. However, I would never admit that in public, so forget what I said!
Today’s picture I took after the driving lesson while walking along the river Spree. Two strange unmarked doors of unspecified function that are located at one of the bridges over the Spree, the Hansa Brücke. It’s an ugly bridge that replaced the one that was destroyed in WW2.
day 4: the shady bear business
the shady bear business © Verena Fischer 2011
From the window in the living room of my quiet apartment in Moabit I can see the sun disappearing behind the roofs and the leaves of the chestnut tree in the courtyard are blowing in the wind. The window is open, but one hardly hears cars go by, and the entire area makes me think of a quiet Sunday afternoon, especially on Monday mornings. My street is in a speed restricted area with cobbled streets and many trees, benches on the corners and old-fashioned water-pumps that still work. There is also an old market hall that has a nice flair about it and a rather useless supermarket inside. I like it a lot and sometimes go inside even though I don’t need anything from in there. There is also a catholic church which sometimes annoys me with too much bell ringing and two schools that have never bothered me in the 2 ½ months that I have been living here. Today’s picture is of the entrance of one of these two schools, namely the Carl-Bolle-Grundschule which was built 1903 by the architect Ludwig Hoffmann. The highlight of the building are for me the statues of two bears reading together with a boy and a girl. Why bears? Well, the bear is a symbol associated with the city of Berlin. What I find rather amusing is that for Ezequiel and me one of the bears looks a bit perverted, maybe because he can’t keep his paws to himself. Can you guess which one? Leave a comment if you know which one I mean!
It’s the fourth day since I have had the idea to publish one picture each day and I am beginning to wonder when the day will come on which I have nothing to show! These days it has been easy because I have been out and about in the city with Ezequiel. Well, Ezequiel sadly left for Spain today after 3 fantastic weeks together and the past few days it also hasn’t been raining so much. Well, I guess those rainy days in which I will focus on my MSc project will be the ones when I will actually need the extra motivation provided by my blog! Until one of those days comes along I will just enjoy taking pictures around town or in my neighbourhood whenever I go and explore a bit more of this big beautiful city.
day 3: together
together © Verena Fischer 2011
Another day of attempting to take pictures and this time we were in the zoo. Berlin has two of them actually: The “Zoo” and the “Tierpark”. Obviously before the reunification there was a need for that. Ezequiel and me went to the one in former West Berlin which is not very far from where I live – not very surprising since I live in an area called Tiergarten. When we came to the zoo there was a very long queue and we were already wondering whether we should just leave, but then a helpful soul told us that there were actually 4 queues and that the 3 others were actually much shorter. In the end it didn’t take long to get in at all. It’s quite pricey though: 13€ and 10€ as a student and it doesn’t even include the aquarium. The zoo alone is very big though and we didn’t even see everything before we got tired, so I think it was actually worth the money.
We obviously saw many many different animals, but my personal favourite were the big cats. We happened to go to the cat house during feeding time, so we could watch lions eat chunks of meat that were thicker than a human leg. Even the cubs were massive and looked dangerous! Very impressive! There were many big cats and also a few small ones that resembled our domesticated cats. They looked less dangerous, but I’m not sure I’d be brave enough to pet them. You might lose a finger or two! Also very nice was the basement of the cat house: it was full of nocturnal animals and they decorated the quite dark space very nicely with a sky full of LED stars. Not all the so-called “nachtaktiven” (German for nocturnal) animals were very active, although some of the bats were flying around like crazy. Generally the zoo is well worth a visit, although I have to say that some of the cages were rather small, especially for the big cats. They should probably have less animals on more space, well, like too many zoos.
And today I also learned some bits and bobs about my camera! This was thanks to my knowledgeable fiance Ezequiel who also happens to have a Canon EOS 450D. Since it was rather cloudy I played around with the white balance a bit and later I also used the aperture settings. The latter makes a nice and obvious difference for portraits. Only day 3 and the blog is already doing what I was hoping for! I’m learning!
The picture itself was taken when we were sitting and having a break near the bears.
day 2: katamari goes berlin
katamari goes berlin © Verena Fischer 2011
On the second day of my adventures into photography my fiance Ezequiel and me planned to go to the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium. And we failed! Let me start at the beginning though: We made the curious decision to go to the Taschen bookstore on Friedrichstraße before heading to the zoo. Apparently a delicious mistake.
Before we went to the bookstore we actually stopped by a strange little exhibition of media art with the title “What machines dream of” in the Automobil Forum Unter den Linden. I had seen the exhibition before together with my brother and it had only a few interesting exhibits that were already broken now that I was seeing it the second time round. Sadly this is the fate of media artworks that invite interaction: People tend to break them! The exhibition was a production of the Ars Electronica museum in Linz which has a wide range of interesting media art exhibits including a virtual environment CAVE which I visited a few years ago with my mother. It’s a fantastic museum! Although this specific exhibition in the Automobil Forum is not so special, it is worth a stroll since it is free of charge. Also take note of the speaking piano which is a speech synthesizer that only uses a piano to read out a text and is presented every half an hour. It’s a bit dissonant, but interesting nonetheless. However, today I completely forgot about it, what a shame!
After the exhibition we went to the Taschen store as planned. Bookstores are dangerous though and we ended up leaving the shop with 3 heavy books. The book I got shows the history of photography on 700 pages! Very fitting, very nice, but also very heavy. Not exactly the kind of book to take to the zoo! And Ezequiel’s books were even bigger and heavier. In the end we just decided to walk around Mitte a bit more and then to return home. We continued along Friedrichstraße and were then drawn along Leipziger Straße, because from afar we saw the interesting building of the Museum für Kommunikation. Again from there we then saw on the next square something that looked like a giant Katamari! Of course we went to investigate and this is where today’s picture was taken. The sculpture called Houseball by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen from 1996 was actually not meant to be a Katamari (well, obviously …), but was supposed to be a “symbol of displaced populations, the ordeal of refugees” (read more here). I however, just have the melody of We love Katamari in my head!
day 1 – into the bauhaus sky
into the bauhaus sky © Verena Fischer 2011
For a while now I wanted to get back into photography. A few years ago I was eager and took pictures of almost anything, but then I started to study at university and became so busy that I stopped. I have attempted several times to start again, but I found it very hard to integrate it into a daily routine. Now, about 2 years after my last attempt, I am just about finished with university and I have some free time coming my way very soon. Therefore I have decided that it’s time to get some external motivation and start this blog. Every day I will take pictures and present one of these pictures here on this blog. One day, one experience at a time. So, let’s start with day 1:
Currently I live in Berlin and today Ezequiel, my fiance, and me went to the bauhaus archive. I generally am very interested in classical modern art and the Bauhaus is also interesting for me because Paul Klee taught there and I really like him. Today, however, was mostly about photography, also in the exhibition which featured pictures by Albert Renger-Patzsch of one of the bauhaus buildings. The building was the Fagus factory which is a factory of shoe lasts. The pictures were black and white pictures of the premises meant for advertising combined with orthopedic pictures of the effect of wearing the wrong shoes, rather strange! In comparison I was less impressed by the exhibition and the collection than I was when I saw the collection in combination with an exhibition of the prints and posters produced by the bauhaus – I cannot remember when that was, a few years ago maybe. It was then when I saw the bauhaus archive for the first time. Although this visit was less good than that first one, I had a very good time anyway and I took some pictures of Ezequiel and of the building. The picture is of a sculpture or let’s say “decorative element” which is located in front of the bauhaus archive building on the side of Klingelhöferstraße. In any case, I can only recommend to visit this museum. It gives interesting insights into classical modern art in Germany in the 1920’ies.
experiments in experience 