abstract
abstract © Verena Fischer 2012
I better won’t dwell on this last year of 2012, since it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. I think it’s only natural to be disappointed when looking back. Therefore I’ll skip this part for now and focus on looking forward to a better 2013 instead. I’ll end the year with a similarly nondescript abstract that caught my eye at the cinema the other day.
By the way, after a bit of a break for health reasons, I am now up for new mischief. Time to get back into the game! Let’s enjoy another year of photography together, this time hopefully without such long breaks. In fact I’m planning another 365 days of daily photography, because it is still the most enjoyable and rewarding way of engaging with photography in my opinion.
Pumpkin pancakes – SCD legal
I know, it’s been a bit quiet around here lately. In case you were wondering what I have been up to lately: Well, I’ve been battling with quite a bit of bad health. Maybe you know that I have Celiac Disease, a chronic gastrointestinal disease that makes me highly allergic to the gluten in crops. I was diagnosed 3 1/2 years ago and have been on a gluten-free diet ever since. However, it’s a genetic disorder, so I had already lived my whole life before, eating a diet that was basically poisoning me. Well, the doctors told me that it might not get better immediately, so I patiently waited. Some of the symptoms cleared up, even some that I never thought would even be related, like my migraines for example. Others stayed and I had flares every so often, especially when I was stressed or travelling. After 2 years and still not being symptom-free they told me that I had IBS – Irritable Bowel Syndrome – caused by Celiac Disease, which is doctor’s-speak for “We don’t know what you have and there is nothing we can do”. I decided that I would have to get used to the thought of being ill for the rest of my life and to live accordingly. Not easy, but well, after another year and reducing stress things were finally looking up. At the beginning of this year I was feeling rather well, with only the occasional bad day.
As a result I was a bit less careful, ate the occasional unhealthy treat – although always gluten free – and I started to drink coffee again. However, over the last half year my health probably deteriorated again without me really noticing. I wasn’t keeping track of the bad days, so it’s hard to know. However, when I travelled again in June and July I was feeling just terrible. Since then I’ve been continually feeling quite bad again and realised that I’m back in a flare for no apparent reason, apart from eating more processed foods, like gf pasta or corn wafers and having coffee. If I think back, then the signs were there that a flare was coming on, but I just didn’t want to accept it. Well, if a bit more carbs and some rather mild coffee is enough to put me into a flare than there is still something seriously wrong with my stomach! After 3 years of mostly healthy eating, daily cooking, lots of fruit and veg? Shouldn’t it get better after all this time if these doctors really have any clue as to what I have? I could only conclude that either I have two gastrointestinal diseases at once, one caused by the other, or – much more likely – that really I’m one of those scare cases where the gluten-free diet just doesn’t work as well as it should. I read about some of those cases when I was starting my gluten-free diet, and was really glad that I at least improved a bit, but if they were really right about the causes and effects of Celiac Disease than I still should have been healed 1 1/2 years ago.
Since the flare just wasn’t going away, I decided to do a bit of research again and do my homework first before facing another series of visits to the doctor’s office. Somehow through a coincidence I stumbled over a diet called SCD – Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which seems to be especially helpful with tough cases of any kind of gastrointestinal disease, from Crohn’s Disease, Ulcerative Colitis, over Celiac to IBS, as well as with other types of diseases linked to chronic inflammation. Well, I was intrigued and started to research the diet a bit more. Turns out that in the US they even already conducted a pilot study into the effectiveness of the diet on IBS with really good results. Well worth a try in any case, since there is no real risk involved. It’s not a low carb diet unless you choose it to be one and it might actually help me to heal a bit more.
What’s different about this diet is that it not only forbids gluten, but also rice, potatoes, corn, pseudo crops like quinoa and a few other starchy foods. In fact all foods containing any kind of starches or complex sugars are not allowed. The aim of the diet is to restore the balance of the bacteria in the gut, and prevent them from overgrowing. Scientifically it looks sound to me and it works along the lines of what I wanted to try anyway, because it uses probiotics, i.e. good bacteria, and limits sugars to the potentially bad bacteria or yeasts already present. At the same time it also gives me the opportunity to really investigate whether I actually tolerate most of the foods that I eat. I eliminated quite a few things already when I started the gluten-free diet, because these foods just didn’t agree well with me, but I’ve been suspecting that there are still some more food allergies hidden in the mix that might have delayed reactions, for example corn and soy, both forbidden on this new diet, or maybe dairy products, with which I had a problem for a while before I started the gluten-free diet.
Well, for me it’s a big change. All of a sudden I’m supposed to eat all this meat and I find it really hard to get enough calories, although I seem to be eating constantly! It’s quite striking how much I was depending on those carbs before. However, although it’s a bit difficult I’ve already had a bit of success with it after just 5 days, which seems rather promising to me. I’ll test it for a month at first and then see whether I continue. So far the food has been rather bland, because I’m introducing only one vegetable at a time, but today I had at least one cool experiment that was less sad to take a picture of. Those were pumpkin pancakes, only consisting of mashed pumpkin, eggs and honey.
pumpkin pancakes © Verena Fischer 2012
1/4 Hokkaido pumpkin, steamed and mashed once soft
3 eggs
2 tsp honey
2 tsp olive oil
Just mix all the ingredients and fry like a pancake in the pan.
I made them small like blintzes, because I expected them to not turn easily. They were more difficult to turn than flour pancakes, but still doable as blintzes and I managed without making a mess of them. They were quite nice, but I noticed that they still tasted quite a bit of egg (less egg wouldn’t have been possible though). I only made them with 1 tsp of honey, which is why I recommend using 2 tsp to counteract the egg taste. They’d probably be nice with cinnamon and an apple sauce – which I will introduce to my diet fairly soon.
Sadly, now that I’ve used up my pumpkin portion for breakfast already I will have to eat carrots for the rest of the day. I’m not really a fan of carrots … tomorrow I’ll try some courgette/zucchini, which is one of my staples and shouldn’t give me any trouble either.
Well, I have to get back to … cooking and eating now. I’m hungry. Again. I hope that fairly soon normal service around here will recommence. At the moment I’m just spending most of my time eating, which makes it rather difficult to go out and take pictures!
the assistant (#384)
the assistant © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 200 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/125
Well, wouldn’t it be great if we all had an assistant like that when it’s raining? Taking pictures in the rain with an umbrella slumped over one shoulder doesn’t really work that well. Or better, it’s not very comfortable at all and in fact very annoying. That generally means that I usually just keep the camera in the bag, unless I have an interesting subject like this in front of the lens.
One of these days I should also spend some time organising my pictures. By now I have lost track of which pictures I have posted where and had to go through quite a number of older posts to make sure that I’m not repeating myself with this one. I hope I didn’t overlook anything.
aaah (#383)
aaah © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 18.0 mm | Aperture: 4.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/15
Oh, what would museums be without children having fun? The technology museum here in Berlin is a great place for kids it seems and this boy was having his fun. The picture is only a teaser for a few more train shots that I’ll be posting one of these days.
I’ve been having a few more quiet days reading Asimov novels and watching Science Fiction movies. Not much to tell, but well, pictures are supposed to say more than words anyway.
the next step (#382)
the next step © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 39.0 mm | Aperture: 5.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/160
Well, urban planning and human behaviour don’t necessary go along the same lines. Obviously nobody expected that someone would walk right through the fresh paint, although these things always happen. I remember that in my childhood I saw quite a few permanent foot prints in the cemented sidewalks of my neighbourhood and I was always fascinated by that. Obviously paint marks are much less permanent than dried foot prints in the cement, but it goes along the same lines. The picture was taken a couple of days ago just a block from here.
strange choreography (#381)
strange choreography © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 53.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/200
After a couple of weeks of taking pictures on film exclusively I took the Canon out for a bit of shooting. This picture was taken yesterday at the Sony Center here in Berlin. These boys suddenly self-organised into this movement reacting to the fountain. Lucky timing for me.
By now you probably know that the Sony Center houses the English language cinema. We were there to see Total Recall, the remake of the great 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. I am working on a little review for one of my next posts, but I would like to re-watch the original to have a proper comparison. I enjoyed the original and remember it quite vividly, but with some bits I’m not quite sure anymore. The details of movies slip easily at times, especially if you watch as many movies as I do. Still, I remember it well, unlike some recently produced movies. In fact, those recent movies I often don’t remember at all after a while because they are just not so memorable. The acting is often bad or at least unremarkable, the stories are derivative and, worst of all, rarely do they ever cause any additional thought on the subject matter.
Did you also notice how many remakes are produced nowadays? It’s as if Hollywood is scared of original screenwriting. Well, it’s not as if anyone would notice. For most people already a movie from the 90s is a movie too old to be worth watching.
under the umbrella (#380)
under the umbrella © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/50
This picture was taken at the flea market next to the Mauerpark. It proves again that flea markets are great for street photography. I especially liked the enigmatic expression of the girl on the right and of course the umbrella above her as well.
By now I should really have some new pictures to show you from shooting with my Zorki, but there are still 3 rolls in the queue to be developed. Two of them are full and the third I had to abandon after experimenting with my Zorki. Apparently things got a bit twisted up inside there and the film got stuck in one of the gear wheels. I managed to rewind the film only after opening the camera up in the dark and going at it with some force. I think there must be about 10 pictures on the roll after all. Yes, I learned my lesson, no more experiments with the equipment, at least for a while.
Gleisdreieck (#379)
Gleisdreieck © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 18.0 mm | Aperture: 5.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/800
This picture could have been so much better if only someone had thought of the poor photographers who have to put up with such ugly foreground elements. Terrible! Sadly trespassing in broad daylight wasn’t really an option. Normally I wouldn’t care about a No Trespassing sign, but when it comes to safety related ones Germans do get a bit anal.
I’m enjoying some quiet time at home now, reading Science Fiction novels and watching countless movies. Certainly the best choice of entertainment for a holiday. Seriously, I’m not the person to run about from museum to museum on a break, so this is precisely how I like it.
(By the way, did anyone notice that the original TRON movie didn’t age well at all? To me it just seemed ridiculous and that was *after* suspending every last one of my beliefs. I guess it must have been pretty cool back in the day though. The visuals must have made up for the shoddy acting, which is definitely not the case anymore at all.)
Looking at you (#378)
Looking at you © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Zorki 3C | ISO : 400 | Focal Length: 50.0 mm | Film: Ilford HP5 Plus | #3
This picture was taken in Friedrichshain before checking out the flea market on Boxhagener Platz. It is an area that is full of interesting graffiti and street art, so always worth a visit.
On the Zorki front I am still unable to resolve the sprocket hole issue. I put some foam into the bottom both under the roll and the take up spool, which didn’t work as planned. I don’t know whether it helped with the sprocket holes on the picture yet, but in any case, it jammed the film advance after just a few shots. Well, I thought, let’s not give up that easily. I just took out the foam on one side. This worked for 2 shots until it jammed again. I probably just have to live with the sprocket holes in the pictures after all.
I will think some more about the problem. Maybe I still come up with a solution after all. However, I learned my lesson: No more experiments on the road when I only have one camera with me.
the new generation (#377)
the new generation © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 8.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/160
On Sundays during the summer the Mauerpark is heaving with people. They sit on the grass, play their instruments, sing in the karaoke or like these two boys they add to the alternative feel of the place. As far as I can see they are just tagging. Well, maybe they’re a bit young to have more than those skills, but they are likely to be the next generation of sprayers anyway. I was never into that kind of thing, but I knew people who were.
For me a park is supposed to be quiet, so I don’t really consider the Mauerpark as a real park. It’s just a bit of green with tons of people. Nevertheless I like the fleamarket which is right next to the park. The Mauerpark is also nice for people watching and street photography, since the place is full of hipsters.
On a silly note: My attempt to get rid of the sprocket holes on my Zorki resulted in jamming the film advance after about 5 pictures. Now I have to wait until I’m back home until I can open the camera in the dark. Experimenting when on the road is always a risk.
hula (#376)
hula © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/640
Well, I’ve done it. I jumped over my own shadow and only took my Zorki on a short trip. As I said before, I really want to get familiar with this camera, so it makes some sense. What didn’t make sense was that I didn’t copy the pictures from the card of my DSLR before leaving. This way I couldn’t post the pictures I was planning to post yesterday. Oh well. I will make up for that once I’m back home re-united with my DSLR.
Shooting with my Zorki was lots of fun though. I already finished a roll of film yesterday and maybe another roll will follow over the course of this trip. One thing I tried to do also was to fix the sprocket hole issue by putting a bit of foamy stuff in the bottom of the camera. Since now the film advance is a bit stiffer than before it might need some more tweaking, but maybe it’s a viable solution once I fiddle a bit with it.
Since working with film disconnects me from the pictures I took yesterday until I have developed and scanned the film, I’m posting an older picture taken in Gesundbrunnen a while back. I found those hula hoops to be something very odd to be carrying around, so I had to document the fact.
vintage cameras (#375)
A little while ago we went to the truly fabulous technology museum here in Berlin. We saw brilliant old trains and planes, and wandered about in a nice exhibition of vintage cameras. I already showed you some pictures of flying machines and a picture of a train with particular dieselpunk appeal, but I still have more to show you. What is more fitting for a photography blog than to show pictures of nice vintage cameras?
vintage cameras – robot © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/50
This picture shows the first Robot model from the 1930s. The Robot is a viewfinder camera with a multispeed rotating shutter and came with Zeiss or Schneider lenses. This model didn’t have the spring motor for film advance like the Robot II (the reason for the Robot II being the preferred camera of the military), but it still looks like a lovely camera.
vintage cameras – TLR © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 40.0 mm | Aperture: 5.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/100
These 3 beauties are twin lens reflex (TLR) cameras. The one on the left looks like the original model from sometime between 1929 and 1932. Since I didn’t photograph the cameras with their description, I can’t be sure about the precise model names. The one in the middle is a bit hard to tell, but to me it looks like an F series model. The one on the right is easy to identify though thanks to its finder; it’s the Ikoflex III produced between 1939 and 1940.
vintage cameras – lens production tool © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 48.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/8
This tool came without a description plate in general. From the context I infer that it is used in lens production. I tried to find a name for the tool online, but somehow I didn’t quite know what to look for and every search phrase connected to lens production came up with nothing remotely similar.
vintage cameras – military Leica © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/50
If you have been following my blog then you know that I have been dreaming about owning a Leica. It is therefore understandable and quite normal that I also find old Leica cameras extremely fascinating. This model is a Leica with an M39 thread mount which was used in WW2. The latter fact probably explains the black finish.
vintage cameras – Leica and its copies © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 24.0 mm | Aperture: 4.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/100
After the second World War all of the Leica and Contax patents came to be meaningless and the designs were shamelessly copied by Soviet and Japanese camera manufacturers. In fact immediately after the war the production machines of the Leica factories were de-assembled in Wetzlar as war raparations and re-assembled in the Soviet union. I myself own a Zorki 3C which is comparable to the Leica III and improved upon the Zorki 1, an exact copy of the Leica II. This display shows the original cameras compared to their copies. On the far left is always the original with the copies next to it on the right. The bottom row shows a Leica II with its soviet copies, a FED 1 and two Zorki 1 models. The middle row shows a Leica III and the Japanese copies Shanghai 58-II, Canon III and Minolta 35 E next to it. The top row is devoted to Contax and its copies, from left to right: Contax II, Kiev 4A, Nikon S, Contax III and Kiev 3.
vintage cameras – Contax © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/100
The last picture shows the Contax S, manufactured in 1949. It is a Single Lens Reflex camera and defined the M42 thread mount as an industry standard.
I hope you enjoyed this little journey into the past. I myself had lots of fun in this exhibition and there was even more to see. Maybe you noticed that I mostly took pictures of cameras after 1930. Well, these are the most interesting to me since they might still be usable today.
modern architecture (#374)
modern architecture © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Zorki 3C | ISO : 400 | Focal Length: 50.0 mm | Film: Ilford HP5 Plus | #3
A little while ago I already wrote about 3D movies. I had seen Men in Black 3 in 3D and concluded that new 3D technology has really advanced in comparison to some of my previous experiences with 3D. Considering that I have been interested in Virtual Reality technology for quite some time I have seen quite a number of 3D labs and installations, among them the CAVE system. All of those systems seem rather dated now when it comes to the visual effect. Men in Black 3D really impressed me in that respect. Although re-rendered rather than filmed in 3D it still was quite spectacular.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to improve upon that experience because we went to see the newest Alien movie Prometheus, which was filmed in 3D. I have to say that I was rather hesitant, since I’m not really made for scary movies. I’ve never managed to get through the first Alien movie, since it was just too scary for me. However, it turns out that Prometheus isn’t really scary at all. Of course there are some suspense moments, where you know that someone is going to die a rather horrible death, but the continuous suspense and anguish of the first Alien movie just wasn’t there. Good for me, but maybe not what most people would suspect.
I also have to say that the story could have been much better. At times you really wonder why these people make such obvious textbook mistakes. Imagine you’re on an alien planet. Would you take your helmet off just because the air is breathable? I wouldn’t, but the characters in this movie do, despite being portrayed as scientists. In fact most of the characters, apart from being one-dimensional and partly rather irrelevant to the story, don’t really behave as they should. The archeologists believe in superstitious nonsense, the biologist doesn’t know anything about the immune system and the geologist can’t find his way around a cave. What struck me as weird was also that the robot displays some sort of twisted humour despite being supposedly incapable of feelings — although this might actually be what makes the character less one-dimensional than most other characters in the movie. There are just too many inconsistencies generally for the story to be good, but to be honest the shallow character development was even more striking. There are only two characters who show more than one dimension, which means that you just don’t care so much about the rest of them. Most of them don’t get to be much more than extras meant to be killed off.
However, despite these very obvious flaws I still recommend that you go see this movie. Why? Well, despite the rather uninspired writing I have to say that the visual side really makes up for the weak story, additionally to the quite good acting performance of Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender playing the main characters. And even if you don’t go for women heroes or robots I really have to insist that visually it’s in fact just amazing! If you want to feel like you’re in a space ship or on an alien planet, then this is the movie for you. 3D really is fantastic for the science fiction genre and this truly seems like a step into the right direction. I believe 3D is the future for movies and soon we will see even more of these kind of amazing visuals.
What I don’t understand is that they have tons of money to throw at the visual effects, but can’t pay for a decent screenwriter. Considering how expensive visual effects are, the writing must amount to a drop in a sea, budget-wise. Good consistent writing could have made this movie brilliant, but this way it almost only amounts to the visuals. The story is not terrible enough to make the movie unwatchable, but it isn’t particularly good either. I hope they do a better job on the sequel, which the ending definitely makes possible.
Since I was out with my Zorki yesterday I show you an older shot from the area surrounding the cinema. The picture shows the quite impressive Deutsche Bahn tower next to the Sony Center here in Berlin.
attitude (#373)
attitude © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 18.0 mm | Aperture: 4.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/30
My DSLR has sometimes a strange stealth advantage. Considering how big it is, it’s sort of unlikely to be invisible, but somehow people tend to believe that you need to look through the viewscreen to take a picture. My 450D has Life View, which means that I can compose on the screen on the back, and then take the picture while looking into a completely different direction.
I doubt I would have been brave enough to just take the picture normally, since these two guys on the left and in the middle were just huge. What I was really going for was the interesting combination of T-Shirts. The guy on the right didn’t belong to the other two by the way.
the curtain (#372)
the curtain © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Zorki 3C | ISO : 400 | Focal Length: 50.0 mm | Film Make: Kodak Tri-X | #4
Just upfront: There is no symbolic meaning to this picture. No curtain falling, nothing like that at all. I just happen to like the abstractness of the picture. It was also an experiment, since it was taken in a rather dark cinema. The curtain was originally red and I would have thought it would have been way too dark for anything to show up on the negative. Turns out that there was enough to work with in this case.
It has been really hot here in Berlin, 35°C. Luckily my flat is rather well insulated and it’s not as hot in here as outside. Tomorrow it’s supposed to cool down to more manageable temperatures and I hope I’ll get the opportunity to get out with the camera. Maybe it’s a good to take a break after having finished my 365 project, but in fact I don’t really want to. It just so happens that the outside world feels like an oven at the moment, which is not too good for the film rolls anyway. As far as I know film can go brittle with the heat and the Zorki isn’t made for those modern rolls anyway. I could go out with my Canon, but I still have a roll to finish.
Excuses, you say? Well, I admit that I’m lazy as well. And besides, going outside involves melting away slowly, worse so in the subway. I rather curl up on the sofa with a good Science Fiction novel.
mid-air (#371)
mid-air © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 400 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/320
Between superhero movies and Science Fiction novels I have come to realise that I must be on holiday.
Two years ago I took a holiday of half a year in Spain and spent several months on the beach. I forced myself not to do much apart from learning Spanish and reading novels. The decision was mainly health related and since then work has forced its way back into my life, although I learned something crucial during that summer. I learned that it’s necessary to relax every now and then, and that it’s necessary to stop worrying.
Well, how do you do that though if you don’t have a 9 to 5 job and always spend your time striving for something? How do you stop worrying and just take a break? I find it rather difficult to be honest and even while I sort of feel like I’m on a holiday, I still do my drawing exercises, write for my blog and take pictures. In fact even behind reading Science Fiction there is some buried wish to understand something about the genre of Science Fiction in particular as well as about story-telling and make-belief in general.
My novel has been sitting “in a drawer” (no actual drawer involved) to “mature”. You know, like a cheese. I want to look at it with different eyes when editing, so I have to bring some distance between me and the story. Other people write on different projects during such times, but all projects I had to work on where in some sense related. They would have kept me too close to the novel. In fact I have even gone out of my way to sever the ties between me and the mind-set the novel was written in, just to see whether it holds up with a different outlook. I’m not sure yet when exactly I will start editing, but it’s going to happen over the next few months.
The picture reminds me of how I feel at the moment. I feel suspended in mid-air, between things, not sure whether I will land just right or stumble, the ground slipping away beneath my feet. Maybe that’s just fine, and I should trust that things will turn out right, but it is scary at times.
Well, and that’s my cue; it’s time to relax and stop worrying. It’s probably just the right time to have a holiday now, before I get back into the swing of things.
Schäfersee (#370)
Schäfersee © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Zorki 3C | ISO : 400 | Focal Length: 50.0 mm | Film Make: Kodak Tri-X | #4
Yesterday we went to the Diane Arbus exhibition at the Martin-Gropius-Bau. I had seen it before, but I was happy to go again since I find her work quite interesting. The exhibition was quite likely a version of the recent traveling Diane Arbus exhibition called Revelations. It features about 200 of her photographs combined with a Chronology of her life and insights into her diaries, cameras and correspondence.
After seeing the exhibition for the first time I decided to read a biography of Arbus by Patricia Bosworth. The book is not bad and reasonably well written, but it strikes me as somewhat speculative. Certain important figures in Arbus’ life, notably her children, did not agree to participate in the making of the book, which makes especially the guesses at Arbus’ inner life rather questionable. Quite likely it also has factual errors, since it claims that Arbus used a Leica in her early years, which seems unlikely looking at her 35mm shots. In fact the exhibition referenced a Nikon instead. I’d call the book a well researched guess that had enough meat to be interesting, but not enough to be entirely believable.
I can’t really pinpoint why I find Arbus’ work interesting. In fact I can say that I only really like a small subset of her pictures, but somehow the rest seems conceptually interesting. I find her vision rather democratic, finding weird characters not only among the freak shows that she used to frequent, but also among the totally normal or rich people. What also strikes me is that although she knew a lot about composition and technicalities, since she had worked as a fashion photographer before her more artistic work, she often went against the typical rules. At times her pictures look like snapshots although her contact sheets reveal that quite a few of those were rather planned, like for example the picture of the Jewish giant and his parents.
Maybe what’s interesting about her work is that her vision is so different from what most photographers look for in their pictures. Her photographs were not exactly documentary style, they are not beautiful as such, nor ugly for that matter. There is just something different about them. Some actually reveal a rather troubled person behind the camera, while others are just very humorous or just altogether strange, without having any specific message behind them. As you can see I am rather lost in speculation. I have no real idea why her work seems interesting. There is just “something about it”, whatever it might be.
I took my Zorki with me yesterday, so again I show you one of my film shots from my last roll of film. It was taken at a lake not far from here.
the dynamics of waiting (#369)
the dynamics of waiting © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 53.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/80
Waiting, photographing, reading, texting, pacing, staring, thinking. Well, all of that can happen when you wait at a train station, in this case the station Gleisdreieck. The girl on the left was taking pictures with an old film camera.
Yesterday I spent half asleep after not being able to sleep much during the night. I have bouts of insomnia at times. This time it was just a single night and I made up for it by sleeping until almost 11.30am this morning. Yesterday I watched some documentaries, spent some time drawing and I watched a movie or two. Sometimes it’s just fine to not do much at all. I didn’t go out, so the picture was actually taken a few days earlier. Well, I can always take more pictures when I’m more awake.
flying machines (#368)
flying machines © Verena Fischer
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 18.0 mm | Aperture: 8.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/500
Since I have finished my 365 project I thought that it was time to change a few things around here. I have chosen a different theme for my blog to reflect my move towards the black and white side of things and I have also updated the information on my About page. For the second year of my journey into photography I also have new shiny goals, like really getting into analog photography and learning to develop my own film. One thing that I have been especially eager to change though was something very simple that has frustrated me to no end over the course of the last year. It was the problem that my previous theme limited me to showing only one picture per post. I agree with the notion that editing helps to learn why specific pictures are better than others, but being too restrictive means that sometimes you miss out, because you might not realise the potential of a picture. Don’t worry, obviously I have no intention of bombarding you with tons of pictures, but it is much easier to pick the best 3 pictures than to pick “the best”.
A few days back we visited the technology museum here in Berlin. As I have already mentioned in a previous post, I was deeply impressed by all the technology exhibited in the museum. They show old trains and planes, old photographic equipment, historical computers and many other technology related curiosities and all in very atmospheric surroundings. Since I didn’t want to post more than 3 pictures I have decided to only show you aircraft related pictures in this post. I am sure I will get the opportunity to show you some more pictures from the visit soon.
The picture above shows a plane that sits on top of the museum. I saw it also from the viewing platform at Potsdamer Platz, which is how I found out that this museum existed.
I’m not sure whether the picture below shows a rotary engine or just the rotor, since I was too fascinated by the actual object to bother with read the inscriptions. Yeah, I’m totally in it for the looks, since I don’t know anything about aircraft technology.
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 33.0 mm | Aperture: 4.5 | Shutter Speed : 1/30
Google told me that this is a Focke-Wulf A 16 passenger aircraft for a maximum of 3 passengers.
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 1600 | Focal Length: 21.0 mm | Aperture: 4.0 | Shutter Speed : 1/60
(Yes, I took pictures of airplanes with swastikas on them, since it’s a German museum after all, but none of those pictures will appear on this blog. I don’t feel like attracting that kind of audience.)
tall (#367)
tall © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Zorki 3C | ISO : 400 | Focal Length: 50.0 mm | Film Make: Kodak Tri-X | 4#30
A little while back I took my Zorki to a small lake that is not too far from here. On that day I was attacked by a bunch of mosquitos, which tends to happen at lakes, and some random woman told me that one of the swans was eaten by a fox recently. Well, the latter rarely happens in a big city like Berlin.
It was roll number 4 and for once the pictures were properly exposed. Turns out that I needed to use the next lower exposure setting with my external light meter. At first I was a bit disappointed with the pictures in this bunch, but the pictures actually started to grow on me. A few of them are really quite nice, like this one here, and a few more needed to be cropped, since I didn’t quite pay attention when taking the pictures. I still have some obvious framing issues, because of the parallax error and the small view finder, but I think my Zorki experiments are getting a bit better.
too bright (#366)
too bright © Verena Fischer 2012
Camera: Canon EOS 450D | ISO : 100 | Focal Length: 55.0 mm | Aperture: 5.6 | Shutter Speed : 1/160
Yesterday I edited the pictures that I took on Sunday. There definitely were some nice ones in the bunch like the picture I posted yesterday or this one here. It was getting late already and the sun stood low. It made shooting quite difficult, because it was a little chilly in the shade and a bit too bright in the sun to take pictures. The only way to go was to turn the problem into the subject. The two of them were just as blinded as I was.
And now some geekery that might curl your toes:
My new theme doesn’t show the exif information for the picture, so I decided to extract it from the picture via exiftool and then copy and paste the line into the post. Exiftool formats the output with some spaces and line breaks though and I wanted to remove the line breaks and substitute them for pipes. In the end I came up with this command line geekism:
exiftool -Model -ISO -FocalLength -Aperture -ShutterSpeed FILENAME | sed 's/Model Name//g' | sed 's/ //g' | tr '\n' '|' | sed 's/|/ | /g' | sed 's/Model Name//g' | sed s/..$//
And yes, this was the wood chopping approach to bash scripting, since I was chopping the output into shape without any consideration for the code to be pretty or lean. And if you now say “What the …?” then don’t worry. There is really no need for this to make any sense whatsoever.
day 365: the narcissistic dog
the narcissistic dog © Verena Fischer 2012
Today my 365 project is coming to an end with this picture taken at the Mauerpark flea market yesterday. If you have been following my blog regularly over the last year, then you probably know that I am interested in a wide range of subjects. Photography, art, tango argentino, technology, literature, music, movies, marine conservation, heck, I even wrote about historical buildings here in Berlin from time to time. Sometimes it’s hard to choose among the many things I could be doing and I get overwhelmed by the many possibilities. At other times I get inevitably pushed into a certain direction and stumble into the next step by pure chance. I am still figuring out where all this might lead, but I do believe that I am moving somewhere, as vague as that may sound. What I am talking about is probably something like a vague inkling on where I want to move “artistically”.
Whenever things come to an end, when goals are achieved or at the end of clearly marked periods of time we automatically think back, evaluate, judge, and possibly also ponder the logical next step. Today marks one of these moments for me.
Many times when I’ve achieved goals I have drawn a clear line underneath them and turned my back on whatever it was that I was doing, at least for a while. After finishing my bachelor degree I switched fields and after getting my Masters degree I shifted my focus again. I have too many interests to stay put, too many goals not to keep shifting my attention, or that’s what I have always told myself. However, when it comes to skills and their development I know from experience in other fields that a year is hardly enough to scratch the surface, especially in an area like photography that has such a vast number of techniques and subjects to explore.
The goal of this project was to get back into photography after not pursuing it for a few years. Before I started the project I didn’t know my camera very well. I didn’t know anything about correct exposure, about aperture or shutter speed and therefore I was shooting in automatic mode. I didn’t know anything about focal lengths or different lenses and I had only the kit lens to play with. During this year I have learned a lot about my camera, I have learnt about exposure settings and measuring light, about lenses and about post-processing. I moved to shooting manually, I got a fast prime lens and ultimately I even got an old soviet rangefinder camera for shooting film. I moved away from shooting urban spaces and towards street photography.
To be honest, I’ve actually come much further than I would have expected. Yes, I think I have achieved a lot in this year and fulfilled the goal of this project, but I still want more.
For the next year my goal is to really get into analog photography, to properly get the hang of shooting with my Zorki and to be able to develop my own film at home. I want to learn also from reading about photography, looking at the work of great photographers and from actually learning about art and art history. After a year of taking pictures daily I feel that there is still so much to explore, so much to learn and so much to try. I’m only at the beginning, and I hope you will join me here also in the next year of my journey.
day 364: on the prowl in the underground
on the prowl in the underground © Verena Fischer 2012
The other day when I was discussing different types of film with a friend I immediately said “I have no use for that”, when he suggested an ISO 100 film. The reason is that I tend to take pictures in the underground. For some reason I am fascinated by the Berlin subway system. Not only the behaviour of the people while waiting is interesting, but also the different types of people on the train, the weird stories you hear and also the really different station designs. In fact the stations and lines were often built at different times, so that every line seems to have its own character. Some of the lines are very old, others sport the terrible colours of the 70s, and again others look rather modern. In fact one of the things I’m planning to do is to explore all the stations of the U3, because they all seem to have a dark and sinister feel to them.
This picture was taken at the station Gesundbrunnen, which is two stops away on the U8. Although the focus is off because the guy in the foreground moved before I could release the shutter, I somehow happen to like the picture. It captures something of the aimless pacing that seems to be common when waiting. It’s a shame that the sprocket holes are in the way. In fact, the other day I tried to look for a solution to the sprocket hole problem online. It seems that soviet film rolls were different to the ones that are sold now and therefore the problem of sprocket holes in the picture seems to be common with Zorkis. I found a tip online that involves putting a penny between the film roll and the bottom. Next time I put a new roll into the camera I’ll try that one out. I don’t have pennies around here, but I’m sure I can find a coin that fits and looking at the negatives it might be just enough to make a difference.
Tomorrow I will have reached day 365, so the project is coming to an end. That doesn’t mean that I’ll discontinue my daily posts though.
day 363: dieselpunk
dieselpunk © Verena Fischer 2012
Yesterday we finally managed to go to the Technology Museum here in Berlin and it was just great. Normally 1 1/2 hours in a museum are about as much as I can take, but in this museum there was just so much great stuff to see, that we really didn’t have enough time. The place is full of old trains, planes, ships and machinery, and we didn’t nearly see everything. We spent a lot of time taking pictures of trains and there is a large section with old cameras that was just fascinating. I saw a FED 1, and a Zorki 4 compared right with the original Leicas they were copying. Extremely cool!
Finally after about an hour of wandering around aimlessly we made our way to look for the planes. Sometime during that search we stumbled over the two beauties in the picture. They could have come right out of a dieselpunk comic. Well, naturally you can’t actually stumble over them, because they are just massive! In fact a lot of the old locomotives were huge, much bigger than you’d expect. Considering that we still wandered around the part of the museum dedicated to trains, it tells you that the museum is big enough to get lost in it. In the end we found the right part of the museum in another building. We ignored a 2 floor exhibition on ships and went right up to the flying machines. Massive airplanes, bombers from WW2, wreckage, engines and propellers, it was fascinating! Suddenly it was half an hour later and the museum was closing. Did I mention all the old computer technology that we didn’t find? Well, apparently we have to go back again for a second time to really see all the stuff we wanted to see and maybe to look at some things in more detail.
experiments in experience 