robvisual - photography

Sometimes I think street photography is the thing I do around the coffee breaks (like Eric Kim does). I am really into third wave coffee and the whole concept of the (slow) coffee house culture. You can sit down and enjoy a wonderful cup of Ethiopian coffee with its rich peach like taste and let life pass by the window. People entering and leaving the room. Lean back and listen to your inner voice. Let things go and try to be an observer. have a book & a coffee - X100s (f/2.8 1/125 23mm ISO 640) Maybe there is a opportunity for a great photo...or not. Maybe you can chat with a stranger or just read a book or write an article about someone writing an article. Don´t expect something. I love to have a break from the carousel of life. Maybe you develop a new idea out of this idle-vacuum. Inspiration is always waiting behind the next door, but can´t force it to be there. What are you doing to escape the wheel? Just let me know...

I know...Halloween is over. But I found this older iPhone-street-photo by looking through my archives.

In the past I was a shy guy who had problems to look into other peoples eyes or giving hands. The first breakthrough in beating the shyness was a bunch of new friends I met on a camping vacation. We started with skateboarding together and my self confidence was growing every day a bit more. Looking back on this transformation shows me how fear is holding you back from doing inspirational and great things. It is like standing in front of a closed door and don´t know how to operate the handle. You can open the door. But the fear from doing something wrong holds you back. feeling like behind a wall? a wall built by you... Even in terms of photography there are many fears: My work is bad. I am not a good photographer! Other people are better than me! I want to take a portrait of strangers but I fear rejection! There are thousands of fears. But trust me. It is worth to fight them step by step. If in your eyes your work is not good enough, try to get in contact with other pho...

Because no one wants to be the creepy guy taking photos from far away like a spy and then quickly run away. Be open and friendly. Smile and share compliments to the people who notice you. When someone is angry and don´t want his or her photo taken then agree with them. Don´t try to ruin their day. If law is with you, you can keep this photo anyway. But don´t be an asshole! If you want to take a portrait, tell them what you like about their outfit, a certain look or something else. Most people just want to know why are you doing this kind of stuff and what is it for. And the most important thing is to be honest to others and yourself. Try to enrich your life by learning from others. Listen to other people and their stories. This will maybe inspire you to take more photographs in a different way or about a special topic. And you can give away a free smile to someone else making their day a bit brighter and better. Be kind to other people. Because you are not alone.  You a...

No. I don´t want to talk about certain brands and give you some affiliate-links to follow. If you are new this topic I want to share some thoughts about three different techniques you can use to have your camera always ready for action. There are three simple ways to use a strap to protect your precious tool and have it where you need it: 1. around your neck: most bigger cameras are used this way 2. around neck and shoulder: you need a longer strap to do this 3. a wrist-strap: good if you like to hold your cam always in your hand I personally prefer variant two . I love to have my cam hanging at the waist area. I don´t want to have that bulky thing hanging in front of my chest. I never understood why camera manufacturers and many photographers like it that way? I love to grab my camera with my right hand and switch it on (the power-switch is mostly on the right) while dragging the whole thing to my eyes. It looks better and in packed situations or light rain you can cover the...

Many street photographers are trying to capture these great moments of life:  people in a light-beam walking down an alleyway people and lines etc.  But there is also a kind of odd photography that does not belong to this type of high-quality-photography. There are many other situations worth taking a photo of them. They can be less interesting on the first sight, but they can send different signals to the viewer and force them to look closer to get the whole message. So don´t be afraid of taking photos that don´t apply to the common sense of photography. There are no rules! Just look for the things between the things!

In my last article ( reduce ) I said that constraint is a good way to boost your creativity. I had such a great opportunity today to prove this theory. I left my camera at home in the morning heading to work. On my way to the company I saw a beautiful blue sky dipped in a red sunrise. Later that day, I was sitting at my desk, my wife sent me a text message stating that the weather is just too good to drive directly home and we should me at a nice place to have a beer. Yes...the weather was awesome today! This is one of the weekdays I have an early end of work. So I had some spare time around the place where we gonna meet later on. I was a bit disappointed without my camera in my bag. But then I grabbed my mobile phone and took some photos without thinking about them too much. After that I was sitting at the pub doing some retouching. The final images are just the result of some extra time without one of my Fuji cameras. These are my favorites:

The small title of this blogpost is a good example for reduction. In photography the creativity decreases with to many possible options. Just look at your lens-park. How many lenses do you call your own? How many of them do you carry with you on a trip outside? Do you try to cover all possibilities? To many choices can lead to an endless road of doubt. Do you find yourself in these quotes? "I need a wider lens for that" - try a different technique like a (Brenizer) panorama or go into the details "The lens can´t handle flare" - use the flare as a visual element in your photos "I need telephoto lens for this portait"  - try to be creative with a wide angle lens and use the surrounding environment to put your subject into the right light a wide angle portrait that covers the whole thing - 18mm If you try to be prepared for every situation you end up carrying a heavy bag full of stuff. But creativity is the result of constraint that helps y...

By walking through a holy place and looking at the holy smartphone... holy/phone - X-PRO1 18mm @ f2 1/60 (ISO 3200) 

Out in the streets there are many situations were you have to act quick to get the photo you want without fiddling with too much settings. A simple technique is to use zone focusing. When you own a mirrorless camera like I do, it is simple as 1-2-3. After you set the camera to manual mode you notice a new scale on the bottom of the viewfinder: the distance scale of my trusty Fuji X-PRO1 This little ruler at the bottom gives you a scale from 0 to infinity (greetings to Mr. Möbius). The red line will show you where your actual focus is set to. And the white bar will tell you what will be in focus at this specific aperture/distance setting. That is the "zone"! ;-) When I go out with my X-PRO1 I put the 18mm on and set the aperture to f8 and the focus manually to a range between 2 to 8 meters or 3.5 to infinity. It depends on what you want to have sharp and crisp in the focus range. In dense urban environments I use the short setting, because there is no far away backgrou...

Before I got into street photography I had no destination what exactly to do with my camera. I took my cam always on vacations and the resulting images were quite good. But they were missing something. After hanging out in the streets and the study of some philosophical stuff like taoism (thanks to Eric Kim for his wonderful blogposts) I found out that I was missing the living element in my travel photos. I was so fixated on architecture or nice landscapes etc. that I forgot to tell a story and add some people to my shots to add some movement or simple said: life. It is important for me to tell a little story now to give the viewer (also yourself) a path to follow. a story about watching bears (quick´n dirty triptic) From street photography I learned how to look at the details and the whole thing at once and how to quickly react to different situations.Maybe something is moving into the frame making the shot more interesting or there is a special light seen from a diffe...

I am not a businessman, but I always have some cards in my messenger bag. I print them on my own with a color laser printer and cut them out of the sheets with a scissor. I put my name, my website at 500px and my email on it. big visual business ;-) Out in den streets I also take some portraits and you save some time if you have your card ready after the photo is taken. That will also put some serious trust into the whole thing. I always tell people that they will find their photo on 500px and that they can send me an email if the want the photo in original size for their own. And maybe you meet another photographer and want to exchange contacts on the go. dance - X100 @ f2  And don´t forget to tell them that they don´t have to pay for the photo and what street photography is all about (the short story). Because street photography is a kind of a life style and you do a great job when you tell people more about this form of art.

There are many photographers talking about their many projects. A project could be a special topic like shooting people looking on their mobile phones or diagonals in architecture. But sometimes people put too much pressure on finding a good topic for a project. Don´t let this happen to you. In terms of taoism you just have to wait and observe until the right thing comes to you. people & stairs All you need is inspiration. Inspiration is everywhere. You just have to lean back and watch the world that surrounds you. Don´t say: "I don´t like places like that" or "this is boring". Maybe the next surprise is hiding around the corner. Try to see the magic behind the things in every day life. You don´t need to travel far away to exotic places to make a good photo. You need the inspiration to trigger your creativity. And when I say inspiration I mean it in every way not limited to photography. A good book or a tasty cup of coffee with a good friend can lead to ...

Tomorrow I will visit the exhibition of a well know photographer Siegfried Hansen. I follow his inspirational paths since I first discovered his profile on flickr some years ago. He did a lot of great street photography and also has a good eye for geometry and putting things into relationship. The exhibition will cover some selected prints out of his sujet. Location and details: http://www.freelens.com/galerie/vorschau/ Homepage: http://www.street-photography-hamburg.siegfried-hansen.de/ it´s all about lines (my photo)

I jumped on the Fuji train with the X100 in late 2012. Later I ditched my whole Nikon rack for an X-E1 with the 35mm 1.4. Later on I bought some new lenses and replaced the X100 and the X-E1 with the X100s and the X-T1. But I always was in love with the X-PRO1 (but it was too expensive). The look and feel just hit my nerves. So one day I noticed this massive price-drop. The price for this little piece of photographic equipment went down to about 500 Euros without a lens. Hooray! that organic look from the x-trans1  I can´t hold myself back and bought this older model. I will never regret it. This camera works like a charm and is still my favorite camera out in the streets if I want more flexibility with different focal lengths. It is heavy as brick and is so well build (despite the battery-door). The shutter sound is subtle and the OVF is great for working with zone focusing without an electronic display in between. look at the colors I can still say that this camera ma...

It is a matter of style and your personal taste. Cultural differences or law can also be a reason for not being as offensive as a Bruce Gilden. For me it is more a matter of how the things are offered to me by life. As a little taoist I don´t like to force things to much. I love when everything comes into place the right time. You just have to be there. And I love people who get lost in things like architecture, a crowd or with their mobile phone in front of their nose. If someone tells you how street photography should look like this or anything else and you have to follow rules, just forget about it. Yes. There are photos out there that don´t belong to street photography. But we all know what the inner core is. Just feel free to express yourself. Don´t try to be someone else. Don´t try to copy a certain style. Just play with all the possibilities the world of photography is offering to you. Try to find your own style and the things you like. And if there are just a few people out...

There are thousands of new technologies and devices born every day. The world is changing faster from decade to decade. Sometimes you need to stop and look on the things that are valuable and still there. When you look at photography you will notice that a good photo is still a good photo. And the rules and the creativity that decide about a well made photo are still the same despite off all the technology behind. It does not matter how many pixels the resulting image has or how less the ISO noise is. A good photo is still a good photo without a doubt. Don´t think that a certain device will automatically lead to better photos. This will result in a never ending game without any further development of your photographic skills. Don´t get me wrong. If you plan to buy a new camera then do it. There is nothing wrong with it. Technical innovations can help you to get better or faster results. Just think of the impossible spherical panoramas when it comes to the darkroom days. But don´t...

all alone... Not really. I just opened an account on twitter after quitting a long time ago (but I will never be on facebook etc. again). I did it to stay in contact with other great people and resources who share great things. I also try to use it as a diary to push the things out I love and to have something to look back in time (I love to do this). And I also love to push the art and ideas of other people. Because in taoism the whole universe has a meaning and we are not alone in the world of the ten thousand things. It is not only about yourself. It would be a boring life without all the inspiration and beautiful things around you. I don´t want to try to get attention for the price of starring all the time on illuminated displays and lose some great experiences in the real world just for having more clicks. I try to reduce this kind of communication to a level that makes me (and maybe others) feel good. Just share your thoughts and try to meet in real life. This is the real...

You are using a software like lightroom, photoshop or capture one to edit your photos? You love photography and you are browsing through other photos every day on flickr or 500px? cold or warm? How should it look like? Don´t forget to calibrate your input and output devices (your printer should match the colors seen on your display). I leave it to you to google the rest of the story. There are some well known manufacturers of calibration devices that help you to set your display or printer to the right color-levels and temperatures. Without calibration looking at photos is a kind of gambling and you may loose so much information by not seeing the images as it should be seen. There is also a poor mans variant of calibrating your monitor as described here:  http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-calibrate-your-monitor/ Happy calibrating! ;-)

Vanishing points can create a portal into another dimension. The viewer gets sucked into the scene. The eye will follow the lines to the deep end of the horizon. There are so many different ways to play with the lines in the image. If you shoot a jetty from a higher viewpoint the horizon level is different and you feel like standing on this thing. So it looks more natural to your eyes.  If you chose a wide lens you can create a long path to the horizon. That will create feelings of a long journey etc. If you use a telephoto lens the whole thing looks more dense like a miniature with a strong 3D-touch. When you combine vanishing points with people you can create a special mood. In the left image this one person far away at the end of this long path. The shadow of the handrails create a strong guiding line that leads the eyes of the viewer to the very small subject at the end. In the right image the whole setting looks like taken from a SciFi movie adding some depth to ...

Separation, loneliness or emptiness. What are the hidden feelings behind them? In the photo above you can better concentrate on one subject. The guiding lines (handrail on the left) are leading towards the woman creating a dynamic flow upwards. It creates a simple story. Where does she go? What are her feelings? A lone woman lost in architecture. There are also many cases were places should be packed with people to tell a different story. But in this special case it has this special movie-like look.

The street photographers scene in Hamburg is not as big as in other countries. That may also be caused by the very restrictive German law. But there are brave photographers out there documenting life out in the streets. Have a look this webpage:  http://www.soulofhamburg.com/about They also have a book out in the wild!

I was walking down the streets without a destination (like I often do) and there was this wall full of graffiti and a round object with some waste beside it. I don´t like waste laying on the streets because children and dogs could be harmed and it is just tasteless and disgusting. Nevertheless from the right perspective this arrangement can be a great photo and you also doing a good thing in documenting what people are doing to their environment. arts & decay / X100s If you visit a modern gallery like the "Tate Modern" or the "Gropius Bau" you will discover similar (artificial) arrangements like the art of Damien Hirst or Joseph Beuys. But out in the streets most people just pass by without paying attention (or money) to it. So as an artist you can do your own interpretation of the scene and conserve this special moment. Because someone could tear down the wall, paint it white and for sure the mess would be cleaned up some day. But in this special time fra...

Street photography is about wanderlust, Taoism and hunting at the same time. You just walk through the streets and look for something interesting to happen (but don´t force it and lower your expectations!). Maybe you stop by a nice setting in the right light and you set your camera right. And now you wait like a hunter for the right subject to enter the frame. I love this moment when everything gets magically arranged for you. blue/red - XPRO1 35mm @ f1.4 (1/160, ISO500) Then you take a series of shots to get the right alignment between the subject and it´s environment. The shot above was a quick one. A whole family was walking on a small walkway that was not suitable for pedestrians. I walked a bit quicker to separate the red girl from the rest of the group and to set the camera right. The blue containers, the fence, the trees in front of that white wall caught my attention. The photo is full of lines and two strong colors. And from this angle it looks very 2D-ish like a dior...