robvisual - photography

There are many people out there complaining about having not enough time to do the things they love. But many of them are still watching 2-5 hours (!) of tv every day or sitting in front of their computers playing never ending games (they call it worlds). If you hear a rushing noise in the background it will come from your precious time that is running down the drain. Don't forget: live is short! glue the holstee manifesto to your wall! There are so many ways (even from a viewpoint of a photographer) to gain more time. One big thing is to say goodbye to your career. Because with more success comes more responsibility, more work and less spare time for your enjoyment. If work is the thing you do to pay the rent (some are in the lucky position to have a job that meet their full satisfaction) then you should spent there as less time as possible. If you have a shitty job that is hell on earth then quit now! Life is about the things that make your heart bump and inspire you to do ...

This morning I grabbed my snap and put it into my messenger bag. On the train I did my first shot without flash (I was covering the flash-hole with a finger) of another passengers hands. The resulting shot was a bit blurry, because there was not enough light. But the resulting print looks great. Three shots arranged together When I arrived at my destination I stopped at a little kiosk with all that blinking led signs at the door. The light was dimmed but the camera did a great job in creating a low-fi variant of the scene. I love the reflection of the lights in the wet area on the floor and colors are also great. I don't need correct or "realistic" colors. That is not the aim of this kind of instant photography. The last shot i took is a man walking upstairs. Behind him is a wall where someone tried to remove all the illegal artistic stuff with chemicals. A game they can't win, because someone left his tags on the chemical treated wall again. I aimed at this s...

Constraint will boost you creativity. A good example is organizing an exhibition. I hear a lot of people complaining about having not enough resources or money to do an exhibition. Stop here and think what an exhibition is: presenting your selected work to a certain audience.  I know that you have pictures in your mind about people hanging around at the opening day wearing french hats and sipping on a glass of campaign or white wine. But this is the expensive movie version of how it looks like. It's a cliche, nothing more. And for this cliche you need a gallery or a room and some money to make high quality prints and frames to hang your images to a wall. Not suitable for everyone. Do you really need that? Imagine the street artists who use the public space to exhibit their work by gluing and painting directly to the wall. I know that this form of exhibition is illegal. But in a certain way it will work for you without violating the law. laser portrait of a book store owne...

After I found out that there are too less print products on the market I decided to do my own via blurb. It will feature various street photography artists and their selected images and will be sold at cost price to share great images at a low price for all street photography freaks out there! You will find a twitter page with actual information on the actual issue here: twitter.com/street_spot

Sometimes you need some inspiration from low end tools to add some spice and fun to the game. Polaroid is offering such a gadget that is very limited in the possibilities but simple to use on the other end. Perfect for the streets. One thing first: I don´t get paid by Polaroid and I bought this white thing with my own money. I tried to contact the marketing department because I like this simple product, but I've heard nothing back from the big P for the last four weeks. Maybe they are too busy for this kind of stuff at the moment. But that doesn't mean I want you to buy this thing because it's hip or something else. Don't be a marketing victim ;-) I want to know if this camera with all its possibilities and limitations is suitable for travel and street photography. The Polaroid snap is an instant camera (like the Fujifilm Instax) that uses zink coated paper for printing the images. The photos have a bit more details than chemical films back in the days or with the...

The principles of street or reportage photography are always in my mind when I am on vacation. Shots with people in it add some motion and color to landscapes.

Are you complaining about sensors, lenses and how sharp they are in the border areas wide open and other details of the newest gear? I am at a hotel at the moment enjoying some spa and the frozen beach of the Baltic Sea. The hotel has a little library where you can browse through different kinds of books. I found two photo books about China from 1985 in the shelf and the photographer did a great job in capturing landscapes, people and architecture of this beautiful country. Analogue But compared to the photos today most of the photos looked a bit dull, under exposed (false colors) and not tac sharp like digital photos today. Most photos are lacking shadow or highlight details. But they are still great. Because it is the content that counts. Today we can do so much more with super sharp glass, 14 bit sensors and ISO up to 50.000 (automatic without changing a roll of film). But we are not satisfied and want better quality nearly every year. Digital Here is a ...

You love photography? Have you tried to give something back to the community (for free)? If you do a bit more than just surfing the web and commenting on social media platforms the whole thing gets better and more interesting every day. Trust me! And there are a lot of things you can do: organize and do photo walks to connect with others online and real life exhibitions doing interviews with other photographers you like opening a website for a special topic or to spread information create videos or podcasts for others etc. There are so many things you can do to add more quality and content to the whole thing. You will make new friends (maybe in real life) and get new inspirations that will expand your and other peoples horizon. You are getting more connected and networking has a real foundation you can build things on. And this leads to new opportunities. Maybe you have some great contacts in New York you can meet up next time you travel to this wonderful city. Just think ...

Imagine how much joy a photo-book can bring to you. Maybe you already own books of Ansel Adams, Saul Leitner, Henry Cartier Bresson and other well know photographers. But why is there no book with your name on it? You are not famous enough? Bullshit! It is not about fame! Just do it! Print a book just for yourself. It is not that expensive anymore (20-30 Euros for 20-36 pages) and you get the same high quality as from the professional ones. If you see your photos on real paper it will make your heart bump. Printing the photos in a smaller scale will make them look awesome. If you know how to prepare your photos for a book (dpi, sharpening etc.) there will be no real visual difference between your book and a pro one. You can also use the book to show some selected works to other photographers, family or clients. Let other photo-books inspire you on how to do it. Don´t try to stuff hundreds of photos into 40 pages because it is possible. Also try to leave some pages blank (I kn...

The snow outside (yes...real snow) tells me to stay inside the house and have a good cup of hot tea and some chocolate. So this might be a good reason to share some links with you: a great video about Vivian Maier I found on youtube - it tells her story and thoughts with a voice that could be hers. The video is well made and full of her work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDewAU-rgIM street photographer Fabian Schreyer - a great portfolio full of colorful photographs http://www.shootingcandid.com Kevin Broadberry - a street photographer from Denmark doing raw and close shots http://www.broadbery.dk Max Martino - and his great real life review of the new born Fuji X-PRO2. I am always looking for real reviews without unboxing and hours of talking (while holding the camera in hands). https://maxdemartinocom.wordpress.com/ NEOPRIME Mag - I love people who try to curate things and put them together in a high quality print. I like the concept of this magazine. They gather tag...

Some years ago I deleted my accounts at flickr, facebook, google+ (it´s empty) and other social media websites. They were too distracting and eating up my precious life time I need to do more important things than that. Some months ago I decided to start a blog about photography and opened up a twitter account to get in contact with other photographers to share information and get some inspiration. From the first day I tried to avoid mixing personal stuff too much with my artist personality in my blog or at twitter. I also wanted to keep out politics, news and other things that have nothing to do with photography. That will only generate a new time eating monster that will haunt me and lead to a labyrinth of things and thoughts I can't handle in my short precious lifetime. I don´t need that anymore in my life.  keep it clean It will also pollute your twitter account. From time to time I get new followers. When I have the time I look at their twitter profiles to follow the...

Every year the camera manufacturers releasing new cameras. They claim that the new one will take better photos than the predecessor because of new sensors, better noise reduction and other nice scientific developments and discoveries. I think that it is great that digital photography gets better every day. Mankind always try to improve things. But from an artist and taoist perspective it is not that important for us.  A photo remains a photo. And the changes are in technology are small and doesn't matter in real life. The only exception are special things that can only be archived with new technology (just thing of the possibilities of ultra high ISO etc.). But if you mostly shoot at normal conditions, like people did 30 years ago on film, you won´t see any real difference. Lets have a looks at these two photos I took: Both images were taken with the XF 27 at 2.8 (1/160 / ISO 1250) freehand. Can you tell me which one was made with the X-PRO1. I think this example will s...

I was recently interviewed by theculturetrip.com about my travel and street photography. You can read the full interview here .

When I´m out in the streets I am not hunting for shots. I just walk around and try to go with the flow. There are days without an acceptable street photo. But if you just follow the visual path that is already there for you, you might end up with some shots without any people in it. Don´t put too much pressure on photography. Everything could be interesting. Maybe a shot without people in it will inspire you for other photographs to be taken in the future. Here are some examples from the last three weeks:  

No. I don´t want to repeat leaked information here to brush up my blog. ;-) The question is if Fuji is on the right track with their successor of the X-Pro1. I recently wrote an article about this upcoming new camera that may appear on the market this month. I said that it is important to improve the core components like auto focus and image processor to satisfy the most photographers out there. And it seems that Fuji is doing the right thing.  Here are some of the leaked features that are interesting for me: – The fastest shutter mechanical shutter 1/8000 seconds, electronic shutter 1/32000 seconds – Intelligent hybrid phase difference AF. AF point is 273 points – Image processing engine X Processor Pro The most important thing is speed in terms of shutter, focus and time-write-to-card. The X-Pro1 is terribly slow in saving images to the SD card and the auto focus system either. – Faster than has been AF, low noise, excellent color reproduction It is als...

There are many street photographers praying that you have to be close to take a serious image in the streets. I think it is just one shade of the whole thing. I don´t want to limit street photography to one style only. And if your are a shy person there is nothing wrong with it. There many opportunities to take great photos in the streets without getting too close. Think about all the great photos were people get lost in a crowd or being related to architecture etc. (the fast moving bicycle taken by Henry Cartier Bresson). As I wrote in this article " Street photography should be like this!? (Follow your own road) " there are no rules. Don´t think that you have to do it a certain way. Here is are some example images that are not taken very close: people lost in architecture a group driving strange vehicles people walking in front of a great backdrop So go out into the streets and try to take photos that make your hearth bump when you look at them. Stay foo...

This article is a great follow up to the previous one ( http://robvisualfuji.blogspot.de/2016/01/street-photography-should-be-like-this.html ). As I started to focus more on street photography I thought that I have to take more images in black and white, because most of the photos on the web are colorless when it comes to this genre. And I processed my photos in black and white because I wanted to do it like a real pro. But there are a lot of photos where this reduction to gray scale ruins the hole thing. The matching colors, the shine or glow and sometimes even the hint of color in a dull environment is lost in 250 shades of gray. (hehe) stars? I had a great laugh as I watched a video on youtube were a street photographer said that this street scene is great because the colors match perfectly. After he took the photo of this scene he said that there is only a b&w film in his camera. So sad... In a late twitter poll black and white was ahead color with seventy percent of ...

We are constantly trying to improve our skills and we fear the harsh critique of our greatest competitor: ourself! Yes. I am that type of guy who sometime looks at his photos and think: they are crap, you should be more like John Doe or Max Mustermann. Blah blah blah. This feeling of insecurity is good and bad at the same time. Bad if you are to shy to get over this feeling drowning in a sea of shame. Good if you can get over this feeling and create something new out of this. Because there is nothing wrong with it. There are a lot of paid workshops out there to learn street photography. That is okay, but don´t expect to much from such events. There are some rockstars in photography out there and we think we could get some of the glare when we pay a certain amount of money to hang around with them. But real life does not work that way. You can only learn things you discover and do out of your own. And you have to follow your own road with all the obstacles, fears and even with al...