Blending Berlin Article

[farbschlurf]

Cool article, for two reasons: Firstly I really learned something I basically never did, and 2nd because it's funny to see these particular pictures: This is about 1 mile away from where I live, so pretty common, for me. I go there from time to time to shoot (ehm, to photograph!) tourist crowds. Maybe this technique works for some of my shots, too, I don't know, I'll give it a try. Anyway I start to think about this again, one of that many "ongoing projects" that need some care.

You caught the mood of a winter day on the wall pretty good there. In summer it's more like disneyland ...

One little addition to your first picture: The reader might not be aware, you have been photographing from east to west. The wall was behind you. The (not most beautiful) house was (and is) in the west. This is not a East-Berlin house. Along the wall in the west there were huge areas of subsidised and/or cheap housing, as a result directly west of the wall it looked pretty dull, too.

Thanks again!

[soboyle]

Nice article, would like to see more of these hands on useful articles on LL. 3 ways to convert to B&W in Lightroom, I knew of 2 but the 3rd is good to know.

[Mark D Segal]

Cool article, for two reasons: Firstly I really learned something I basically never did, and 2nd because it's funny to see these particular pictures: This is about 1 mile away from where I live, so pretty common, for me. I go there from time to time to shoot (ehm, to photograph!) tourist crowds. Maybe this technique works for some of my shots, too, I don't know, I'll give it a try. Anyway I start to think about this again, one of that many "ongoing projects" that need some care.

You caught the mood of a winter day on the wall pretty good there. In summer it's more like disneyland ...

One little addition to your first picture: The reader might not be aware, you have been photographing from east to west. The wall was behind you. The (not most beautiful) house was (and is) in the west. This is not a East-Berlin house. Along the wall in the west there were huge areas of subsidised and/or cheap housing, as a result directly west of the wall it looked pretty dull, too.

Thanks again!

Thanks Stefan, glad you enjoyed it. In your last para, I suppose you meant Figure 5 - and yes indeed, the preserved wall fragment is behind me (East) and that rather bland apartment building is West. One has to go there, survey the scene and look at all the exhibits above ground and in the subway station for it to really sink-in what all this meant; the City has done a remarkable job with this historic monument and many others. You speak of "Disneyland"; well this was November, and even then at the East Side Gallery it was challenging to photograph portions of the mural art, a good amount of which has real artistic merit.

[farbschlurf]

Yes, the memorial site at Bernauer Straße is pretty good (though it‘s probably not the right expression, here, you know what I mean...), there are other spots which are a lot more „disneyland“ like, checkpoint charlie for instance. There it‘s pretty extreme. But, well, Berlin is living from tourists a significant part, so no way to go back, I‘m afraid. BTW just few months ago they found the remains of another tunnel people dug to escape a few hundered meters further. It will be included to the memorial, soon.

One of my ideas, similar to yours, though with a different meaning, was to photograph the brightly colored sight-seeing busses. They queue up in amazing numbers right before the wall-remparts during the season. A similar treatment might help emphasise things, that was what came to my mind instantly. I‘ll try.

Thanks again for your article.

[LesPalenik]

Very useful article and interesting pictures. I was there 50 years ago, and it looked very differently then.
Thank you, Mark

[Mark D Segal]

Very useful article and interesting pictures. I was there 50 years ago, and it looked very differently then.
Thank you, Mark

Thanks Les.

I think also it must be very different now from how it was in 1989 when the wall came down, because there has obviously been a tremendous amount of construction and re-development, even now cranes everywhere. There's a lot of material for creative photography - much more than I had time to explore; maybe next time.