I was at a conference in St. Louis, Missouri this week. Our hotel was right across the famous Gateway Arch, the Gateway to the West. Despite I didn't bring my tripod I could not resist to try some night shots of the arch and the area around.
I like to continue my little series about Prague with views from Europe's busiest pedestrian bridge, Karluv Most (Charles Bridge). It connects the Old Town quarter with Mala Strana (Lesser Town) and the Prague castle, the biggest castle in the world. That it is also the most visited castle in the world can easily be found out by just walking across Charles Bridge. It is impossible to make a picture without having lots of people in the frame. The only way is to shoot just above peoples heads like in the photo above. A dark sky with nice clouds and the buildings illuminated by the low evening sun made for a great color contrast. I used the tele end of the 24-120 for this image. It compresses the view over the bridge nicely and the churches in the background appear much closer than they really are. An image I always wanted to make.
The bridge is lined by 30, mostly Baroque, statues mounted to the balustrade on both sides of the bridge. It is supposed to bring good fortune if you touch the plagues below some of the statues. I have seen people waiting in line for doing this, it must be true... This young man thought so too and gave me the chance for this shot in best light. I'm usually very hesitant to make pictures of people I don't know (you probably can tell by browsing through my picture galleries). In Prague everybody runs around with a camera around their necks and shoots whatever comes across. It is easy to blend in, even for me... ;-)
Charles Bridge is not just an architectural highlight in Prague it is also a place where art is performed, displayed, and sold. Dozens of artists try to make a living and offer their paintings, drawings, jewelry, and other handcrafted things to the millions of tourists that walk across the bridge every year. Musicians and other performing artists gather good crowds all the time. By just listening to or looking at the people you can tell that the visitors come from all over the world. Bus loads of tourists with their guides make navigation sometimes not easy. The trick is to wait patiently for your chance to make a particular image. If you wait too long someone may have walked into the frame already... More to come.
I actually wanted to write about the famous Charles Bridge in Prague today but a question in my last post from Brian, a cool guy from Germany, made me change my plans. Let's talk about beer and food instead... ;-)
Yes Brian, I have been in the famous "Pivovar U Fleku". I wanted to show my wife Joan where all my bad habits started... (just kidding... :-) ). This was indeed a place I have visited many, many times in my younger years. I haven't been there for more than twenty years but not much seemed to have changed since. The beer was still good and the food looked better than ever. We had a great time.
It is really not difficult to find good places to eat in Prague. Many restaurants are in very old and charming buildings. Most menus are in Czech, German, and English language and it is easy for tourists to find their way around. There are places for every price level and beside international cuisine most restaurants offer still the traditional way of Bohemian cooking.
The Bohemian brewing traditions are very old and famous and a real beer connoisseur must have Prague on his bucket list. The best places to enjoy a good beer (pivo) are the small micro breweries and pubs (pivovars).
Downtown Bautzen was already decorated for the annual spring festival "Bautzener Frühling". This event lasts three days and is filled with music, art, entertainment, and lots of food and drinks. Every year a flag contest is part of the festival and the best flags get awarded and will be used for the city's decoration during the next years.
The tower on the east end of Reichenstrasse is called "Reichenturm" and used to be part of the city fortifications. Its lower part was finished in 1492 while the upper part was added about 1718 during the time of baroque architecture. The tower is actually leaning by 1.44 meters but has been finally stabilized in 1954.
I grew up in the old part of Bautzen and it is always a great joy for me to see how the historic buildings have been restored from damage during WWII or how they are preserved from the normal influence of the weather. In my opinion, this is tax money well spent. As a photographer in particular it is not difficult to like this...
No, I'm not in Africa... ;-) Yesterday I just left Düsseldorf, Germany, where I spent last week at DRUPA, the world's largest trade show for the graphic industry. It still goes on for another week. It was as always an exhausting event. I'm now in my old home town Bautzen, Germany and look forward to be tomorrow at the wedding of my son and his future wife. There was no time for good photography during the last nine days but this sculpture at the airport was worth a quick click. Just wanted to say hello to all my friends and followers of my blog. Stay tuned, I hope I have something better to show here soon.
I'm still working on my images from last week's trip to Arizona and I like to show you a few more.
The little miner town Jerome has a very interesting attraction. The Gold King Mine and Ghost Town is just a mile north of Jerome. A fascinating place, hard to describe with words (at least for me).The location of the Gold King Mine was originally the community of Haynes, a suburb of Jerome in 1890. If you like to read more about it click HERE. This will lead you to the Sedona Verde Valley Tourism Council website, which has a pretty good story about this place and its owner.
As a photographer you may get lost. It is not hard to make up your mind where to point the lens first. Lots of good old stuff. As an engineer, I just got carried away by looking at all the old mechanical wonders of the past. From old mining equipment, to probably more than a hundred old trucks and cars, machines and tools, and of course the old buildings of the ghost town.
The museum closes at 5PM and light is harsh during the day. But hey, we have HDR these days and subjects, like you can find them in a historical place like this, can bare quite a bit of "HDR-retro-tweaking", as I like to call it. Nothing to loose for me... ;-)
Another quick post from my short trip into RedRock Country. Yesterday I went from Flagstaff to Jerome. Jerome is an old miner town tucked to the slope of a mountain. Lots of tourists and bikers, and there is always something interesting to see. The harsh light during the day made me keep the camera in the bag for landscape photography most of the time but some of the fun stuff I saw in Jerome needed to be captured. On my way back to Flagstaff some clouds developed over the desert and I gave it a trial.
No, not even an HDR image, just a brief "Hello snapshot" from Kansas City, Missouri. Business requires my presence here and that means no wildlife shooting this week. I have lots of unpublished images from the last couple months on my hard drive but I thought it doesn't hurt to show something totally different today. I hope you still enjoy.
We finally got the winter here in Iowa and have some snow on the ground. However, I would have seen snow anyway, because it was the weekend for the annual ice fishing trip with friends. For the sixth year in a row we went to the Northwoods in Wisconsin. The ice was not as thick as other years but nevertheless still thick enough to drive on. I usually take my camera with me but photography was not the top priority last weekend.
My fishing luck wasn't really great. I caught a couple Northern Pike but they were small and I didn't keep them. "Fisher king" was my brother in law Don, who pulled two 28 inch Northerns onto the ice. It was my pleasure to make a few clicks of him with his catch.
The main reason why I take my photo gear on the ice is the never ending hope to catch some great light. I always have one eye on the sky, especially during the time around sunset. The image above tells the story about a great final of a wonderful day on the ice of Fay Lake in Wisconsin.
Wishing all of you a wonderful and creative New Year 2012!
Thank you for all your words of encouragement and critique in 2011. Thank you also for taking the time to view my images and read the little stories about my trials to capture the wonders of nature.
Ich wünsche Euch allen ein wundervolles und kreatives neues Jahr 2012!
Danke für eure Worte des Zuspruchs und Kritik im alten Jahr. Danke auch einfach nur dafür, dass ihr euch die Zeit nehmt meine Fotos anzusehen und die kleinen Geschichten über meine Versuche die Wunder der Natur im Bild festzuhalten zu lesen.
