Winter is now truly behind us, so it is time to finish up an urban photography project which I undertook this winter. Taking advantage of the short day, or rather the long nights of Berlin’s winter season, I set out to shoot different aspects of night in the city. I tried to catch the glittering lights of the glass towers, the surreal effects of reflections within reflections when shooting from inside out, the stark, gritty and sometimes surreal sights of industrial sites, and more intimate views of empty, lit interiors, looking in from the outside.
Most of the photos were captured on my Fujifilm X-E2, which is the camera I tend to carry around with me every day. Some were shot on the X-T20, and a few using the iPhone X, whose capacity to shoot in low light is amazing and served the project well.
There is something about cities at night when the streets empty, the shops close down and the lights from inside shine out. The night hides but it also reveals. Interiors and entrances light up as the night swallows the outside. Buildings appear differently, warmer, colder, stranger, depending on the light. Glimpses of lives that stay unnoticed during the day are suddenly revealed, while other sides of life hide away.
For a change of pace, and in order to hone my eye for formatting photos, I decided to step away from people photography for a bit and embark on something which I have never really attempted before: photographing interiors. By this I was inspired by some of the photos I took inside some of Sevilla’s historic buildings. The challenge is to capture the elegance and beauty of a room while working within a confined space.
These images are from my first attempt. I shot them in a club here in Berlin which was empty at the time, a club in a historic 19th century building that used to house craftspeople’s workshops. It’s a first attempt, more to follow…
Here are more photos which I brought back from Sevilla. This time not people-centric, but exploring the details that make a city, the colours, the grit, the imperfections…. which to me say more about a city, it’s history and its culture than any panorama shot out there van convey. Well, that’s my opinion…
I have uploaded the last set of my Morocco travelogue section with photos from Meknes, one of Morocco’s four imperial cities. Meknes is a bit off the beaten track, not as popular and crowded as nearby Fes, but I hugely enjoyed the city, which is relaxed and its people extremely friendly and welcoming, more so than in the larger tourist destinations. It helped that I stayed in a very cute and comfortable Riad with a room on the rooftop, run by a verg welcoming family.
Meknes doesn’t have that many obvious tourist attractions, which was fine by me as I enjoyed wandering the streets and having a relaxed time photographing the old town, again fascinated by the many colours and textures on display, which is what I tried to capture in the photographs.
Again, all photos taken with a Fujifilm X-T10, except for one or two iPhone photos.
Casablanca was my fourth stop on my Morocco itinerary. I had allocated only two days for it, mostly on the recommendations of friends and guidebooks who claimed that there was not much to see in Casablanca. They were wrong.
There are basically three sections to the set. The first one is a series of photos which I took around and inside the huge Hassan II Mosque, which is the largest mosque outside of Saudi-Arabia, and one of the very few mosques in Morocco where non-Muslims are allowed to enter. It is a fascinating building, and quite an engineering feat. It also understands itself as an inclusive place of worship, incorporating design elements from Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism.
The second group of photos were taken by the seaside, on and near the “corniche” at Anfa. Here I shot the dilapidated, enpty seaside resorts and other once-modern buildings by the sea. These photos are in colour, the rest are in black and white.
The third group of photos I took in the city center, featuring chiefly the art deco buildings from colonial times. Additional photos highlight the new, modern architecture along the sea front.
One of my tourist guidebooks mentioned that people tend to come away disappointed from Casablanca because they associate the city with the movie of the same name, and that the city is nothing like the movie. Apart from the fact that I don’t recall much of the city of Casablanca being shown in the movie (I remember mostly the inside of Rick’s bar and some vague matte paintings of a city in the background), I actually found that the Art Deco buildings reminded me very much of the movie: the vestiges of a passed era, an architecture and style not quite here nor there, i.e. not quite European and not quite Moroccon, and above all, with its emphasis on white and black, best viewed in black and white.
I’m currently still sorting through the hundreds of photos which I took on my three week trip through Morocco, and after the street portrait & photography set, I have now published another set in the Travelogue section of my site, this one focusing on the colours of Marrakesh. Colour is what visitors tend to associate with Moroccon cities: above all the warm reds, but also rich blues, bright yellow and orange offset against white, ochre and other Earth colours. And indeed, the colours are astounding, but even more so are the intricacies of the designs combining the colours, whether they are mosaics, tiles, paintings, reliefs or graffiti.
In Marrakesh, I was staying in a Riad in the heart of the medieval, maze-like medina. I only had to step outside the door and walk down whichever alley I chose to be submerged in the richness of Moroccon design. Haunting the medina in the early hours of the morning and capturing the colours and the textures was certainly a highlight of my stay in Marrakesh. Quite frankly, this random walking through unknown parts of the city is an activity which I enjoy so much more than sightseeing – even though this activity was lost on the locals, who kept pointing out to me that there were no sights whereever I was heading.
The set of photos I chose to upload focuses mostly on details. I included the photos that are about what I enjoyed most in Morocco, the unique feeling that emanates from the colourful, playful designs. Apart from the photos from the median, there are also some taken in the cheerfully blue Jardin Majorelle (erstwhile home of the late fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent), the Menara Garden and the Saadian Tombs. There are some photos from a couple of tanneries where leather is made from cow and goat hide. There are three black and white images from the New City as well. I did include a number of street photographs as did not want the set to solely focus on design. After all, any portrait of a city is only complete with the people in it.
All except two images were captured with a Fujifilm X-T10 camera, the remaining two were captured with the iPhone Hipstamatic app.
Almost 20 years after it was built, Potsdamer Platz still divides opinions. Some hate it, some shrug it off, some like it. For some, it’s a symbol of Berlin’s post-reunion megolamania, a failed wanna-be Disney-Manhattan. However, for a city that does not take many chances on cutting-edge, innovative architecture, Potsdamer Platz is remarkable in that here at least are a few designs which did not originate in a Lego box. Personnaly, I like it.
Not even an hour away from Berlin, Potsdam is a city that feels very different from Berlin. It’s always fun to play the tourist in a place so close to home.
All photos taken with the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone. Hipstamatic is still my favourite camera app, and actually by now the only one I use.
Camera: Fujifilm X-E2
