Posts in Category: Germany

8/26/2010

The Dom: Wetzlar, Germany

There is an interesting story, of course, behind the Dom…the not quite cathedral of old Wetzlar. The original church was built in the 1300s, but as the city of Wetzlar grew (salt and iron), the town fathers found the ambition to be a cathedral city, and began to build a new church around the walls of the old. That’s how they did it then…they literally built the new building with the old one inside it. Before it was completed, Wetzlar fell on hard times, and construction was abandoned. It was restarted, as I remember the story, 3 separate times in the next 200 years, as the fortunes and ambitions of the town and the town fathers waxed and waned, each time with a new architect and a new style.  It never was finished. There were supposed to be two towers, and inside the church there are doorways half way up blank walls where new floors had been planned and never installed. And yet, because of that, it is one of the most interesting churches in Germany, containing as it does, written in stone, a record of the changing styles in church architecture over almost 3 centuries.

Sitting high on the hill on which old Wetzlar is built, the Dom dominates the skyline from any direction, but it is actually not easy to find a good spot for photography. This is a classic distant shot, taken from the long park along the River Lahn, beyond the stone bridge, again on my one rainy late evening of photography on this trip to Wetzlar. In this light, and with that sky, it certainly has drama. What you see is a Photomatix HDR rendered from two Canon SX20IS wide angle exposures. (The blue on the tower is not a lens or sensor flaw. There is scaffolding the full height of the tower where they are repairing and reinforcing the walls, and it is, characteristically, covered in bright blue polyester tarps.)

After blending and tone-mapping in Photomatix Lite, I did my usual Blackpoint adjustment, added Clarity and Vibrance, and sharpen in Lighroom. Some perspective adjustment was also applied.

From Germany and England 2010.

8/25/2010

Giessen Backyard

Still rainy days in Germany when I took this shot. I visited a colleagues home in Giessen in the early German evening, and while he discussed roof repairs with his contractor, I looked around for photo options. This is taken straight down from a balcony on the second floor. I like it as an abstract…the contrast of colors and textures and forms.

Canon SD4000IS at 28mm equivalent field of view @ f2.8 @ 1/100th @ ISO 200. Programmed auto.

Adjusted Blackpoint, added Clarity and Vibrance, sharpen, and auto white balance in Lightroom.

From Germany and England 2010.

8/24/2010

Half-Timber Wetzlar

The Old Town section of Wetzlar has buildings dating from the late 1300s to the present. Many half-timbered buildings from the 14th and 15th centuries have been lovingly restored. You can see the progression of building…the oldest buildings are the straightest, as they still had access to tall timber. As the town grew, they had to rely on shorter timbers and build one story on top of the other. Over time the various stories have leaned different ways, giving the the 15th century houses a unique, slightly crazed, character. When you add brightly painted carved detail, and filled flower boxes the effect is pretty amazing.

City photography is always a challenge, due to perspective and wide angle lens distortions. We are used to seeing buildings leaning crazy directions, but in the case of Wetzlar’s half-timbered houses part  of  the lean is reality. The building on the right above is a classic example. No one is going to believe the lean of the roof peak, but is, in fact, reality. Correcting distortions for a more natural view is never easy, but the new tools in Lightroom 3 are nothing short of amazing, and, for the first time I was able to pull the half-timbered shots back to something very close to the way I see them with my naked eye.

All the shots here are with the Canon SX20IS. The top shot is an HDR using two exposures in Photomatix Lite, using the exposure blending mode to keep the sky more natural. The other two shots are straight-forward single exposures processed in Lightroom with my usual mix of Blackpoint adjustment, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpening. In both cases the image was cropped for composition and to eliminate distractions, and adjusted using the distortion controls for more believable perspective.

From Gemany and England 2010.

8/23/2010

Gables

This is one of my favorite views of Wetzlar. I love the jumble of gables and the scatter of skylights. I have taken this shot many times…but never on a late rainy evening, and never with HDR in mind. This is again, two exposures separated by 3EV combined in Photomatix. I had to turn the strength of the blend way down, or the sky went way dramatic.

To my eye that is a bit over the top, though it does make a statement.

After processing in Photomatix, both shots were taken into Lightroom, where the first challenge was correcting the vertical perspective distortion and some lens distortion for a more natural look. Then I adjusted Blackpoint, added Clarity and Vibrance and used the Sharpen narrow edges preset.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent. ISO 200.

From Germany and England 2010.

8/22/2010

Window Light

Happy Sunday!  I am composing this on a Thursday morning in England, as Sunday morning will find me at the British Birding Fair already at this time. This is another shot from my late rainy evening stroll through old town Wetzlar. One of the reasons I like the old town is that it is full of little corners like this one, along a narrow (10 feet wide at most) cobbled street between half-timbered buildings dating from the 1500’s. I like the contrast of the blue wall, with its interesting texture and the bright red and green geraniums. The golden glow of the light behind the pebbled glass window completes the picture for me.

Windows are always interesting to me as photographic elements, and I have noticed among photographers  a similar fascination (among my flickr friends at least…one of my most visited images is a window shot).

For me it is about what they reveal and what they hide. They are meant to provide a view from within and light from without, for those who live inside. But they also. of course, provide a view of the life within to those who are outside. Jesus has something to say about that…about eyes as windows, and about the light that should shine out of them. The title of my SmugMug site comes from one of those passages. I hope my windows show at least such a golden glow on a late rainy evening…even if they are too often, just as obscuring as this one.

This took considerable distortion and perspective tweaking in Lightroom since I shot it an odd oblique angle (to chatch the light in the window). Then my standard Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance and Sharpen.

From Germany and England 2010.

8/21/2010

Lahn Bridge: Wetzlar

An very old coble stone bridge provides access to the lower part of the old town section of Wetzlar. Here we see it in another late evening shot (after 8PM) on a rainy day in August. The concrete sluice way replaces falls and rapids that contributed to flooding in the past, and keeps the water through the commercial section of the new town at manageable levels. The river is managed, in part, for tourism as it is one of the most popular canoeing trails in Europe.

This is a sudo HDR using the tone mapping functions in Photomatix, applied to a single image, plus some tweaking of Blackpoint, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpening  in Lightroom.

Canon SX20IS at 28mm equivalent @ f2.8 @ 1/60 @ ISO 200. Landscape mode.

From Germany and England 2010.

8/20/2010

Rooftops: Hamburg

What does a photographer do if stuck in a 5th office all day on his first (and likely only) visit  to Hamburg (and on a gray day at that).

He sees what is to be seen out the windows and snaps a few on short breaks in the meeting schedule. At lease that’s what I do.

Canon SD4000IS (which is great for this kind of spontaneous work) at 1) 90mm equivalent @ f5 @ 1/320th @ ISO 125 and 2) 106mm equivalent @ f5 @ 1/125th @ ISO 125. Programmed auto.

Both received a combination of Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen narrow edges in Lightroom, as well as some distortion tweaking and slight cropping for composition.

From Germany and England 2010.

And then, of course, there is the classic out the windshield shot from the moving car. This one required considerable adjustment for perspective distortion as well a cropping for composition.

8/19/2010

Mill Canal, River Lahn: Wetzlar Germany

I love to walk the old town of Wetzlar, and I never fail to find something new to photograph, or to discover a new light on an old favorite scene, but my only opportunity this trip was between 8 and 9PM at the tag end of day of heavy rain. I took my umbrella, and used it, as I explored what the fading light had to say about the ancient town. This is the mill canal along the old town side of the River Lahn were it separates, for the most part, Old Wetzlar and New. I love this jumble of houses, of many different ages (and that is using ages in its historical sense), along the canal, and the light gave me a good excuse to try an HDR shot where nothing else would have worked. The long exposure required for the late evening foreground would have burned the sky white, and an exposure for the clouds would have left the foreground close to black. I took two exposures separated by 3.5 stops, –2EV and +1.5EV, and combined them using the Detail Enhancement/Tone Mapping mode in Photomatix. The result is actually pretty close to a naked eye view. Presented as an photograph, it might strikes the eye as painterly, since we know, from daily experience of recoded images, that a camera could not have caught that range.

The image is not perfect. I was working, as usual, without a tripod, and trying to balance an umbrella as well…but I still like the effect. You would have to walk along the canal in Wetzlar, on a rainy evening with your umbrella up, to know how well it captures the atmosphere of the place.

In addition to the treatment in Photomatix, I adjusted color balance in Lighroom, slid the Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance, and used the Sharpen narrow edges preset. I also used the distortion controls, both for lens and vertical perspective, to restore a natural look.

Corrected distortion is actually another reason why the experienced eye sees this image as painterly…we have come to expect, to totally accept, wide angle and vertical distortion in photographs…when it is not there, or when it is corrected as in this image, we miss it!

From Germany and England 2010.

12/1/2009

 

Detail: Wetzlar Old Town

Happy December! Happy December 2009!

The post and beam, half timbered construction of Old Town Wetzlar is always fascinating, especially as it is, for the most part, really well kept up or restored…as though the whole city acts as a museum. And the work is ongoing. I have never been there when several of the Old Town buildings were not under restoration. On this trip there were cranes and scaffolding and house jacks everywhere.

The result is, however, a wonderful display of architectural  detail and a real sense of another time. This house is on a narrow side street just over the bridge (now, as in past, a thriving commercial center with ground floor shops and dwellings above).

Sony DSC H50 at about 55mm equivalent. F3.2 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.

One of the lessons of this trip and my Pic of the Day series using the images is how much lower the overall light levels are in Europe. This shot was taken on a cloudy day, but still, f3.2 @ 1/60th? I would expect exposure values at least twice that in a similar shot anywhere in the US.

Very minimal processing in Lightroom. Adjustments to Blackpoint, Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpening.

This is a shot even closer in.

 

More Detail: Old Town Wetzlar

 

 

 

11/30/2009

 

The Dom up the Alley Stairs

Again the Dom, this time from the Old Town just across the bridge. This alley/stair has always fascinated me with its mixture of forms and textures. The distortions of the Sony H50 lens are obvious here, but any lens in this situation is going to show at its worst.

Sony DSC H50 at full wide (31mm equivalent). f3.5 @ 1/60th @ ISO 100. Programmed auto.

My usual in Lightroom. Blackpoint right, added Clarity and Vibrance. Sharpen Landscape preset.

From Germany 2009.