Summer in the Park

As I mentioned in my last post, I am finding motivation very hard to come by at present, my lack of enthusiasm for the course and photography in general is beginning to really get me down.  This week I kind of tried to get a grip, for the last 10 weeks I have been averaging 12 hour work days together with a long haul trip to California.  I came to the realization that it was not the course, it was me, I was approaching the classic symptoms of burn out.  It is ironic, in my company we get regular emails warning of this and asking us to take care of ourselves, whilst at the same time we make people redundant and give their work to the remaining staff -  a vicious circle that never ends well.  Rather than being a relief my course was becoming yet more work, yet more pressure.  I recognize this now and whilst reducing my work load is going to be hard, I am working on an attitude adjustment and getting a full medical from my GP to make sure I make it past my 50th Birthday - OK, maybe a little melodramatic, but the stress induced chest pains I am having are going to need attention.  On the bright side, it's Saturday morning and rather than mope around I am writing up some photographic work and getting ready to head into town to visit the modern art gallery for a little inspiration and to take photos of people looking at art.

One of the added pressures has been the incessent heat, which is draining, but also limits me photographically, there is simply too much light right now and walking around doing street photography is extremely draining.  However, when the temperature heads into the mid 30's it changes the landscape.  I originally intended these photographs to be for the 8th project looking at workflow and shot selection, however, in the end the images I created were far too opportunistic and of a single type to really explore that issue. I spent Sunday afternoon in the southern end of the Englischer Garten simply walking around trying to capture the insane number of people simply lying around in the park.

This area was the subject for my 3rd assignment for Landscape.  This is a typical image of the space I was visiting, early in the morning in October/November

And last weekend

OK, different framing and B&W, but it is exactly the same space.  The question I asked myself was how to capture this multitude and express it as an image.  The photographs are so busy, perhaps that is the answer, to create some form of almost mosaic of people and bicycles.

Alternatively I also tried to focus on smaller groups or activities, but in the throng this was very hard

Getting separation of the subjects from the background was very hard and not well achieved.  The brightness limited using a very shallow aperture without an ND filter, which I do not have for my Samsung system.  One advantage of the Samsung NX20 is that it has a flip out LCD.  This enables me to shoot from the waste using the camera almost like a TLR.  This alters the perspective and for these shots of people on the ground got me closer to their plane.  It is also nicely discreet and enables me to shield the screen with my body.  Finally it also is much more stable than the stupidity of holding a camera at arms length and looking at a tiny LCD screen.

The contrast was shockingly high and I am quite pleased with how the little Samsung performed, this is a really remarkable camera, not very fashionable but so versatile and the optics are fantastic for a mirrorless system.  This is an attempt at pushing the contrast to the limit, not sure if it works or even if I like it.  I was looking for dark shadows and then people occupying the strips of light between the shade.  I have to admit I would have been sitting in the shade.

I end with a photo in a very different vein, taken from a bridge crossing the River Isar.  I have cropped the photo quite heavily to make it a study of two points in a fairly featureless space

I think more than anything else this speaks of the summer and escape from the heat.

My gradual work towards Assignment 4 and the "Die Muenchener" is slowly assembling.  Each week I am capturing one or two photographs that might work into the format, the last image above is, I think, a good one.  My current problem is that I have spent too much time photographing the special and not enough time on the ordinary.  I need to add some street furniture and day to day scenes to the summer/festival scenes that I am so far amassing.  What is already clear is that my view on the world is going to be brighter and more optimistic than Robert Frank's take on 1950's USA.  Munich is a city very much at peace with itself, wealthy, happy, caring, very much the opposite of what it once was.

Having said that I need to be careful to be representative and include imagery that reveals some of the cracks in the veneer, there is poverty, violence and immorality, although the last one is also quite fun, Germans are quite free about sexual expression compared to the Brits.

Dear Diary, I think I am starting to enjoy this!