I have opted to work to a theme for this project, a brief study of the Munich Christmas markets. At this time of year almost every neighbourhood attracts a cluster of huts selling decorations and handworked Christmas presents. At the heart of each will be a Gluewein stand and a collection of huts selling grilled bratwurst, flammkuechen, and other delights that simply taste so much better for being consumed in the open air. This is an intrinsic element of Munich's calendar, the opening of the stands on the first weekend of advent is greatly looked forward to, it represents the start of the festive season.
As well as being a chance to capture the spirit of the season a crowded Christmas market provided an opportunity to practice some candid photographs and practice my street skills. The following photos are from just two Christmas markets, the main one in the center of Munich and the market in the middle of the Englischer Garten, Munich's principal park. The latter is a magical place, far from the busy streets, so quiet and with no overhead street lighting. My camera of choice was my Fuji X100, small, discreet and with very good low light abilities. These are places that need to be photographed at dusk to get the best out of the lighting. I used the cameras tiny flash as a fill light to pull up the lighting on peoples faces. It also created some interested effects in the falling snow.
My first image is of one of the Gluewein stands just in front of the town hall. Christmas markets are a very inclusive tradition, young and old, the cool and not so cool, all enjoy a glass or two and an opportunity to shop. These guys posed for me and somehow this captures the old and the new.
A rather simple shot, but one that tells the story, people shopping or simply enjoying looking at the myriad of colourful decorations in the stand.
When taking this set it was important for me to try and capture the interaction of the people with the stands, but also in a candid manner. I found that positioning myself at the end of the stands shooting along them took me out of peoples eye lines, but still provided the opportunity to capture interaction, whether a simple glance or a more involved transaction.
I particularly like the next image, it captures the spirit of the market, it is very hard not to smile at a Christmas market. In this and the latter image I have cropped to a square format, eliminating unneeded background and bring the focus of the viewer to the subject. A lesson learned from my assignment 2 debacle is to vary the framing.
Now moving to photographs taken in the park and in the snow. The following photograph uses a long shutter speed with the risk of blurring (1/10s), but the detail is still good enough. I do find that my ability to hand hold the smaller X100 is far better than with DSLRs, even though the X100 lacks image stabilization. Here the longer exposure has caused the falling snow to streak across the frame, adding to the sense of cold.
Even though it was bitterly cold, the market was packed - this was a Sunday evening, most popular day of the week for the markets as the advent Sundays are very symbolic here as part of the Christmas count down. This show needed dusk lighting to work, flash was not going to help for such a wide image. This is an illustrative shot.
On a similar vein the following is also an illustrative shot, an attempt to capture the falling snow in the lights and the crowds flocking through the market. With this and all of the other shots I have exposed for ambient light and then used flash for fill in. ISO is almost always 3200, I leave this on an auto setting, telling the camera to try and give me 1/100s for the shutter speed. The Fuji image quality is fine at ISO 3200, but falls over a cliff at 6400 and beyond.
My parting show is of the people who make the market work, the Bratwurst grillers, without them the markets would be far less fun. Here the fill flash has lit up the snow and created the specks at the bottom of the frame. Underwater I try so hard to avoid this effect, here it adds to the atmosphere.
Well, that was Christmas in Munich, each year is the same, and thank goodness for that. The tradition of the Christmas markets is many hundreds of years old and very treasured by the citizens of Munich, a true urban tradition and a key to enjoying this time of year. Perhaps this is not the urban photography the project had in mind, but I am almost entirely shooting in the city so will get plenty of practice over the coming year.
That completes the compulsory projects for Chapter 1. I missed the two optional ones, I may return to them time permitting, but neither are of particular interest to me. I have much work to catch up on, I am already working on my thoughts for Assignment 3, which should be at the end of Chapter 3.
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