Tag: Black and white

Le città e il gioco. 7.

Tobias M. Schiel11 Comments

These two finds came as surprises: I had almost given up on finding a ‘classical’ swing and the type of seesaw I remember from my childhood when I came across this swing casting its shadow near Leichweißhöhle. And I found a modernist seesaw on a playground near Parkstraße I had almost dismissed as not really worth while visiting – until the morning sun hitting the sand taught me better.

With light being as transient as it is, both these situations may have been unique – which is why I think this post is quite appropriate as a contribution to this week’s photo challenge.

The Berlin Train I

Tobias M. Schiel2 Comments

F-BO 5290-29Frankfurt Bonames Airfield (top picture) was photographed in 2010. I remember driving out to the Airlift Memorial at Frankfurt Airport afterwards but having no desire to photograph the historic airplanes there… However, I did return to the Airlift Memorial in December 2012 to photograph airplanes there (bottom).

Now it just felt right to combine pictures from the two sessions – showing the tarmac and a part of the wing of a Douglas C-54. They are both about aviation, and the principles of abstraction appear quite similar. Are these two in tune?

Resolved

Tobias M. Schiel15 Comments

289-31290-22This week’s photo theme is “Resolved“, and Sara kindly suggested that the resolution might as well be about our photography: In 2013, I would like to make pictures that are quite abstract – because I just love playing with the pictorial space – yet tell of a story.

So here are pictures I made when I visited the Luftbrücke memorial near Frankfurt Airport. It is my story about a place that reminds us of a transatlantic story (and of a story that tells us how problems can be resolved).

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Take Five

Tobias M. Schiel12 Comments

282-36279-12286-20 269-22 275-07 288-06… get six! Picking my favourite pictures made in 2012 was not easy to begin with. After I had finally narrowed the choice down, I realized I love thinking in pairs: Are there combinations that work better than others, juxtapositions I would check out were I to put together an exhibition? I think there are … and then Number 5 begged to be paired with an additional picture – hence the extra.

Why this choice? What do I like about these pictures? Scrolling through them there is one thing I realize to my own surprise: Though I see something abstract in all of them, they all seem to contain stories (which I leave for you to figure out).

The pictures were taken travelling England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Top to bottom: Kranzplatz Playground, Wiesbaden, Germany; Alfriston Clergy House, England; Port of Hamburg, Germany; beach near Westkapelle on Walcheren, Netherlands; Charmouth, England; and just up the street from our place in Wiesbaden. They are my entry for this week’s photo challenge.

Inspiration

Tobias M. Schiel6 Comments

“We want to see portraits of you doing something that inspires you to blog.” That’s what the Special Photo Challenge asked for. So here are some things that inspire me.

The left picture shows many objects – me photographing stuff, actually. It was inspired by Susan Sontag’s essays on photography: The mere act of making a photograph, Sontag says, re-evaluates the stuff we find because taking a picture equals claiming that the subject is deserves to be looked at – even ugly objects become ‘nice’ in photograph. Hence Sontag’s idea that photography aesteticizes the whole world.

Though I find a lot of inspiration in texts, pictures inspire me too: I ‘found’ the right one after visiting an Ellsworth Kelly exhibition entitled “Black and White”. This abstract picture with me in it may well be a reaction to (or inspired by) the pictures I saw. – While all this describes my motivation to photograph, this blog is really inspired by my love of photography, and the desire to share my pictures and see what you think.