Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts from the ‘Night Photography’ category

A mobile test

This Heading is H4

I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to create a post on mobile, independently of laptop or desktop. The present example is a text block that goes before an image.

“The Sappers were here” (www); photo on 13 Apr 2024 (iP15). Example of inserted image block.

This is an example of a text block after an image; in this case, it’s at night across Brunette Avenue from Sapperton SkyTrain station in New Westminster, BC.

While I might add a few thoughts about image and context of its time and place, further lack of customization (e.g., access to shortlink, modified edit-defaults via desktop, etc.) emphasizes the simplicity to the swift overall process of content creation and snobbery by sidestepping users’ own creative process to content creation.

I made the image above with an iPhone15 on 13 April 2024. Composed entirely within Jetpack for iOS, this post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-siu.

Zoologischer Garten, Zoo Station, Bahnhof Zoologischer Garten, Berlin, Hauptstadt, Germany, Deutschland, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Berlin 2021, part 1

By late-2021, the world reopened its borders, as air-passengers returned to the skies. I leapt at the chance to return to the other side of the planet for a quick 10-day’er in Berlin. Only two years have passed, but truth is a vast chasm of broken records and loss. I’ve made abundant visual snaps, and yet, memories have remained stuck in the familiar: fresh, unambiguous, excruciating.

Zoologischer Garten station at night, from C/O Berlin.

Zoologischer Garten train station is named for the adjacent zoo-park of the same name. “Zoo Station” became the key station for train traffic in West Berlin during years of separation and division by the Berlin Wall. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and subsequent reunification of Berlin, the station’s importance diminished; its use today is primarily for suburban S-Bahn and regional trains. The station is immortalized in the song “Zoo Station” by Irish band U2, and coincidentally, the station is served by the city’s U-Bahn underground metro lines U2 and U9.

“Either I’m swimming among lights, or I’m drowning in the tide …”

I made the photo above on 22 Nov 2021 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and these settings: 1/2-sec, f/8, ISO2500 and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-rwZ.

My Fuji X70: Monochrome Red (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: Gateway Gardens station, Frankfurt am Main – 11 May 2023.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has added a lot to my approach to photography for projects in both domestic and international scope. To satisfy my curiosity about Fujifilm’s analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes for varying “looks” and “palettes” applied to images, I’ve provided examples of X70 images with these recipes:

•   CineStill 800T
•   Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm)
•   Fujichrome Slide
•   Kodachrome 64
•   Kodacolor
•   Kodak Platinum 200

I examine the Monochrome+R film-simulation recipe, which Ritchie Roesch describes in Fuji X Weekly:

… Back when I shot black-and-white film, I usually used a color filter to manipulate the shades of grey, and for landscape photography the Red filter was my most-used option. You cannot use these filters on your Fujifilm camera, but Fujifilm does provide you with three faux filters: +Y, +R, and +G. These mimic the aesthetic of using a Yellow, Red, or Green filter (sort of). In my opinion, +R doesn’t actually replicate the use of a Red filter very well; it’s more like an Orange filter. This recipe is intended to produce a look more similar to a Red filter on black-and-white film, which means that it will darken blues and lighten reds.

This recipe is for the X-Trans II sensor. My X70 settings are:

  • “Monochrome+R” built-in film-sim
  • Dynamic Range: DR400
  • Color: —
  • Sharpness: +1 (Medium-Hard)
  • Highlight: -1 (Medium-Soft)
  • Shadow: +2 (Hard)
  • Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
  • White Balance: Fluorescent1 (day); -4 Red, +7 Blue
  • ISO: Auto, up to 6400

I had assigned this recipe as “general black and white”, with which I experimented in a variety of locations and settings. The following images are almost straight-out-of-the-camera; only adjustments to brightness level and size (2048 by 1365 pix) have been applied, with no corrections to colour, contrast, geometric distortion, or rotation.

( Click here for images )

My Fuji X70: CineStill 800T (XTrans2 recipe)

Above/featured: Archangel Michael dispatching the devil: St. Michael’s Church, Vienna – 1 Jun 2023.

The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has added a lot to my approach to photography for projects in domestic and international scope. To satisfy my curiosity about Fujifilm’s analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes for varying “looks” and “palettes” applied to images, I’ve provided examples of X70 images with these recipes:

•   Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm)
•   Fujichrome Slide
•   Kodachrome 64
•   Kodacolor
•   Kodak Platinum 200

Here I show images made with the “CineStill 800T” recipe, which Ritchie Roesch describes in Fuji X Weekly:

… CineStill 800T is Kodak Vision3 500T motion picture film that’s been modified for use in 35mm film cameras and development using the C-41 process. Because it has the RemJet layer removed, it is more prone to halation. The “T” in the name means tungsten-balanced, which is a fancy way of saying that it is white-balanced for artificial light and not daylight. … Even though the film that this recipe is intended to mimic is Tungsten-balanced, the recipe can still produce interesting pictures in daylight. It’s a versatile recipe, but it definitely delivers the best results in artificial light.

The recipe is for the X-Trans II sensor; the settings on my X70 are:

  • “Pro Neg Std” built-in film-sim
  • Dynamic Range: DR400
  • Color: -1 (Medium-Low)
  • Sharpness: 0 (Medium)
  • Highlight: +2 (High)
  • Shadow: +1 (Medium-High)
  • Noise Reduction: -2 (Low)
  • White Balance: 4300K; -3 Red, -3 Blue
  • ISO: Auto, up to 3200

I assigned this recipe for the “nighttime” setting as 1 of the 7 camera’s custom presets, but I also experimented in daylight at a variety of locations. The following JPG images are “almost” straight-out-of-the-camera; only adjustments to brightness level and a crop to a predefined image size have been applied, with no corrections to colour, contrast, geometric distortion, or rotation. I agree with Roesch’s statement about getting “best results” after dark in artificial light, but I got some interesting images in daylight as well.

( Click here for images )

Vienna: Lichtzeichen testament to Jewish presence

Above/featured: Lichtzeichen number 10, Stumperschul, in the city’s 6th district. Photo, 28 May 2022.

From a distance, the light seems suspended in mid-air.

Closing the distance widens my realization: it’s an illuminated sculpture that has a curved warped shape on top. That’s also when understanding narrows into sharp focus when I stand directly underneath: the shape “straightens” out, revealing itself as a Star of David.

Lichtzeichen Wien (LZ) consists of 26 structures in the Vienna region, marking former locations of synagogues, schools, temples, and prayer rooms destroyed by the Nazis in the pogrom of November 1938. During the night of 9–10 November 1938, the Nazi regime organized and carried out a systematic attack against the Jewish population in Germany and Austria. The rampage in Vienna continued for several days; most of the city’s synagogues, temples, and prayer-halls were destroyed.

An urban memorial project by joint collaboration of the Jewish Museum Vienna and the University of Applied Arts Vienna consists of identical columns designed by artist Lukas Kaufmann. The commemorative project is called “Ot” (אות), which means “symbol” in Hebrew. Each “light column” sculpture stands about 5-metres high with a star of David, and includes the name of the former Jewish structure and an accompanying QR-code. Official unveiling of the memorial project occurred in 2018 on the 80th anniversary of the 1938 pogrom.

I visited and photographed 25 of the 26 Lichtzeichen locations in Vienna over a period of two separate months in 2022 and 2023. The 26th memorial is in Wiener Neustadt, a city about 50 km south from Vienna.

( Click here for images and more )