Urban Photography - Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Urban Photography’ category

Sydney: happy 52 to the Opera House (2025)

Above/featured: South view from Sydney Harbour towards the CBD – 12 Apr 2013 (450D).

Standing prominently above Sydney’s Bennelong Point, the white shelled structure serves as an icon for city and country.

The Sydney Opera House is made up of three groups of interlocking “vaulted shells” housing two primary concert auditorium spaces. The shell-like structures sit upon a large platform, encompassed on the outside by stepped terraces as staging or assembly areas for visitors.

On 20 October 1973, Queen Elizabeth II formally opened The Opera House. In the decades since, the building has become an icon for city and country. The building endures as a “landmark” and “ambassador” for both city and country. Immediately telling are the roof’s white shells, looking like wind-blown sails at a distance in the harbour.

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Staroměstské náměstí, Old Town Square, Praha, Prague, Czech Republic, fotoeins.com

My Prague: 5 Spots for Night Photos

(last edited: 19 Jul 2019.)

Prague is very attractive by day, but the Czech capital city is also beautiful at night.

By day, visitors are out and about, moving from one attraction to another. At night, sounds from pub crawls and pre-wedding parties seem to fill the air.

A closer look reveals a romantic side to the city with silent streets and half-empty plazas. A yellow glow settles like a warm and welcoming halo, softening the sharp lines of centuries-old architecture, and smoothing over cobbled stones embedded in old neighbourhood streets.

It’s easy to forget a significant part of central Prague is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but the following five locations to view the city at night provide great reminders. Don’t ignore the illuminated city after dark, which is still very safe, and don’t forget to bring your camera when journeying out at night.

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VIVID Sydney lights festival: 2013 highlights

Since 2009, the annual VIVID Sydney festival lights up the city with vibrant colour and imaginative displays. Between 24 May and 10 June, the 2013 version has over 60 light projections on display around Sydney Cove, Walsh Bay, and Darling Harbour.

VIVID Sydney is an important annual wintertime cultural event bringing together light installations, live music, photography, design, creative ideas, and people in one of the largest festivals in the southern hemisphere. With the central display on the sails of the Opera House, the Spinifex Group put their unique spin to “Lighting the Sails.” Also, for the first time, the Sydney Harbour Bridge gets the VIVID treatment.

I’m fortunate to have photographed a variety of installations over six evenings 24, 26, 28, 30 May; and 3 June 2013. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-3qf.

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Sydney Monorail: the final stop after 25 years

(24 June 2013.)

For 25 years, the Metro Monorail (wiki) has allowed both residents and visitors to go between the downtown Central Business District (CBD) and Darling Harbour. After spending some time in Sydney, it’ll be different to view the CBD without seeing the overhead guideway or the monorail sliding in between the buildings.

On the other hand, some argue it’s about time the unsightly eyesore of the monorail disappeared.

What’s certain is that the Sydney Monorail service will cease operations on 30 June 2013.

After many years of abandonment and neglect, Darling Harbour was redeveloped in the late-1980s as a pedestrian vehicle-free tourist area. The redevelopment project included construction of the Sydney Monorail which began operations in 1988. The monorail was built as a single 3.6-kilometre loop with eight stations, connecting the CBD, Darling Harbour, the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, and Chinatown/Haymarket in a complete circuit within 20 minutes.

With little prospect for an upgrade to an aging transport system or for continuing operating funds, the transport authority for the state of New South Wales purchased the company operating the Monorail, and announced in June 2012 monorail operations would stop in one year’s time.

After its final stop on 30 June, the monorail trains will be decommissioned. The track, guideway, and station infrastructure will be dismantled, demolished, and removed. This process will give way for an expanded entertainment, convention, and exhibition centre (International Convention Centre, ICC Sydney) for scheduled completion by the end of 2016, although some disagree with plans to demolish the present convention centre.

“Goodbye, and thanks for the memories …”

Removal of the monorail began August 2013 and was completed by April 2014.

I made the photos above on 2 April, 12 April, and 12 May 2013. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-3d3.

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Berlin: the city’s oldest Jewish Cemetery

Der Jüdische Friedhof (Old Jewish Cemetery), Grosse Hamburger Strasse

In the past, I’ve often felt guilty for taking photographs at a cemetery, as if the act of opening and closing the camera’s shutter somehow “exposes and steals” the essence of people who are laid to rest. Only in the last few years have I overcome these feelings, as I now see cemeteries as beautiful places to visit and to witness frozen snapshots to individual lives over time. On this late-autumn afternoon, I stood in the middle of the garden, transported to a different place and a different time, surrounded by tranquility and living memories.

Große Hamburger Straße (or Greater Hamburg Street) was the key central road in what was once the Spandauer Vorstadt, which was the suburb or town at the foot of the former Berlin city gates. The road allowed for trade and movement from Berlin in the direction towards the nearby town of Spandau.

According to berlin.de, the area developed around the Hackesche Market and Courtyards:

Historically, development of the Höfe went hand in hand with the growth of Berlin as a thriving urban centre. The expansion started around 1700 from an outer suburb known as Spandauer Vorstadt, located outside the Spandau City gate which already had its own church, the Sophienkirche as early as 1712. Friedrich Wilhelm I built a new city wall here and the former suburb became a new urban district belonging to Berlin. Today’s Hackescher Markt takes its name from the market built here by a Spandau city officer, Count von Hacke.

The influx of Jewish migrants and the exiled French Huguenots gave the district the cosmopolitan diversity which it never lost. The first synagogue was built in this area and the first Jewish cemetery established on the Grosse Hamburger Strasse. Another name for the area, the Scheunenviertel (barn district) is associated today with up and coming art galleries and the more bohemian side of Berlin. The largest synagogue in Germany was built in nearby Oranienburger Strasse in 1866.

In use from 1672 to 1827, this is Berlin’s oldest cemetery for the Jewish community. Buried here is Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786), philosopher, a founding father of the Jewish Enlightenment, and grandfather to the great composer Felix Mendelssohn. During the last stages of fighting in the Second World War, 2425 dead were buried here in 16 mass graves. With no clear boundaries separating those buried in the past from those buried during the war, the new memorial garden was constructed and restored in 2007-08 with all of the buried left undisturbed as they were.

The present location was also the site of the first nursing home in 1844 for the Jewish community in Berlin. The Gestapo transformed the home in 1942 to a collection and staging point for prisoners, and ordered the destruction of the entire site in 1943. 55000 Berlin Jews from infants to the elderly were deported and murdered in the concentration camps at Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.

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