Summer | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts from the ‘Summer’ category

Fotoeins Friday: Bayreuth Opera House, 🇩🇪 UNESCO WHS

Bayreuth, Germany: inside the main hall of the Margravial Opera House (Markgräfliches Opernhaus) during guided tour. The building was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012.

I made the image above on 9 Jun 2024 with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime and the following settings: 1/30-sec, f/2.8, ISO6400, and 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-wBK.

My Berlin: Wrapped Reichstag at night, 30 years on

Above: “Wrapped Reichstag 1995–2025” light show.

In 1995, the artist duo Christo & Jeanne-Claude carried out a bold but contentious project by covering Berlin’s landmark Reichstag parliament building. Plans for the project had taken over 20 years, even though the artwork had always meant to be temporary and all expenses had been covered without corporate sponsors. Over 5 million visited in a period of 12 days in the summer of 1995 to look at the undulating “silver dream” in the German capital city. The timing was ideal. After reunification of the two Germanys in 1990, the new home of the federal parliament would be Berlin’s Reichstag. Renovations to the building began in the autumn of 1995 with the federal parliament opening in the spring of 1999.

From 9 to 22 June 2025, the Reichstag building was illuminated nightly with a light show in a 30-year anniversary tribute to the famous 1995 artwork. In a 20- to 30-minute cycle, the light-show appeared to first envelop the building in silver fabric. The fabric cover flapped in artificial breeze, before the cover lost its shape and fell onto the ground at the base of the building. The free-of-charge light show began shortly after sunset at about 930pm and continued until 1am. Whatever Christo and Jeanne-Claude chose to cover and transform, their art works posed questions of perception, origins, shape, functionality, and permanence.

• DW: Germany Arts
• Visit Berlin

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Nuremberg: The Landmark Trials in Room 600, 80 years on

Above: In front of the Justizpalast (Palace of Justice) at the corner of Benjamin-Ferencz-Platz and Fürther Strasse in Nuremberg, Germany.

On 20 November 1945, an extraordinary trial got under way in the German city of Nuremberg, only six months after the Nazis surrendered to the Allied nations in World War 2. For the first time in modern history, an assembled tribunal of international judges presided over trials against top leaders of a nation for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to carry out these crimes.

What is called the “Nuremberg Trials” refers primarily to the “Major War Criminals Trial” where over 20 leaders in German Nazi high command were put on trial before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) from November 1945 to October 1946. The IMT consisted of judges from each of the four Allied nations: Great Britain, France, United States, and the U.S.S.R. Subsequently from late-1946 to 1949, 12 additional trials were held before American military tribunals to uncover and highlight the extent and depth to which additional leaders in German society supported the Nazi dictatorship.

“… The privilege of opening the first trial in history for crimes against the peace of the world imposes a grave responsibility. The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive their being repeated. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that power has ever paid to reason.”

– Opening statement by Robert H. Jackson, U.S. chief prosecutor, on the second day of the Nuremberg Trials (Major War Criminals Trial), 21 November 1945; see Sources below.

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Helgoland, Heligoland, Schleswig-Holstein, Düne, Nordsee, North Sea, Germany, Deutschland, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday, Helgoland: Helgoländer Felssockel marine reserve

It’s overcast with light “mizzle” (mist-drizzle), but the winds are relatively light and the water chop reasonable. Not only are these are the waters of the North Sea just off Helgoland island, but this is also the Helgoländer Felssockel marine nature reserve, designated and established in 1981. The reserve does not include Helgoland nor the Düne islet. In the background at centre are the two tall remaining rock formations: “Kurze Anna” (Little Anna) and “Lange Anna” (Tall Anna).

I made the image above with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime on 25 May 2024 with the following settings: 1/500-sec, f/11, ISO1000, 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-w95.

Fotoeins Friday, Helgoland: nesting northern gannets

It’s bird season! But this is definitely not hunting with guns, but rather, a photographic hunt of the wild mass of noisy smelly birds. Pictured here is a small sampling of thousands of northern gannets nesting on their little mounds, each with at least an egg, hatchling, or in this case, a chick as indicated by an arrow.

I made the image above with a Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime on 24 May 2024 with the following settings: 1/500-sec, f/13, ISO1000, 18.5mm focal length (28mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins DOT com as https://wp.me/p1BIdT-w8R.