Potsdamer Platz | Fotoeins Fotografie

Posts tagged ‘Potsdamer Platz’

Festival of Lights, Potsdamer Platz, Hauptstadt, Berlin, Germany, fotoeins, myRTW

Fotoeins Friday: optical scatter, Berlin Potsdamer Platz

21 October 2012.

Berlin’s Festival of Lights takes place every year in early- to mid-October at various sites and plazas in the German capital city. At Potsdamer Platz train station (“Bahnhof”), the light show begins with beams “marked” by carbon-dioxide “smoke” with the surrounding buildings as “screens”. We see “light scatter” as carbon-dioxide molecules are much smaller in size (about 200 picometres or 2 Angstroms) compared to the wavelength of the visual light (about 0.5 micron or 5000 Angstroms) being scattered. At right angles, the intensity of scattered light is one half of the intensity of light in the forward direction. This is an example of Rayleigh scattering which is also responsible for why clear skies by day are blue. Light intensity also falls off with the inverse source of the distance from the source, and in just a few metres, light intensity diminishes to near zero. Only the word “Bahnhof” which indicates the entrance into Potsdamer Platz station stands alone.

Bonus: you get a pretty picture and a quick lesson in physics.

During my year-long RTW, I made this photo on 21 October 2012 with the Canon 450D, 18-55 kit-lens, and these settings: 1/5-sec, f/4.5, ISO800, 33mm focal length (53mm full-frame equivalent). This post appears on Fotoeins Fotografie at fotoeins.com as http://wp.me/p1BIdT-agv.

Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, Germany, fotoeins.com

Fotoeins Friday: Walls in our minds (25. Jahre Wiedervereinigung)

In the German capital city of Berlin, the large billboards street-level at Potsdamer Platz advertise the kind of photography one can make with Apple’s iPhone 6. The vertical pattern of dunes and stripes leading down to the fragment of the Berlin Wall and people walking across the line of sight lent themselves to a shot which came together over time. The Berlin Wall once made this spot and the entire area no-man’s land.

• What are the walls in our minds?
• What boundaries have we set for ourselves?
• What consequences occur when limits are surpassed?

3 October 2015 marks the 25th anniversary of German Reunification.
(Am 3. Oktober 2015 findet der 25. Jahrestag der deutschen Wiedervereinigung statt.)

Exhibition at Potsdamer Platz Arkaden

I made these photographs on 4 May 2015 with the Canon EOS6D camera and the EF 24-105 zoom-lens. This post appears on Fotoeins Fotopress at fotoeins.com at http://wp.me/p1BIdT-72u.

My Berlin: Mitte on Christmas Eve

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Hauptstadt,
no residents were stirring, not even a tourist …

Well, except me, that is …

It’s little surprise many find themselves where they’re supposed to be on Christmas Eve.

Ever since visiting Berlin the first time in 2002, I’ve always entertained the idea of photographing the German capital city during winter holidays. The city slows down, becomes quiet, and sits back as if to take a deep long breath.

Crammed train stations seem cold, emptied of all who normally stream through the halls. The usual sounds of the city are muted by diminished traffic on the day before Christmas and by the sound-diffusing and -absorbing property of falling snow. City fixtures and Christmas decorations cast bright spotlights down on the ground layer of snow while diffuse glow of colour is scattered up to the cloud deck overhead.

Under blizzard-like conditions and little street traffic, I cannot deny myself this beautiful photographic opportunity.

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Wo sind Sie jetzt? | Where are you now?

Train stations on Christmas Eve are emptier than usual and an unlikely place to visit. But I’ve always viewed the timing as a unique photographic opportunity.

I was in Berlin on Christmas Eve 2010, and with the city already covered in snow, I set out into the evening under additional heavy snowfall. I wanted to photograph the quiet conditions in the capital city, and I stopped at Potsdamer Platz station, normally a busy transfer station in the Mitte (or central) district.

My spontaneous visit and photographs resulted in something more profound.

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Christmas in July (13 of 14), Berlin

This 13th installment is the 2nd-to-last post of the photo series.

Berlin, Germany – 24 December 2010.

830pm, Christmas Eve.

Typically, I’d come to watch people in this place, the Sony Center. Would it be time for a quick coffee, before heading into Cinestar for a movie in English? If I stopped by at night and looked up, would I see the roof bathed in colour? Or would it be a way to spend time in the Legoland Discovery Centre, and think about whimsy and youth? Well after dark on a cold blustery snowy Christmas Eve, I came for the sparkle, and treated myself to the sight of a light-tree.

Light-tree at Sony Center, Potsdamer Platz.

Tree lights in different focus: Sony Center, Potsdamer Platz.

930pm, Christmas Eve.

There is a distinct danger of seeing one Christmas market, and seeing the one and the same at every other market in every other city or town in Germany. However, in Berlin’s Mitte, the Weihnachtszauber Gendarmenmarkt, or Christmas Magic at Gendarmenmarkt charges a modest entrance fee, where most other markets are free. The suggestion is something a little more, a little extra that simply cannot be found or matched anywhere else. Unfortunately, that promise would be left empty so late on Christmas Eve : all I had left were the lights. But as you’ve seen throughout this “Christmas in July” series, I do like the lights, and I can make do with something about the lights.

The lights of Weihnachtszauber : Gendarmenmarkt, Berlin.

I made the five photos shown above in Berlin on Christmas Eve 2010. This article was posted initially on Fotoeins Fotopress (fotoeins.com).

Erna-Berger-Strasse, Berlin, Germany, fotoeins.com

My Berlin: a lonely watchtower stands in Mitte

I’m sure I would’ve immersed myself in European history and languages, had I not studied physics or astronomy. After two years of working in Germany, I developed a deep interest for language and her people. Even after having left the country in 2003, I’ve been fortunate to return once or twice each year.

I had read about one of the few remaining DDR-Wachtürme (East German Watchtowers) in Berlin. On a December afternoon, light snowfall in the German capital city seemed to slow both human and mechanized activity. I wandered slowly into Berlin Mitte to check out the location of an old East German watchtower that’s been listed as a historical monument since 2001.

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