Festival Of Lights

As I said in my previous post, the festival of lights has been here in Berlin. I ventured out a couple of times to photograph but never really got a shot that I was entirely happy with. It didn't help that the event itself was pretty underwhelmingl. It failed to inspire me. Well that's my excuse anyway. Maybe next year it will be better, but for now here is the sole picture that I am relatively happy to share.

Berlin Night Shoot

At the moment more than 50 of Berlin's major landmarks and buildings are being illuminated because of the annual Festival Of Lights. Last night I went out intending to photograph these amazing light shows and was encountered by a rather large amount of photographers, tripod in hand, who had the same idea. At the Brandenburger Tor it was crazy. Everywhere I stepped I got in the way of somebody's shot. This is not how I like to do photography. It is bad enough that I don't have enough patience for using a tripod, add the fact that I would have to be content with a an angle that wasn't what I wanted, maybe then you can realise that I have no pictures of the light show yet.

Instead I decided to take advantage of the wet weather and the reflection of lights all around and take some pics that well could easily have been taken any night of the week. This happens to me quite alot where I set out to document some event and then quickly lose interest, only to end up photographing the crowds or traffic that the event has caused due to it's popularity.

The festival will last for another week so I have plenty of more time to get the shots that I want. But for now here are the images from my first evening.

Schaufensterpuppen!

Zoooooooooooooooooooo

I've been to the zoo a couple of times here in Berlin, with the aim of avoiding to take boring telescopic shots of the animals. Instead I chose to try and show their enclosure, that they are actually captive and not some free wild animals that could be living anywhere. I feel that these images are far more interesting than the usual photographs that you get from a day at the zoo.

Look! Up In The Sky!

Clouds can be so interesting to photograph, but not on their own. I feel that there needs to be an object to go with the shape that they develop, otherwise it's just a photograph of a fairly interesting sky, but a boring image overall. It could be a large piece of architecture, a balloon floating in the air, or which can be seen below; an aeroplane. Sometimes you just have to wait for the right moment, or the right moment sometimes comes to you (which I particularly like).

Attack Of The Giant Little Girl

Over the weekend there has been alot of activity celebrating Germany's reunification, held annually on the 3rd October. The main attraction this year was the presence of a team of puppeteers from France known as Royal De Luxe who paraded both their giant puppets along the streets of Berlin.

Although impressive, I didn't take too many photographs of the puppets, but focused more on the crowds of people around me. I have never seen the streets so busy and I struggled to even cross the road, trying to squeeze my way between bodies. I'm sure a snail would have beaten me in a race to get from one side to the other.