Looking for Love

Sometimes it’s very clear what to look for. And if you are very lucky there’s someone around to show you the right direction.
Well, actually it was not that romantic. I asked the sales-girl whether the sign works. She denied and told me that simply the name of her boss is "Love".
Damn. But this would have been way to simple, would it?

Outlet

Very close to my home is the small city of Herzogenaurach - the World Headquarter of Adidas. One wouldn’t expect the brain of a global player in the Outback.
They built a big Factory Outlet Store a few years ago. At night it is illuminated and pulsates in blue color and when I’m on my way home I don’t see the building itself but only a intense blue shine behind a hill. I love the combination of the black sky and the light blue cloud.
Today I followed the blue shine and played around a little bit with HDR photos.

Choko-Cheers

Currently the job is kind of hectical. Sometimes candy helps a lot in such times. Today a co-worker came in with some candy bars and we celebrated our chocolate-stress-reduction-therapy by performing a cheers.
It really helped a little bit. Tomorrow will should do it with carrots or cucumbers - more healthy stuff but only half the fun.

(Actually this is my Thursday posting. The last days my blog provider blogger had a few downtimes and I wasn’t able to post.)

Umbrellost

Just an orphaned umbrella. There are millions more in the world. Their owner forgot them as soon as the rain stops. Have you ever wondered what happens to all the forgotten rain shields?
My theory is that the gather at some secret place like the lost gloves.

Wings

No idea, whether there’s Red Bull outside of Europe. It’s an Energy Drink with lots of caffein and it tastes like liquid Gummi Bears. I like the taste. Their main marketing message is “Red Bull verleiht Flügel” - this means “Red Bull gives you wings”. For me it was funny to see a thing that is supposed to fly tied to the earth - flattened down by hundreds of cars.
Maybe the marketing message should be changed into “Red Bull gives you wings but be aware of cars”.

Living Manga

I didn’t understand what was going on but suddenly I was surrounded by a lot of young super heros. They tried to look like the figures in japanese Manga comics. It was funny to prance around and to shoot photos of their colorful costumes. The Manga heros tried to look as cool as possible. Great.
Why the hell do we pretend all the time that we are better than we actually are? No one of us has super power but almost everyone of us tries to.

Looking Down

Today I did a walk with three girls (11-14 years old) across Nuremberg. I brought some of my old digital cameras for the girls. The task was to shoot photos following one out of three topics I proposed:
a) Looking Down
b) Small Things
c) Typical German



Most adults would say “what do you mean with ‘Looking Down’”. But for the girls it was more than enough.
All three girls chose a). I gave them almost no assistance but only tried to open their eyes for some small things and for changing the point of viewing at the world.
It was so damn amazing to watch the girls crouching around shooting broken bottles, dead mice and cigarette fags. The shot some things in exactly the same way I would have done, too - without knowing it.
I’ll upload some of their pics in the next days.

Well, I don’t know whether the girls liked the afternoon as much as I did but I guess they had at least a great time. Hopefully they will continue to shoot photos of unimportant stuff.

Inspiring people is one of the greatest things I know.

Magazine World

I feel hunted by armies of beautiful people. They stare at me from the covers of hundreds of magazines. In the waiting room of my physician I have to deal with all the perfect male bodies of Men’s Health. While in the queue of the supermarket cashpoint I pass the canterbury and suddenly there are all those supermodels with flawless skin and breasts like inflated Air Bags. Even in a stylish little bar they had magazines showing cute people that stand in stylish little bars.
The people in the bar tried to imitate the artificial models in the magazines. At the first glance it looked great but I spied on some of them during the evening and you know what? One ate peanuts and licked his fingers, the female pseudo-supermodel drilled around in her ears and if I wasn’t completely wrong I even saw some beauties with crop tops disappearing to the restrooms for peeing.
I will try to avoid the magazines and read a brochure about skin cancer instead of Men’s Health in the waiting room next time.

Colored Undies

Are we really more attractive if we start to wear colored underwear? I’m not sure whether it would work for me - neither for wearing nor for looking at.

Frozen Flight

I felt like jumping and asked my sister to shoot a few photos. I like frozen motions. When I look at this photo it’s impossible to determine whether I’m still ascending or already on my landing approach.
It’s similar with life. If you only see one moment you are not able to say whether it’s going better or worse. You have to live the whole damn chapter. Great, isn’t it?

My Personal Prada

I just came back from the movies. “The Devil Wears Prada”. Went there because I love Meryl Streep. It turned out that the movie was just the usual Hollywood crap. I didn’t like it although it was full of awesome looking women.
Shoes from Prada played an important role in the life of the people in the movie.
I thought about my most valuable shoes and I came to this one. My good old Adidas shoes. I wore them for years and years until they turned to rotten somethings. Last time I used them while painting my apartment and there are still some white stains on them.
Probably I’ll never wear them again but am I able to throw them away? Not yet.

By the way: This was the first pic I shot with my new webcam.

Lost Bob

Berlin, Main Station.
The station is brand new with a really cool dome made of glass and steel.
I leaned back to get an impression of the dimensions of the dome and then I saw him. Bob. Sponge Bob. He was hovering high above me under the top of the dome.
The guy looked very amazed. I turned my head searching for the crying child that lost Bob. No supicious individuals in sight. Probably the kid already sat in a train departing from Berlin.
OK, Bob was free now. But for what price? No chance to escape from the dome. I guess he'll miss a great experience of visiting a city far away together with a cheerful small human. Sometimes we seem to see only what's holding us back and not the opportunities of exploring the world outside our Main Station together.

Kite

When was the last time you run over a meadow and sqealed with glee?
On my side it was Saturday, 14:13 PM.

Waterside Power

Government buildings beside the Reichstag in Berlin.
Looks like our power guys really care about our money.
I did a sightseeing tour of Berlin @ night by boat with some business partners. Although I hate to do such tourist trips in general I have to admit that it was quite nice to see the illuminated Berlin from the waterside.


Rush-by-boat-sightseeing.

The most funny thing was that the boat was almost as high as some low bridges. We had to lean back to avoid bloody heads. It was dark, the boat was relatively fast and as soon as you heard a horn signal you had to be quick with making yourself flat.

Botox To Go

I saw this shop window in Berlin yesterday. It was the surgery of a plastic surgeon.
How weird is the world we live in?

Blue Mouth

What if your mouth would turn blue as soon as you lie?
Do you think we all would look like blueberries? I guess so.

Spin

Close you eyes, trust the guy that holds you and make a loud humming sound. You wont need more than three rotations unless you feel happy.

Sacret Valley

Click on photo to enlarge

Yesterday I drove through my favorite valley - it’s called the Wiesent Valley. The autumn sun was beautiful and although I was already late I had to stop for at least a few minutes to enjoy the landscape and the view to the castle ruin Neideck. I took the chance to shoot some photos with the tripod and merged them to a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo.
The photo above consists of 7 images that were merged together. You might say it looks a little bit unreal. It does although I didn’t manipulate the colors but only made adjustments on the contrast. Without HDR I wouldn’t been able to capture all the mirroring in the water.

Candy Parachute

When driving long distances by car I like to listen to long features on News radio stations. Today I was disappointed because there was only a feature for kids on my favorite station Bayern 2. For some reason I didn’t change the frequency but listened. It was a true story about a little german girl named Mercedes in the times after WW2.
She lived in Berlin while the Soviets blocked the city completely. The armies from the US and the Royal Air Force started to fly food to Berlin. It was called the Berlin Airlift. Little Mercedes was hungry all the time and things like candy were just a sweet dream.
One of the US pilots, a guy named Gail Halvorsen, talked to some Berlin kids and they asked him for sweets. He answered that they should watch out the next day for a landing airplane that wiggles its wings. In the night Gail built little parachutes and attached candy bars to them. The next day while on his landing approach he spotted several kids beneath the Tempelhof Airbase, wiggled the wings of his airplane and dropped the candy parachutes out of the window. The kids cheered while collecting the candy bars that seem to come right from heaven. I’m not able to imagine how good a bar of chocolate might taste for a hungry kid in a destroyed city. Gails idea became popular among the pilots and as a result the airplanes were called candy bombers by the Berlin folks. Little Mercedes was one of them and met Gail 24 years later to thank him.

For some reason the story touched me more than I wanted.

I visited my little niche today and told her the story about the war, the hungry kids and the candy bomber Gail Halvorsen. I decided to play chocolate pilot with her, build a small parachute, tied a bar of candy to it and entered my airplane - the balcony. My niche waited down there. As soon as I wiggled my arms she cheered “It’s the chocolate pilot” and then I dropped my parachute down to the small Berlin girl. Although my niche is still very small I think she got the story about poor kids in bad times and about having hope because there are some cool humans out there.

Here is what the english Wikipedia says about Gail Halvorsen and here is the german version.

Scooter Girls, Part II

Just two more scooter girls. Compared with the last one there’s no daubt whether this two feel lonely or sad. The don’t.

Scooter Girl

Lonely or simply don’t interested in stupid car bumping?

Fun Fair Folks

Lottery Booth

In Fürth there’s an annual fun fair. It happens on the streets of the whole inner city and it’s called “Michaelis-Kirchweih”.
I strolled around and had the idea to shoot some folks inside their little selling-booths. Usually the folks look a little bit lost and resigned in my eyes. Today they gave me the impression that the like what they do and they like doing it with dignity. I liked that kind of proudness.


Shooting Gallery


Soft Ice Booth


Bratwurst Booth


Fish Booth


Gingerbread Heart Booth


Things-That-Are-Complety-Useless-Booth


Cucumber Booth

Cutlery

Ever thought like you invited guests and no one cares? Probably most of the times one doesn’t need a lot of cutlery in reserve.

Smile-Transfer

The Sad One

Two guys, sitting next to each other. No one knows the other. No one even notices the other. The one guy seems to be very happy, the day of the other one was probably not a perfect one.
Wouldn’t it be great if one could transfer a bit of that smiling-thing from the happy one to the sad one? I’m quite sure that the happy one wouldn’t even notice it because he ownes more than he can consume in that moment.


The Happy One

Swan

In Nuremberg there’s a small lake called “Dutzendteich”. One can rent pedalo boats and paddle around. They have a lot of ordinary boats and - the swan.
The swan is a pedalo boat too, but it looks like, well, a swan.
Every time I walk by I think about the swan. Actually I hate pedalo boats and I think they are very bourgeois and kitschy. And the swan is the king of all kitschy pedalo boats. But if I ever will rent a boat at the Dutzendteich, I would definitely choose the swan.
You call me a whimp? I call you ignorants!

I shot this photo at night because I planned to steal the swan.
Just kidding.

Thank Your For Not Smoking

Going out with a fresh non-smoker can be very interesting. Some of the stereotypes about being nervous without cigarettes seem to be true.
The girl didn’t know what to do with her hands and so she chopped almost all toothpicks she could find. She broke them down in accurate little pieces and separated the wooden pieces, the plastic wrapping and the paper into three different heaps. Very structured. After some time (and approximately 20 dead toothpicks) the service girl donated some lollipops to pretend her from unmounting more of the pubs’ interior.
I’m really glad that nicotin addiction was never an issue for me and I hope, she will manage to keep her hands off cigarettes.

Ironing Before Sunset

One of these awful romantic Sundays. I managed to handle the gigantic pile of clothes that waited for ages to be ironed. For some reason I moved the ironing board to my small home office and watched the movie “Before Sunset” with July Delpy and Ethan Hawke while ironing T-Shirts from Rock bands (no, I don’t have a TV)
The movie is one of my all-time-favorites although it only consists of an 90 minutes dialog between an man and a woman. No action, no sex, not even a kiss.

It was the first time I did this ironing-board-movement-watching-romantic-stuff-thing and now I’m wondering whether I’m still a real man or not.

I noticed that this is already the second time my flat iron plays a role in one of my postings. Unbelievable. The first one was called Iron Man and I wrote it in January 2006. It’s crazy: I used Google to find my own posting in the Internet.

Full

The sign says “full”. Not more. Just “full”.
I love signs with room for interpretations and I love even more to think about possible meanings.
Is this the sign for “Stand here to get full inspiration”?
Or the sign for “Please insert only full doses of life”?
Or “Full trust behind this point”.
Or “This life is fully booked. Try to spend yours elsewhere”?

As always, the truth was much more profane.