In the blink of an eye

Having dinner together, I noticed a young girl. The light was good. I could take only this shot, after that she was too aware of me. The moment was gone.

Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography. George Eastman

Part of a new project that I am working on, beach resorts in winter. It was very cold, difficult to focus your mind on taking pictures. Somehow, this day wanted my very wide angle lens on the good old D700. But not this one. The X100 was getting in my way for most shots, focusing too slow for the shots I had in mind and manual focus not doing its thing at all. But sometimes it worked it's magic.

It does pay off to bring your camera. Always bring your camera. Going through the car wash, there where all these unexpected shapes on the wind screen. But it did not really work, the shapes where very good, but the light was to dull. And then it all changed.

My father-in-law passed away So we had a service in church This is my niece lighting a candle Taking pictures in church was not easy.  I knew this day was coming and that I wanted to take photographs, but my D700 would be too noisy and too big. This would be Leica territory, but I sold mine years ago. I was looking for a stealthier camera for some time, so I decided to get the X100. Great camera. With this one, I could take pictures all the time during the service. To paraphrase Chase Jarvis: "The best camera is the one you can actually use". It was a day full of emotion, so I set the camera to Program - Auto ISO - Auto WB, I had no room for technical finesse.

Berlin indeed. The cover picture might give the plot away. This is not about a recent visit, this is about Berlin in 1980. The year before I had dropped out of photography school, I got extremely board with the pure technical approach they adopted there and I took an external photography exam, passed it and could officially call myself a Professional Photographer, certified and all. In those days you needed that certificate to set up any type of commercial photography business. I was getting more and more attracted to photojournalism and by chance I met a girl with somewhat similar ambitions, Jacqueline de Gier  . She was also into fashion design in those days, that's how I met her, I think I was asked to cover a fashion show of her. Anyway, long story short: We where looking for interesting journalistic stories and decided to go to Berlin. By the way, we had no payed jobs in those days, worked on-and-off on little projects and assignments and we were always ve...