East German is weather is currently a melange of different kinds of grey interspersed by light rain and uncomfortable winds. That is a typical Berlin winter for you and it has been this since November last year. Which means that there was not much photography to be done. As I am not allowed to enter shopping centers, museums or other indoor areas due to ongoing restrictions these avenues of photography are currently unavailable too. I still want to write though so I had a look through last years pictures and decided to post another “week in film recipes”. Maybe you too can enjoy the colorful images while being stuck in bland and cold winter weather.
I wrote about wanting to find my own photographic style in a sea of jpeg recipes and Lightroom presets. These recipes are a great starting point and it is my idea to test and modify several different ones. I want to use only recipe for a week to see what can be done with it under different lighting conditions and with different motives. This time I used Ektachrome 100SW because it is available for the Fujifilm X-T3 and X70. It is based on the somewhat the Velvia film sim which is a punchier more colorful preset mostly designed for landscapes.
A triptych about society. Wasteful electric scooters for lazy tourists and party people. A political landscape so fragmented that a whole lamp post can’t fit all parties in parliament. And road works everywhere, literal ones and metaphorical ones, that hold our country and our society back. We need change and we need an honest discussion about it’s direction. Old ideologies no longer work but the new ones are irresponsible and unrealistic. We should ditch them altogether.
Let’s take a break from deep political topics and enjoy nature. It is important to enjoy the simple things in life. Despite everything life is good here. It could be much worse and yes it could also be better. But we need stop from time to time, see the beauty around us, be thankful for what we have and restore some much needed energy and hope. The we can go back out there, do our duties and try to make this world a better place.
Many photos were made during a long walk with a very inspiring interlocutor on a warm sunny day in one of Potsdam’s royal gardens. There I saw this couple (or friends) having a quiet conversation. In today’s frantic world, it is important to find these places and just talk.
Photographic Notes:
This film recipe is quite colorful and offers a lot of contrast. Colors really pop especially greens and yellows. Just look at the apple and the flowers. It is a beautiful recipe if I were to actually like popping colors. For me it is just too much color and too much pop. I found it a difficult recipe that tends to produce harsh blacks that don’t fit well with the overall look. I do like heavy contrast but I also like it in either black and white or with de-saturated colors. Both combined is too much for my taste. But this is why I try those recipes, to see and to learn what looks I like, what scenes would fit or not.
The images were made with the Fujifilm X70 and the Fujifilm X-T3 with a Meike 28mm f2.8 lens.