Burner Portrait XI

Just returned from Burning Man. This time I'm posing myself. Should be legitimate as I'm a burner myself after all. Steffi (who is now also a burner) took this picture.At a crazy place like Black Rock City, it seemed nearly impossible to me to create any sort of attention by simply being dressed in a certain way. However, in a world where naked guys in tutus are a perfectly normal thing, a guy in a suit apparently becomes a head turner. I wasn't expecting this. Suddenly people followed me to talk to me or photograph me. By the time a hardcore looking burner stepped down his vehicle and kindly asked me to "slowly walk towards the camera" my Burning Man world was somewhat turned upside down. Shortly later I took this off, grabbed my camera and went back to business as 'usual'. More pictures will follow.

More Burner Portraits:

Kreuzberg I, II

After Berlin-Friedrichshain, now pictures from Kreuzberg. Also a pic of sweaty me trying to look cool.
In just a couple of weeks I'm starting my largest trip so far. If you happen to cross way with the guy in the picture somewhere around the world, feel free to say hi - I promise he'll be nice.

Keep eyes open in or at:
- US East Coast
- US West Coast
- Burning Man
- Hawaii
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Hong Kong
- Japan

5th Anniversary!

Believe it or not, this blog is now five years old.

For those who like numbers

- 5 years.- 780 posts (including this one).- 1,954 comments from the most awesome people.- An average of 13 posts per month.- I guess this means that I write a new post every 2.3 days.- Month with most posts: January 2009 (27 posts!)- Months with least number of posts: August 2006, December 2006 and February 2007 - with only 6 posts each.

For those who like pictures

I was wondering how I could post something special as part of the celebrations. As you can probably imagine, I didn't start photography at the point when I started blogging. So I want to take you all the way back to 2003 where it all started.2003 - borrowing a point 'n shoot from my roommateThat's right. No interest in photography whatsoever till the point where I found myself in Princeton, New Jersey. Till that point I have never been to New York City, and suddenly I was able to go there pretty much any time I liked. Like everybody else I was very impressed by the city. Actually, I was very impressed by everything that came with the experience of living abroad. My roommate back then (who also took the picture of me below) was nice enough to let me take his tiny little Nikon to New York. As soon as I had this camera in my hands I was on a mission.

This was one of the very first pictures I brought home. This is the point where I thought "this is so cool!"

Shortly later I bought my own compact camera. That was a Canon A70 with 3.2 Megapixels. Interestingly, I was totally happy with the capabilities of that camera and completely fine in my little tiny-camera-world. I simply experimented with everything it offered to me.2004 - trip to San FranciscoWhile roaming around in San Fran I more and more felt the urge for better equipment. It's the way the city looks with all its hills and cool buildings. It somehow invites you to try different compositions and angles. After one year with a compact camera, I suddenly felt limited with it. I was about to make the step from "seeing something interesting and photographing it" to "seeing something usual and make it look interesting". I often get mails from newbies asking me what equipment to buy. This always reminds me of 2004. My honest answer is: if you don't know what to buy, you probably don't really need anything. I suggest you upgrade your stuff when you are desperate for it. At that point you know what you need. Not sure if this counts for everybody, but it might. Most of 2004 I spent in Germany waiting to get accepted for a PhD program in Computer Science.

2005 - the big stepsIn 2005 I made the big step and got a "real" camera - a Canon 20D. After some abstinence, I also made the big step back to the US for my PhD research. So here I was: same guy, same place, but bigger ambitions. The pictures below belong to the very first ones I took with that new camera. At this point I can probably finish up this post. Pretty much everything that happened after you can find in this blog.Thank you guys for stopping by from time to time! I'll keep posting and hope to see you here again!

Burning Man Self Portrait

A whole afternoon I dedicated to photographing things inside dust storms. The density of the dust kept changing continuously, which made it very interesting and fun. However, the dust is known for its high pH level, which is also interesting, but wasn't so much fun for my eyes and equipment.
This one is a reflection on an extra terrestrial looking sculpture.

On the way home

On the way home form the desert. This mirror needs to be cleaned.

I was balancing the camera on the window frame with one hand. Now I'm thinking about all those new interesting perspectives one could get by installing the camera on the car and doing long time exposures while driving through the night. I know there is all kinds of equipment out there to get a camera mounted onto a car. Filmmakers use stuff like that, right? Would that be too much over the top? Maybe I get something small to get me started. However, the thought of the camera falling off while driving is a real nightmare.

Cross Country - Day 5 & 6

Better late than never, here is a little post about the past two days. I spent most of the fifth day in Oklahoma. I met real Oklahomans and got some advice on what to see there. The result is the picture below: the tall grass prairie. I enjoyed this a lot. Very large open space and not a single person anywhere. The only traces of civilization are roads (not many though) and fences. Here and there a barn and some cows, and that's it. Not that I haven't seen something like that before, but you can really drive there for hours and nothing changes. And that's basically what I did.

Late at night between day 5 and 6 I reached Texas and stayed in Amarillo. Before checking in to some roadside motel, I visited the Cadillac Ranch. This is another story and worth another post.

Day six I spent driving through New Mexico up to Santa Fe. My idea was to spend a white Christmas there.

The tall grass prairie of Oklahoma. What looks like a very short arm is just me being German and bending my elbow exact 90 degrees while using the remote control.