Category: street

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CHINA contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk Photography street street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 74/365

Sometimes it feels to me that I am cycling through my life in a comfortable pace and watching events happen around me as if on a movie screen.

But every once in a while an opportunity for change and elevation shows itself and somehow because of being so comfortable on the bike, I choose to look away.

Change means risk, discomfort, letting go of what we know, learning to adapt to a new situation and deciding to take the steps towards it without seeing the end of the road. A journey towards the unknown.

Change takes courage, will and determination and ladders are not easy to climb but climb them we will.

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children contemplations inspiration Istanbul morning coffee talk Photography portrait story street street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 63/365

Those moments in the street~ Istanbul

Hi from another one of a series of gray rainy days in Germany.

So many things keep drawing me back to the streets with my camera and we are now going on over 25 years!

One of those things is a memorable moment, where everything comes together to encapsulate a memory. A smile, a story, a writing on the wall and the experience gets encapsulated in an image, never to be forgotten.

This image was take in the Tarlabasi area of Istanbul.

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china contemplations inspiration Photography street street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 62/365

At the end of the day, when all is done,

When we realize there is no rewind button to press,

What’s done is done,

All there is to do is learn from the past,

All there is to make is a better tomorrow,

And no matter what, there are jewels to be found,

In the sands of yesterday…

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children china contemplations inspiration morning coffee talk Photography street street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 61/365

I am still traveling through favorite moments in photography today and these images stand out.

During my travels through Yunnan, I often had a Polaroid camera with me to make instant photographs of people and mostly the children that I could offer to them as small gifts.

This process caused a huge amount of joy and fun at the surprise of seeing their images appear as if by magic and at times like this as in the second photo, an attack of little people trying to get their hands on the magical device, my Polaroid camera 😂.

But as a traveling street photographer, this is a great way of bringing the distance between you and local people you are meeting for the first time and trying to photograph them in a short time window.

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contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk street street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 19/365

Good Morning,

If you celebrate Christmas, you must be counting down at this point to the event next Friday. Here in Germany, some of the cities like Duesseldorf are lucky to have their Christmas markets still open despite the rising Covid-19 numbers, but with restrictions.

At this point the change and strangeness of the pandemic can no longer be denied or ignored by anyone. Masked faces are becoming the new normal and we are learning to read faces from the expressions in the eyes. A city of masked super heroes who keep on going towards the holidays armed with hope, the will to live, the love of joy and being with family and friends.

The resilience of humans feels like an encoded gift in our genetic makeup. We somehow seem to adapt and keep finding the beauty in life despite the circumstances. History is filled with examples of this and it just makes me smile.

Enjoy the countdown and let’s see what this new year is bringing.

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CHINA contemplations Germany myanmar Photography street street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~18/365

young girl in Kashgar, 2011
woman in old alley, Shanghai, 2013
girl on bus, Yangon, 2016
girl behind train window, Istanbul, 2021

Good Morning,

It is winter in this part of the world and everyone spends a large part of their day indoors, seeing the world through window panes. How much of our lives is actually lived behind such barriers, in our cars, homes, schools, offices, airplanes, buses…

It feels like we see the world and the people around us through a frame, a view finder and that can only be part of the picture. How much does that influence our communication, tolerance, understanding of others, well-being, and humanity?

As the pandemic progresses, this lifestyle becomes more and more the normal way of going on and we are limited to our confined environments and lack of physical contact with others.

How many of our children are living mostly behind screens and communicating virtually with their friends? What influence will this have on our future as a human race?

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Istanbul Photography street street photography

The Birds of Istanbul~

The Birds of Istanbul~

Upon first arriving in Istanbul, you are overwhelmed with the sheer amount of visual stimuli and with the unusual that makes the city what it is. Magnificent architecture, unique sounds and smells of its exotic cuisine and spices, the water ways surrounding it, and mostly the birds.

The seagulls and pigeons are everywhere, flying, fishing, communicating loudly and making themselves the stars of the show.

The birds complete the final touches on the spectacular canvas that is the city of Istanbul.

 

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Istanbul Photography street street photography

A Grey Day in Istanbul ~

A Grey Day in Istanbul~

Turkish beauty ~
Water everywhere ~
Have you had Turkish tea?~
The hustle and bustle~
After all the rain~

It rained most of the day today In Istanbul. Rain has this way of forcing it’s mood on you, doesn’t it? There is a sense of containment and going inwards, where if you had the choice, you would curl indoors with a book or bake cookies.

I love rain photography, when reflection, rain drops and moody skies abound. Istanbul delivers all that and more.

You can even find the smiles between all the grumpiness of bad weather if you search for them hard enough.

 

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LEBANON Photography street

Being Alone Together~ 2

The Future is not written till we write it~ Byblos, Lebanon

This image illustrates to me the basic reality that we find ourselves living in: that life is a journey and our tomorrows are dependent on every action we take and every step we make. To author one’s destiny is a huge responsibility that most of us abdicate from. ‘Choice’ remains our greatest gift whether we see it or not.

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Germany Photography street street photography

Living in Deep Freeze~

It’s always a good time to restart a blog, but there is something more compelling about living through:

  1. a global pandemic
  2. a general breakdown of norms as we know them
  3. an increase in conductivity (trust me on that)
  4. incredibly strange weather patterns
  5. varied degrees of lockdown measures
  6. living vicariously through my photographic archived memories
  7. becoming great friends with my teenage daughter
  8. a complete change of domestic circumstance
  9. a complete halt on all travel plans and viewing humans as 2 dimensional beings through Zoom.
  10. adding a whole new set of skills to my arsenal (Motion Graphics)! (More on that soon)

Yesterday I decided to just go see what other people are doing during this almost 10 days of unusual arctic temperatures in Germany. So after spending one hour trying to remove thick ice from the car, I made it on the icy roads to Duesseldorf, to find joyful people, walking in the bright sun, on white frozen snow, next to a Rhein River in high tide, some masked, some not and I was in awe of finding out how much I missed people in general, the passing conversations with strangers and the funny smiles I get when I perform my weird acrobatics to get strange angled shots.

what have you been up to these days?