Tag: duesseldorf

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Germany Photography street photography

Discovering the streets of Duesseldorf ~

They say nothing improves without practice… those 10,000 hours.

I have started organizing this meetup group over 15 years ago in shanghai and for the last 5 years here in duesseldorf. We walk the streets almost once a week with cameras, photographing, exchanging tips and experiencing the life of the street.

I love walking alone to do my photography but the group events are just as valuable. Seeing how the same scene can be translated so differently for each photographer reasserts for me the uniqueness of each human and the magic of diversity.

Our next event will be in the streets of Paris! Stay tuned.

You can see more about my meetup group here!

Categories
Photography street photography

SOLO~ The Art of Being Alone

week 2 of presale for the book has started!
Book Cover

Hi everyone,

I have been gone from here a while and daily blog project paused because of many changes happening all at once in my world as they often do in people’s worlds. As I am mostly a very private person, I will remain vague about these upheavals.

At the start of this month, a magical project turned up when I was approached by a book publisher here in Duesseldorf with the option of creating my first photography book based on the recent work I have been sharing. Naturally I was thrilled as I do love photography books and I was not sure where to start with producing mine.

To keep a long story inside a single paragraph: I met the team, they are amazing, the title appeared, I received a huge amount of support from my friends, family, fellow artist and fans, and here we are in week 2 of the pre-sale of the book, which is already a go!

The pre-sale copies will be signed and will include a small surprise with them as thanks to those amazing people who are allowing the book to exist. It will be a 168 page hard cover book printed on beautiful quality paper and containing 160 images from this theme.

Thank you Snap Collective Publishing for this adventure and thank you all for supporting my work.

Copies can be ordered Here!

Categories
contemplations Germany morning coffee talk Photography street photography war

Daily Coffee Talk~ 86/365

Have you every had the feeling that even when you are alone, you are really not?

In my mind, there is never a dull moment. Thoughts, ponders, queries, hopes, questions, memories, investigations, plans, connecting of dots, and yes, sometimes fears and worries.

I am finding it difficult to not be concerned about what is happening around me in Europe. How can anyone not be? But why are we feeling the pain of others so much more acutely? Has something changed in the conductivity of the world?

It is quite unfathomable what humans are capable of doing to other humans in the search of their own self glory and greedy agendas.

So myself is telling me today to keep going, to keep hoping, to continue sending strength and good thoughts toward the innocent people caught up in this crazy war and to know that there is always light behind the darkness.

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Germany morning coffee talk Photography street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 78/365

Rhein Promenade~ Duesseldorf

As Europe starts to gradually ease covid restrictions, I keep hearing talk of going back to our old normal, as if that is even possible!

Having lived through this pandemic and all the changes that we have witnessed, how can we use the words ‘going back’?

From here on, we can only move forward and discover a new normal, certainly not the same one we had.

Will they erase all these isolation circles that we got so used to standing inside of ? What about the way we wash our hands for 20 seconds? And the masks? Would the masks stay as they did in Asia after the SARS epidemic?

Let’s see what the future holds and how ‘normal’ is to be redefined.

Categories
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.

Categories
art contemplations life morning coffee talk myanmar Photography street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 16/365

Lea and time.
the tunnel of time
time passing in Yangon

Good Morning,

Time and time again, I dwell on the concept of ‘time’. It’s time for ‘time’ one more time, and how many times are enough times.Well just maybe one more time.

Time passes slow when things are difficult, fast when they are joyful, time heals our wounds and time can be endless when we are waiting. The truth of time is illusive, almost incomprehensible. Why do we perceive time? Is time the same here as it is at the edge of the universe? We measure time by the rotations of our planet around the sun and that makes our time unique to us here on earth.

Why do we need time? Is it to perceive and to measure change? Is it to urge us on to develop and discover why we are here in the first place? What is it like to live on on the top or bottom of the planet where it’s endlessly day or endlessly night?

I can go on like this for hours and yes, that’s part of the reason why I find myself awake at 4 am.

It’s time to stop writing and have that second cup of coffee… Wishing you a peaceful ‘time’ during the remainder of this week that seems to zip by at an unusual speed.

Categories
contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk Photography

Morning Coffee Talk~7/365

Good morning, it’s a little after 6 am. I love the early morning, the smell of the first cup of coffee, the calm that envelopes the world around me, the promise of the first light to come reminding me that I live on a spinning sphere, a mind boggling fact on its own.

My thoughts travel today to the balance needed in these times of increasing intensity. Everything seems to register on our lives with more power, life events, world happenings, personal changes,.. it’s all quite impactful and I have the sense it is not just me registering this.

It feels more important than ever to take a moment every now and then and weigh the balances, do a self check on personal well-being, and perform some necessary housekeeping internally.

The white blanket of passage into winter is here and it feels like a cloud of peace inside all the hurry and scurry of the world.

I wish you a peaceful next weeks of crossing into the new year that I am certain will bring its own surprises and changes.

The images were taken earlier this month and last month in Duesseldorf, Germany.

Categories
Germany Photography street photography

Duesseldorf- Start of Summer

Summer weather and the start of some kind of normalcy in Düsseldorf bring a sigh or relief after months of lockdown. This past weekend I sensed a feeling of liberation in people as they strolled around in the city streets and waited in line at restaurants and cafes.

Is this the beginning of the end of the pandemic? Will the new normal every look like the old normal? One thing is sure: we all went through a dramatic change on a very deep level and my instinct tells me that more change is on its way.

Categories
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?

Categories
Photography

Photography Projects in Lockdown~ Hope

Two months ago, lockdown began as a precaution for the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany. I had to find a creative way to change the way that my busy and very active photography meetup group of over 2000 members meets and keeps on finding inspiration.

So the photographing a concept came to life. The first idea was to invite everyone to try and photograph ‘hope’. The results (photographs and words to go with them were sent to me and we had a short zoom meeting afterwards to reflect on the process and share the work). I had no idea what would happen. To my surprise the process caught on immediately and attracted people from outside the group who saw the posting on facebook. The results were so inspiring to me and the process has kept us all busy week after week (we are up to project 5 by now). I will be sharing the presentations from each of these here starting with ‘hope’.