Brandenburg an der Havel - at night

LaFoto · Aug 19, 2006

Mentos' night photo of Benidorm in the Photo Critique (here) inspired me to go and resize my night photos of Brandenburg which I took while we were on holidays.

The first is a handheld 1/10 sec. exposure at 1600 ISO of the "Dom" (cathedral)...

... taken with the 350D at about 9:30 p.m., while the other two were taken a lot later (after our dinner) with the little Powershot on its "HUGE" (weaponlike!) tripod which I had to place right onto the pavement (and it was raining by then)

I think they are both 15 second exposures at f 8.0 (which is the smallest possible aperture in the Powershot, while 15 seconds also is the longest possible exposure).

I cropped the first just a tiny bit (there was a street light included into the original frame on the right which I decided I'd rather NOT have in the frame) but the last two are as they are. No changes done to the originals other that resize them for web-showing.

mentos_007 · Aug 19, 2006

The tiny small tripod? oh come on... it works

cool shots

LaFoto · Aug 20, 2006

Yes, that very tiny tripod. "The Weapon" - and I'll be careful to leave it in my check luggage when I go to England again on Thursday, be assured! I won't let anyone explain to me any more that it could be a weapon and must therefore not travel in my photo backpack (which goes with me as hand luggage).

And yes, it works all right, doesn't it. Forced me to get a nice perspective of the wet cobblestones in those streets of a very old part of a very interesting town.

The raindrops on the little lens of the little Powershot are a bit annoying, but I was still happy with the outcome of these.

jeroen · Aug 20, 2006

Wow, cool!
I love nr 2, specially the reflections on the pavement.

Alex06 · Aug 20, 2006

Oooh, Corinna I just love these- especially #1 &3. The first thing I thought of when I saw the first one is wow that looks like a Kincade painting. I love the warm glow of the lights contrasted with the cool tone of the sky. :mrgreen:

But tell me, is it really safe to be wandering the deserted streets alone at night?! If so, I want to move.

LaFoto · Aug 20, 2006

I was not all alone. My family were with me.
Other than ourselves, though, there was no one else there.
We had moored in the marina (somewhat outside), and had to walk since our only means of transportation at the time was our yacht, and that did not manage streets too well, see?

) and were hungry, looking for a place to have dinner. It took us a 15 minute walk before we even met the first person who we could ask if there was a place to eat somewhere nearby...!

All the places we visited during our holidays used to be East Germany before the reunification, and what with times being rough (economically) many people actually leave those places. Not that Brandenburg is exactly DESERTED, there ARE people there, of course, but actually, wherever we went, we never encountered the least bit of trouble or threat or so.

Antarctican · Aug 20, 2006

I really like this series. Think I'll have to get one of those little 'weapons' for travel.

KunalShingla · Aug 20, 2006

nice shots there....love the 2nd one there....1st one looks more like a snapshot but still feels nice....good photos...

LaFoto · Aug 20, 2006

Must agree about the snapshot character of the first, since that was how this was "planned", i.e. it was not planned at all, I came past this spot, saw the orange lights against the sky there and the old, old church, the family were striving on in the search for a restaurant because everyone was quite hungy at the time, and I checked if it COULD be taken handheld at all, decided to give it a try, and ran after the family

. So yes. There is a definite snapshot-element to the first! (Likewise to MOST of my pics taken during our holiday since I was always running after the rest of my family, wherever we went, check out the Berlin-architecture shots for that, those actually were taken under the very same conditions).