The unadventurous journey of S.J.

M645

spanishjohnny — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 11:34:30 +0000

tilly was so kind to scan a few negatives of mine that i want to upload here.thank you!

they are always smiling

good summer days in stockholm

me taking a shot of r

Happy New Year to all of you!

Street is Serious – Berlin

spanishjohnny — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 13:22:56 +0000

It has been ages since I updated this here. It wasn’t the plan I had for 2011 but it is what it is and so I want to continue where I stopped – SIS – Street is Serious late July in Berlin

It was quite a run from one end to the country to the other. When I entered Berlin I realised that I was driving on the famous AVUS. Short before this trip my Zeiss 35/2.8 C-Biogon arrived, so this was acutally one of the very first shots I did with it.

ddI arrived at Jane’s place right in the heart of Kreuzberg. Her flatmate’s girlfriend Tony opend the door and handed me a glass of very nice red wine while she was cooking great spaghetti while we were waiting for Jana and her flatmate Jonas – both great photographers! Great night with 4 bottles of wine.

I woke up quite early by this sound - typical Berlin song. It fitted so well and I had a big smile on my face. PS: this is a “out of bed shot” with a Jupiter 8.

What a coincidence, I came out the house and saw came by the “Solmsstraße” – Leica frieds know what I mean…

First nice moment in the metro

Before SIS started I walked around the area, I came by that house right away. Quite a nice combination of new and old.

It was a bureau of a scientific publisher

Everybody checked out the pictures of the others. (these ones are taken with the Rokkor 58/1.2 + Noctilux 1.0)

Simon

The fabulous Andrea

Shashank and Philipp

The Sev
Ludwig

Shash is testing the magical Noctilux + Leica M9-p

This is the result, a tired me but the lens is truely kick ass

Shash did another testshot with Chris

Chris had this idea to do a group shoot, pretty insane. Worth a Porshe on 1qm :O

What an orgy!

And getting things started on the streets of Berlin. On the first day i didn’t take much pictures. It was more a “listen, look and learn”. It was quite interesting to observe the different styles of Chris, Sev and Simon.

To far away bit what the hell. I didn’t took more shots that day. The next day we went to the Mauerpark. The order is messed up but I think you don’t care.

Now some Mauerpark shots

A typical Berlin Mauerpark couple

I think that was the moment when the Mamiya broke down

I found this funny but they not. The girl on the left gave be a angry face!

At least she was nice – Sing us a song, you’re the piano girl!

A crazy robot guy. He had a hydraulic thing, with a remote and he did crazy stuff with it.

Chris gave me some hints how to do some shots in this mess of people. Never did such a thing with a rangefinder. Makes me itchy to focus right with it. It’s just different when you used a SLR for almost ever. I was worried not to hit the focus in situations where you have to act fast and people move. It was my first real use with the Leica and i didn’t got one shot out of focus. Later that day the use of the M9 helped my to get some confidence in doing things right.

That’s his remote

Yeah, that’s not really in focus but hey, that’s a bourgeois thing -this guy was was a mad dog!

…more readers. It was interesting to see the different pictures and styles of the SIS-people from that day. Have a look at people’s photoblogs.

He was in my state of mind

Now M9 shots with my Zeiss C-Biogon, a kick ass lens btw.

Car boot sales are my photographic nightmare, just don’t like it!

Thought I could play with contrasts but it didn’t work out so well

Here Severin got me some hints. I took that shot at first…

He said go down to make it more interesting, don’t to things by halfs

DOWN and take care of the Sky The father was very understanding for our need here. He got down right away…

Sushi for the kids!

The only “color shot” from Anthony Kiedis

He almost killed me “DID YOU TAKE A FUCKING SHOT OF ME” – “Oh no way sir”

This is for my friend Wolle, I’m sure he likes it!

…and somehow you are in a rush and take shots of everything. Thank god it was digital!

We all came together and changed teams. We strolled around the area at the Mauerpark and took a few shots here and there. This time I got lost somehow and so I went alone and waited till we all came back together.

Some weird performance of a boy and a girl singing.

Don’t know what he was doing, and i don’t know what i was doing too

Hunni

This is my favorite shot from the Mauerpark. They looks so similar, drink the same beer and look the same way.

Some parental looking people made blow bubbles. Of course they attracted lots of kids. They had all so much fun. It was pretty busy so I focused on this girl. First time with a rangefinder, i found it quite hard but it worked out fine.

Somehow a picture from the first day, i guess i continued that film. That poor bachelor was in a Borat-Kinda dress, if he only knew that 15 photogeeks came along…

I messed that one up…

An ad for a nude photographer impressed Sev a lot

Sev at work

Finally food

And let the geek talk begin… I like Shash’s 5D with the oldOlympus Zuiko lenses – 21/2.0 is so crazy

two boozy germany, very awkward!

After the first day I left the SIS headquarter and passed a playground which is right across the street. three little heroes played there and I took the first shot. Then I thought I need a second one…

this one is better. must be strange to be a kid on berlin

As a group of 10 (?) we stoped by some Cafés and some people “WTF they all have Leicas” or “Oh no, just another photoworkshop” – and we had fun!

Hunnies and Hipsters

Film

Times of photo edit

I think I’m more a people shooter than a street guy.

People who shot film didn’t needed to edit.

I finished soon and so I have the Noctilux + M9-p a try

X100 talkers

Of course i needed to do that!

…and one badass shot too

Pizza time!

No Coffee

That was the workshop, a very nice one, thank you guys!

Back to film – oh i like the film look

Der von hier!

Still to far away

I went to the metro and guess who I ran in to

and we ran into two us-people. Funny thing!

Jana and me had Momos – awesome Mongolian food!

FINE

post berlin

spanishjohnny — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 18:19:33 +0000

i had a 7h to drive on friday. welcome wine in the kitchen. i had my “own” room to sleep (thanks to jana and jonas!) over the rooftops of kreuzberg. the street is serious workshop was great! i met a lot of nice people and a lot of a nice city. lost a fear of shooting street. lots of rolls exposed. i had tibetan momos with jana at night. the window was open all night and on sunday morning i woke up by a car that had that sound = big smile. ran accidentally into my good friend juan that i havn’t seen in two years. lots of rolls exposed. got lost on the subway. had a day off. met laura for a breakfast. got my jacket back (thanks severin). got 12 fresh rolls of film. a double shot of strong coffee. had a 6h ride. need 12h of sleep.

basel, switzerland

spanishjohnny — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 21:51:39 +0000

about four weeks ago we were visiting friends in basel, switzerland. i mixed up the order of the latest posts but who really cares? i wanted to post these before the four of us hit the road to sweden on monday. these are vacation pictures, nothing fancy but i hope you still like it.

back than i had the notion that there is something wrong with the leica. i was right. i checked the lightmeter and it was totally off. well right now it’s at the hospital – “fotomechanik reinhardt”. so far the my leica story is such a expensive pain.

what a nice place to live!

at the museum tinguely

the famous painting machine

colour?!

PEN

MONEY

RATT TATT TATT

nice to see how people use the river bank

planning the next vacation

Marschland

spanishjohnny — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 19:56:54 +0000

The last weekend we drove up to one of my (our) favorite places: The marshland of the Ems-River. I took the old Seagull 6×6, my last roll of APX100 and the D200 as lightmeter with me. Because I only had 12 shots – these are the digital results from that day. I’m not very happy with the colors but what the hell, it’s only for the blog

atmosphere of trust

spanishjohnny — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 23:09:03 +0000

Dear Reader, this time i developed two rolls of Rollei Retro 100 aka Agfa apx 100 from two weekends in March that i spent in the North and in the Ruhrgebiet. I gave it a more random order because this is not following any story.

This normally is a place where the Circus folks park their trailers, some of my friends from home might know this place. I saw this container from the road, turned around and took a shot of that thing. I wanted to see how it looks on film

It was the Sunday after the horrible disaster in Japan… I know it’s different in germany but in the end it might be not different at all. Passing the nuclear power plant was a strange feeling and somehow it still is everytime I pass it

I just missed the focus, taking photographs out of a car is not a good idea

I played around with exposures. I still wonder how the long time leica user do shots like this, it’s just guessing the exposure isn’t it? Not that it was different on the XD7. Still like the result, not the dust though. I should get a bottle of Rapidry, see if this magical stuff works.

Still guessing

Working

After work, relaxing in the sun

Somebody has got to do it

——-

Part II

Morning view, i think they saw a bird and i saw them.

Two weeks ago I went to see the water after work, it was not there at that time. It was a nice afternoon. Still work on my Leica-Metering-Skills.

After I arrived in Bochum we took a walk. I like the brushwood and ask her to help me out

Kids playing in the street

Hacky Sack champ

The Jupiter at f2.0 – nice i think

Same here, my favorite in this blog

atmosphere of trust – an relic of the industrial and social heritage of the area. i always like to discover signs like that.

have a good weekend!

First day with my new photo machine

spanishjohnny — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 19:56:48 +0000

So here is the first roll i shot with the new camera. I had this BW400 lying at home and thought I give it a try. I’m not a big fan of this film, it’s way to contrasty so you loose a lot of details. I guess it’s the fault of the scanning process but what the hell.

Very first shot, my mum

and this is my dad

i went over to meet my friend jan

he took a shot of me he can tell you a thing or two about me getting this camera

As a backup I took that roll of TriX with me, I carried this package with me for weeks

Later we went to this pub that turned more out into a restaurant, i didn’t know that. Back in the days it was a nice place to sit and have a proper beer.Perfect condition for this contrast-bitch BW400

of course i had to do this^^

On the way to my sister – you might have seen this part

out of the car

awesome title

Second day with my new photo machine

spanishjohnny — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:32:36 +0000

The first roll i put in my new camera was a roll of BW400CN I had. I thought I maybe could get faster results from it, of a 24h photo shop. I was wrong, I was faster and developed the second roll last night. The Leica is a little different to use than my SLRs but it would be strange if it wasn’t. Like it a lot but I have a little trouble with the meter. Don’t know and don’t care at the moment

Thanks Klaus for his Jupiter8 lens, without him I probably had drilled a hole in the cap of the camera. It’s really nice of you!

So it’s saturday, me and my sister are visiting Nijmegen and took a break at a café

Three clicks at the same time

She is reading the menu while I had to check the toilet upstairs. It’s a nice place!

A Dutch biker

The weather was really nice and a few people had a party on the first floor.

Just to try things out… Nijmegen is a nice city thoughHEMA: Overexposed it, big time – see trouble with the meter or the meter has trouble with it’s user

I think the Jupiter 8 is quite nice.

successful shopping – bulb

unpack all the nice things

a nice dinner in a nice flat

the next morning, i got some buns from a bakery and saw this guy

so where to go today?

views all over the city

we went to the castle

flying dog (a bit to far away)

again a city of views

bye bye kleve

visiting my grandma

now i wait for the BW400

another weekend pt.1

spanishjohnny — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:16:01 +0000

Dear Visitors,

as always it takes a while until i come up with something new. The last weeks had been very busy and i was to lazy to do develop and scan – as always.

So I got the lazy ass version of black and white photography and bought two rolls of Ilford XP2. One roll is still in the use and the other one i already got from the drugstore. I makes me really angry how they treat film these days. I know the XP2 and it’s quite a good film, if you scan it right. There is black and there is white, nothing else. Makes me freak out but still, it’s nice not to splash around chemicals from time to time and still use the trusty XD7.

hannover – a man is having a splash.

crazytob is having a parking lot with a view. i had to work in hannover and so we met afterwards. we walked around and in the end i had to take a shot of him and he got a few taken of me.

i arrived in in bochum that night, virtual window shopping and a rokkor at f1.2. after that we went to a gallery show but all the photographs are rather bad so you will not see them.

next morning

haha, i never saw that one. a sticker from the beautiful city of chester

after the hair is dried

analog shopping is more fun

nice job cewe color… tz

i love my pony…!?

at night on the way home…

to be continued….

Pictures from a sunken ship sailor + yashica t4

spanishjohnny — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 21:58:57 +0000

this weekend i got to the sunken ship sailor festival (http://www.sunkenshipsailor-festival.de/). actually not my type of music but my friends from pony empire were playing too.i don’t know why so many places got these crazy LEDs. it’s always just a few spots on front of the band, the rest is just black. what a pain, it hurts my eyes and the camera sensor. i wasn’t in the mood to throw me and my d200 into that battlefield. so i took the pony-phone to film a few songs ;P

still i took a few… not so fancy but here they are

he was filming the whole thing, i wonder how his dmkII handled the scene

now another band – “Goodbye Fairground”quite good, they sound a bit like “Gaslight Anthem”

nice LEDs they make everything pink – what do you do?

at least that’s nice…

Tackleberry – not my type of music but they were good!

————–

here are a few shots from the roll rollei retro 100 i scanned last week. i screwed most of the shots. all taken with a yashica t4

funny double exposure

on the way home. A31