pals

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when it started raining in girona my plans to go to the pyrenees quickly changed and i decided to hop in my vw bus and drive towards sunny weather. i got a tip on instagram from my friend lisa to visit pals.

pals is a small town not far from the ocean and one feels like going back in time when walking up to el pedro and the torre. i was very lucky to arrive with a bus load of german retirees. it was so much fun listening to their conversations and watch them flood the streets of this peaceful little village.

it felt like they were walking wallets to the people selling ceramics and other local products in the little stores inhabiting the old stone buildings.

i often set my digital camera to black and white. it is very useful to understand the contrast and since i always shoot raw i can easily convert to color. this time i decided not to and applied an ilford hp5 filter of vsco.

 

girona

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pforzheim in the south of germany has about as many inhabitants as girona, a river flows through both cities and the layout is almost the same. girona has one significant difference – it looks pretty and has much more charme. but basically the two towns are the same. even the landscape and the periphery resemble each other.

since i am on my trip i always compare the new sights, sounds and people to things i already know. it is quite fun to find similarities to things you are already accustomed to in an environment that is totally new to you.

girona is a wonderful city. i am lucky i was there when it wasn’t overrun with tourists looking for the places where game of thrones was filmed and eating overpriced meals in the old part of the town.

what i really like to do is to sit down and just watch the people passing by and take the same picture over and over again, just with a different protagonist that presents itself to me and my camera. it is something i started in berlin and i really want to continue. it is part of my „kleine arbeiten“ project. the pictures look very good when hung in a row as the horizon and background repeat.

oh and i had a catalan sausage for lunch at mononcle . so delicious!

L94

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L94 is the bus that took me from and to barcelona. i am camping at the beach very close to the airport. the last time i visited barcelona it was in a different mindset and more pleasure oriented. this time i looked at the city with different eyes.

the busy streets of the city center with the little second hand shops, the many skateboarders and the many sights marketed to tourists didn’t spark my photographic interest. it was the bus journey going from the periphery of barcelona towards the city center and the changing landscape that really caught my attention.

the first time i realized how satisfying it can be to take pictures from a moving train or in this case bus it can be was on a journey through the winter-landscape between berlin and karlsruhe in january of 2010. back then i used my rolleiflex and already anticipated the beautiful effect of blur caused by horizontal velocity.

objects closer to the lens move faster across the focusing screen than those further away. this causes the distant objects to be sharp and detailed whereas the closer objects blur and become distorted.

i used my phone pressed close to the bus window to avoid any reflections and just clicked everytime we passed by something interesting. the delay of the phonecamera required a lot of anticipation on my part. a very important trait of photography.

in barcelona i enjoyed some wonderful downtime, waiting for my „streets“ film to be developed by kitoli photo lab. tomorrow i will pick up my three rolls of snapshots out of my moving car and i am really excited to see how they turned out. then i am on my way to the pyrenees to take some landscape photography while hiking. an unusual subject for me and thus quite challenging and exciting.

aurelia

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i am working on a series where i take pictures out of my car using an olympus mju ii and cheap fuji film. i just point and shoot through my windshield sometimes holding the camera out of the window of my moving car. i photograph everything that catches my eye. paytoll buildings, other drivers, clouds, the strips of lands between borders, mountains, palmtrees, interesting buildings and the scenery when i cross over bridges. i want to make a book using these photographs documenting the different landscapes and architecture in europe. when i came to zagreb i got one roll developed fast in order to check the quality of my work. the person using the frontier developing machine was very interesting and so i thought of getting the next roll of film developed in rome so i can meet those people still believing in the future of film and making a business. it was very hard to find a lab that processes film fast. nearly impossible. all the internet inquiries told me it would take at least a week. so i almost lost hope to continue the project. one day i got out of the metro one stop early to check out the neighborhood and actually found a little place „nova foto“ that would develop my film in one hour. i was sold.

the next day i packed my roll of fuji superia 200 and dropped it off at the store. it wouldn’t have made sense to use the metro to go to the center as it takes about 20 min, so i wandered around aurelia and took some photos of the streets and people. the authenticity of this area fascinated me much more than the pittoresque little streets of trastevere  or the vatican. it wasn’t filled with tourists, making me feel like an outsider looking in for the first time.

the hour passed quickly and the prints were still warm when i picked them up. i even got a little plastic photo-album for them.

bologna part two

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the second part of my day in bologna was wonderful. i just enjoyed longboarding the walkways and got out of the city center, where i discovered the beautiful entranca hall to the department of political science and sociology of the university.

i took a lot of pictures of the polished stoned floors and the huge variety of colors and shapes they come in. i will attach the pictures to the next post which i will call material one. i am planning to take photographs of materials along this trip. such common things as stone or everyday objects like busstops are the only things left to differentiate between cities full of h&m’s and other franchises taking over our world.

i really liked the guy’s t-shirt saying „when does the fun start“. i guess i can say it already begun.

bologna

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yesterday i drove from zagreb to bologna. the drive through slovenia in the evening light was very scenic. i really want to go to slovenia for a longer period and hike the beautiful mountains. i made only one stop to get gas and a sandwich, all the truckers were sitting at the gas station drinking white wine, one was shaving in the restroom.

in italy i saw wonderful thunderstorms driving through veneto to emilia romagna. in my bus i prepared some food and went to bed around 1 am.

today i got up around 8 and organized my things. as my younger sister says, living in a car is easy as long as you organize all your stuff, so i had to make some adjustments because some things are more important than others. around 11 i grabbed my longboard and went to the outer edge of bologna. it is wonderful weather and the arcades with their smooth polished floors are just perfect to skate through.

i used the wifi connection in the café to upload some of todays photos and write this entry. tonight i am going to florence.

zagreb

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the third destination of my road trip is zagreb. my friend from karlsruhe jan’s family lives in the upper city and we planned to spend some time together in his hometown.

honestly i didn’t spend much of my energy on taking pictures but rather slowly adjusted to being on the road and traveling. i remade this website with wordpress because i wanted to make it more accessible and add this section where i share my experiences.

this city is a real metropolis with the feeling of a mid sized town. it has an abundance of cafés and bars. the houses are old and shabby and give you a warm feeling with their centuries old stone work decorations. it has a lot of appeal to enjoy the great food and drinks and just let the days pass by with ease. cultural and friendly are the people of zagreb.

jan and julian on soundcloud

castello miramare

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on the way from venice to zagreb i visited castello miramare 5km northwest from trieste. i had a wonderful break in the park surrounding the beautiful building and took a lot of pictures with my analog nikon camera. i am really looking forward to develop this roll of film since it is such an amazing scenic place.

i then drove through the small streets of trieste. a wonderful city which i visited 2 years ago. the weather was very cloudy and it started to rain so i was off to croatia.

venice

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i was in venice only for one night. after driving through switzerland i arrived at the camp site around 9pm and managed to make my way to venice by train. i used my digital camera and my nikon 28mm f2.8 lens on a tripod to do some long exposures of the canal and the busy streets. i finished my photo walk on the markus square and felt a little out of place with all the tourists and couples.