Autor-Archive: Arno Wirtz

It’s definitely autumn over here in northern Germany.

What I love most during this time is the crispness of the light on a sunny day.

It makes my heart jump up and down in joy – it’s that beautiful – and I just love it.

I also love walking around while looking at the light.

There is a new melancholy in the air that I hadn’t noticed in the summer.

Watching the people go about their day it’s clear that life is slowing down and getting ready for the long winter months.

The people will miss the light and warmth that the warmer seasons provide.

There are different sounds in the air and what appears loud in summer suddenly seems muted.

Not sure if this is just my impression – or if sounds really do sound different in autumn – but to me it’s a tangible change that I enjoy.

With the change in the light and sound comes a certain quietness that has a sense of calm.

As the world chooses a lower gear it’s the people around me that grab my attention.

I notice lots of them enjoying the rarer sunny days and making the most of the warmth that soon will seem like a luxury in the harsher climate of the German winter.

Awwww…

So, there I was, hitting the pavements of Stralsund on Germany’s Baltic Sea coast.

I was happily walking along some narrow alleys wondering how to best do what I like doing most, which is to photograph street portraits.

In a previous post I mentioned that it is now illegal to photograph people without their consent, thereby rendering natural street photography pretty much redundant in Germany.

It is of course permissible to ask first and shoot later, or to photograph in such a way that people can’t be identified.

Contemplating that it might be time to start asking people if I could take their photograph I dreaded the possibility of missing good images because I might get turned down.

In general my approach has always been to ask before photographing and during many journeys outside of Germany I have rarely been turned down.

But Germans are different and most just aren’t keen to be photographed.

So the chance of asking for a photograph and losing out is pretty high.

Anyway, my wonderful travel guide – who has a habit of taking the mikey out of me – had earlier pinned a mid-sized pirate flag to my camera bag.

Turns out that Germans found this funny and wherever I went the flag brought smiles to peoples faces.

It also turned out that it was easier to ask people for permission to photograph.

Somehow this pirate flag had the ability to engage people in a way that merely being human did not.

The lovely couple below is one such example of barriers being broken down by the use of a pirate flag.

We saw each other coming…and there we were…a match made in heaven, and what I think is a fab portrait.

After making the picture I asked the couple if I could email them a copy of the image.

To this the gentleman kindly replied that they’d just gotten rid of their computer.

And there you go, another lesson learned. We don’t all need this modern stuff to happily get by in life.

Many thanks to the friendly couple, who made a wonderful photographic subject.

My wonderful travel guide pointing out an area of photographic interest while at the same time preserving her anonymity:

Well, it’s official now, it’s autumn.

First thing you notice is that people begin scraping their car windows in the morning.

Luckily the central heating keeps everything cosy, and if you don’t have a need to step outside – or look outside the window – you wouldn’t really notice the difference at first.

But the signs of seasonal change are everywhere.

The temperature gauge at night says 0 degrees, the birds start gathering for their big migrations, and the trees have put on colours in the autumn spectrum.

After my first German summer in 25 years – which was a blast – I’m now preparing for my first winter.

The days are noticeably shorter, very short in fact.

While the height of summer provided 16+ daylight hours, now we’re down to roughly 11 hours, and on the 21st of December it will be 7+ hours.

Not much light to be out and about photographing.

The change of seasons became very obvious the other day when I was sitting by my lounge window while observing the surroundings during some heavy rains.

The mood in the landscape was different, there was darkness in the air that I hadn’t noticed during earlier months.

The smells were also different and just seemed fresher and from farther away.

Not sure what exactly triggers the birds to gather, but the skeins have certainly been busy exercising their formation flying over recent weeks.

Not too long and they will all be gone till spring.