BMW World

Can you guess whats the most visited tourist site in Bavaria? The Alps?... Castle Neuschwanstein?... Nope. Its the BMW World!
Time for a night out with only me and the camera :-)


Although most people may enter the building through the front door, the back entrance has its charms.

The colorfully lit rolling ceiling resembles cloud formations. Due to the contrast of thick structure and abundant glass facades, the roof looks very bold and lightweight at the same time.

The following picture is somewhat of an experiment of mine. It's actually a panorama made of 36 single shots: 12 angles with 3 exposures each. After blending it all together, this was the final result. With the full moon behind the building it came out looking pretty unreal, but I like the effort :-)

Now to my personal favorite of the night: the three landmarks of BMW in one picture. The photo is just tack sharp.

Olympia Park Munich

After our move to Germany we finally settled in Munich. We live close to the Olympia park, where the Olympic summer games of 1972 were hosted. The park is quite beautiful and is frequented by many in the evening hours for sports/beer/picnic or just a casual stroll.


A panorama shot from the top of the Olympia Mountain, overlooking the park to the north with the Olympia Lake, Olympia Stadium, Olympia Tower and BMW headquarters to the right. Interesting fact: the Olympia Mountain is actually a big pile of rubble back from the years after WWII.

The Olympic Natatorium with the outdoor lake-side theater to the left. It kind of reminds me of a hobbit cave... a very modern hobbit cave... :-)
Anyways, the picture looks a little bit like the front of a postcard.

A Few Days in Berlin

So early this year we went to Berlin for a few days. We much enjoyed the time there and one day I took the camera out for a walk...


Here we go:

This picture shows part of the Spree river in the city district of Moabit. The weather was just gorgeous and the last rays of the sun reflect off the glass facade of the waterside buildings.

When driving back to our place we waited for the Metro in one of those typical Metro stations. I got tired of waiting and started to take pictures :-)

One of Berlin's great landmarks is the red town-hall/major's office, built out of red brick.

Castle Sanssouci was built by a Prussian king as a summer residence. The picture shows the courtyard of the Orangerie, part of Sanssouci.

The last bit is in color. This is the German president's residence, castle Bellevue. Kind of the German White House :-)

The Tilt-shift Tryout

I've been wanting to try out tilt-shift effects during post processing for a while now. A tilt-shift effect is typically applied to miniaturize scenes. To accomplish this, part of the photo is blurred and the colors are over-saturated to make houses/cars/people look like toys. I finally dug out some old pictures, started up Photoshop Elements and tried my luck.

Here are my first attempts:

A pirate ship in the Baltimore Inner Harbor. Granted: it already looked like a toy ship anyways :-)

The skyline of Pittsburgh shortly before sunset.

Harpers Ferry from up high.

An HDR panorama view of the Baltimore Inner Harbor. The fake miniature effect does not come out as well here, since the photo was taken on ground level. I like the picture anyway.

Toy Cars

Ever wondered why your little boy is a car nut? The answer may just be that his dad is a car nut, too. After coming back home, we rediscovered a big box of my toy cars. An excellent chance to try out some macro photos :-)

Here are pictures of some of model cars, size 1:87, from a German company called Praliné.

 

 

The following pictures are shots of two of the bigger model cars, size 1:16. The first two pictures show a Porsche 356, while the third picture shows an S.S. 100 from Jaguar.

The Big Move

Our big move from Maryland to Germany happened last November. While we were very busy in the months before the move and in the first months after the move, expect a couple of new posts soon.

By the way: below is a picture of the plane we took from the U.S. to Germany. 
Photo may differ from actual product :-)