Olympiapark - Abandoned Train Station

Short trip with a friend to an old train station which was built for the 1972 olympic games in Munich. It closed down in 1988 and has been abandoned ever since.

entrance to the train station

train tracks towards the olympic town center

ripped out tracks and graffiti in the station

Olympia Park @ Night

Quick visit to the Olympia Park in Munich on a saturday night.
At the same time this is the first post with new equipment (see the equipment section on the upper right).

Olympic natatorium

Olympia tower, natatorium and BMW headquarters

BMW world entrance

Olympia town with Olympia Hotel

All pictures were taken with the Sony A7 and a Minolta MD-Rokkor 24mm f2.8 lens.

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 :-)

Kim Engineering Building (b&w)

The Jeong H Kim Engineering Building is one of the showcase buildings of the UMD engineering school. The iconic rotunda is brightly lit after sunset, which is why it is the focus of the following pictures.

Here we go:

 A front shot of the Kim building rotunda

Details of the architecture

My personal favorite: a panorama of the Kim buidling plaza, one wing of the building, and the rotunda

The 60's Chevy C10

For a couple of months a nicely restorated Chevrolet C10 has been standing in front of my office during the day time. One day I had my camera with me and decided to get out during lunch time and try my luck. As the surroundings were not great as a background for a car shot, I tried to focus on the interesting details of the car.

Here we go:

UMD Early Morning (color)

As promised, here are a few HDR pictures taken from the UMD campus early morning in color.
They are mainly the same pictures seen in the last post... in color.

Here we go:

The UMD main gate

The "M" circle

View from the "M" circle towards the main gate

View of the UMD mall fountain towards the administration building.

UMD Early Morning

About one week ago I got up early to take pictures from the University of Maryland entrance and way to the mall during and shortly after sun rise. Although I made some technical mistakes while taking the panorama shots, most of them turned out surprisingly well. The pictures of the current post will be black and white, but I am planning on making a second post soon with a slightly different assortment of color pictures.

Here we go:

The University main gate shortly before sunrise.

A panorama shot of the engineering building on the way from the main gate to the University mall.

Traffic circle with the classical Maryland "M".

A panorama shot back from the traffic circle towards the main gate.

Fountain on the mall and the flight of stairs leading up to McKeldin Library.

Fountain panorama with Administration Building in the background.

McKeldin Library with an eye towards the mall architecture.

Some Flowers (1)

Here are some random shots of flowers from last year, not associated with a specific trip or location. Most were shot handheld with my trusted Tamron lens (why some may not be tack sharp), some were shot with a tripod and the additional help of the Canon Close-up lens. I will post more flower shots in due time.

Here we go:

One of my favorites, because of the beautiful color gradients in the rose petals:

An orchid seen in a conservatory:

A white topped pitcher plant outside in a park:

A wild flower in a forest in Canada. Possibly a daffodil, but I'm not sure:

Great Falls National Park 2012

A few weekends ago I went for a hike in Great Falls National Park with a friend.
We saw a lot of wildlife: snakes, small birds, big birds, todds with suicidal tendencies (long story). There was one animal though who was kind enough to sit still for a couple of seconds to give me a great picture: A couple of five-lined skinks!

The following pictures are some impressions from the path along the old Chesapeake and Ohio Canal which runs parallel to the Potomac great falls. The historic-style boat you see below provides mule-drawn tours on the canal.

There are lots of things one can do in Great Falls: having a barbecue, site seeing of the falls, rock scrambling, or just enjoying a relaxing walk next to the canal.