I’m in Germany!

It has been a while since I have been out of the US traveling. This month I find myself in Europe and I will be traveling for the rest of May. First in Germany then to Barcelona, Spain and finally to Vienna, Austria. Each of these cities are places where I have friends living and I have chosen this May to take time to visit them and explore Europe a bit. Since I am not on assignment, I am taking a slightly different approach to my photography. I am traveling light, well relatively light. Also, because I will be mostly on the schedule of others, I will not always have the luxury of positioning myself for prime lighting. So I am taking a more relaxed approach and shooting a lot of “snap shots” using my Cannon G12 point and shoot camera.

I will endeavor to post images and relate stories of this adventure here as often as I am able. Please fill the post comments with your words and suggestions for me on this journey. If you are receiving this via email post the you will obviously need to visit the actual blog to make comments.

I am staying in Langenlonsheim, a suburb of Frankfurt Germany where my good friend Gudrun lives with her husband Uwe and their 4 children. This is the heart of Germany’s wine making country along the Rhine Valley. Spring is fully sprung here with warm temperatures and flowers all over the place. The rolling hillsides are covered with the grape fields of vineyards.

My first outing, helping me to fight jet-lag, is a bike ride with Gudrun on the bike path from her home along the Nahe River, a tributary of the Rhine to the town of Bingen at it’s confluence with the Rhine River. The Nahe River banks are south facing and hold many of the regions finest vinyards. Most of Germany’s vineyards owe there existence to the Rhine and it’s tributaries.

Germany’s winter and spring have been dry and both these rivers are unusually low for this time of the year. I am thrilled however to see all the lush green and blooming flowers. I just heard it is snowing again at my Colorado home and I am glad to be here enjoying the warmth. Despite the drought the weather has been mostly overcast and hazy.

This is not ideal weather for trying to shoot large vistas. So I try to shoot scenes without a lot of sky when the weather is like this. I also like to focus on small details. Flowers especially look nice under the diffused light of an overcast sky.