Photo-Blog Hans-Josef Jeanrond

Airport Images

Flughafenbilder

Images d'aéroport

On the way from Nice to Berlin in January. Only the snowy mountains show that we are in winter. Brilliant sunshine made a stark difference to the landing in wintery grey (and cold!) Berlin. (I spare you the images of dark-grey Berlin. For other images of Berlin, see here

"La Pause" / "Lunchbreak"

Town and country in the airport terminal.

After take-off

Paris Photo at the Grand Palais

Paris Photo au Grand Palais

La Photographie en grand : Grands formats, grands prix, grand nombre de visiteurs - grand espace VIP

I am not going to comment on the photographs on show, the choice was just too overwhelming. (Have a look for yourselves here if you did not have the chance to attend.) Nor am I attempting to give you an impression of the atmosphere, since this is not a photojournalistic blog - and since I thought I had to give up my camera backpack at the cloakroom. (I saw quite a few people afterwards that had kept their's, but just looking at them after a few hours made my back hurt.) So I only had my new smartphone to take a few pictures, as a test so to speak.

I found the entrance to the VIP lounge just as impressive as a lot of the prices.

The exit with the red carpet seemingly leading to the Petit Palais was quite impressive as well.

Leaving after a few hours, I was only a shadow of myself.

Revived after a few hours on the train, I was able to capture this impression of the building of the Communauté d'Agglomération Toulon Provence Méditerranée, still with the phone, before being picked up for the final leg of the journey home.

Walk-in Portrait Studio

Portrait Studio Tag der offenen Tür

Salle des Mouffus, Boulevard Lazare Carnot au centre du village

Venez seul(e), en famille ou entre ami(e)s, pour vous faire photographier, sans engagement et sans obligation d'acheter les photos.
Avant la rentrée, voilà encore une occasion de faire photographier vos enfants.

Vous trouvez que vous n'êtes pas photogénique ? Réfléchissez à cette définition : "On est photogénique quand on est prêt de donner de soi."
Le champs de l'expression est vaste; à vous de jouer.

Cliquez sur le photos pour les agrandir.

Roofs and Waves

Dächer und Wellen

Des toits et des vagues

On a recent trip to Glasgow, I went - of course - to see Zaha Hadid's Riverside Museum. As so often in Scotland, the sun played hide and seek with erveryone, making it difficult to catch the reflections in the dark glass panels of the riverside front of the museum.
The building being very close to the river, my 35mm lens proved not wide-angeled enough for the photos I would have liked to take, but here are at leat some impressions of the building and its sourroundings.
I assume the roof construction was inspired by the old storage or factory buildings with their zig-zag roof structures, and by the waves of the river and the nearby sea. Maybe the cityscape served as inspiration, too. Contracting these elements in what resembles a swift stroke of the pen, and actually constructing a roof according to this pen stroke is quite daring - and possibly a stroke of genious. Reading the text on Hadid's Website, my intuition on her inspiration seems to be right.
In the following images, you can see the old roof structures, reflected in a window on the side of the building that resembles an image hung on a museum wall. The second one gives an idea of bold line of the museum's roof .
(Click on the images to enlarge)

Having lived in Scotland for two years, I don't even dare to imagine the wind pressure and the challenges by the tons of rain being blown against the huge glass façade, but apparently it resists the elements. You get an idea of the size from the previous and the next picture:


The sailing boat moored in front of the building is part of the museum.
Walking around the front to the right, there is another window that acts like an exhibit hung on the outside of the building.

Spring at Collobrières

Printemps à Collobrières

Frühling in Collobrières

Fission Tree

Arbre fendant

Spaltbaum

Lichtbögen

Arcs of Light

Arcs de lumière

Tour Exaltis is a relatively late addition to La Défense (2006), designed by architects Bruno Willerval of Bridot-Willerval and Bernardo Fort-Brescia of Architectonica, and built by Bouygues. It houses the headquarters of Mazars.

The arcs of light are lighting strips in the interior of the big entrance hall. The architects have extended them onto the pavement outside the building, as you can see in this image (click to enlarge).

I have taken up that idea and “extended” the arcs of light into the surroundings, structuring the mirror images of la Défense, and blurring the distinction “inside – outside”.

The first image is closely cropped to the pedestrian level of La Défense, with Tour Total and Tour Areva framing the image left and right. The second shows the lower street level - with pedestrians, and the photographer in the lower left corner. (Contrary to Erich Kästner's proverbial saying that the photographer is never in the picture: "Merk's dir, du Schaf, weil's immer gilt: der Photograph ist nie auf'm Bild.")

Here we have two emblematic buildings of La Défense reflected in cascades in the concave structure of Tour Exaltis: La Grande Arche and one of the towers of Société Générale.

"Breaking through"
The reflected image of Pei's EDF tower seems to be breaking through the façade of the Exaltis tower from the inside.

Berliner Reflektionen

Reflets de Berlin

Berlin Reflections

Back to Berlin for a 4 day conference, with just the Nikon body and one lens (only one hand luggage! and the computer bag is the obligatory one on this trip), I try to redo some of the images taken 4 years ago with a little compact camera.
After the switch from summer time the previous night, I calculate that 4 pm would be a good time to be on location. Alas, I do not take into account Berlin's north-eastern geography, and light is fading from 3:30 pm onwards!
That results in a few nice (I hope) twilight images, but I have to return another time to get the images I am after. Construction work prevents me to get to the right spot, but I am rather pleased with some of the reflections.

"Lila Dämmerung", Potsdamer Platz

"Fuzzy Geometry", Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus

On the way back to the government district, I pass by Neue Nationalgalerie

and "Legoland" at Potsdamer Platz

The afternoon light and the reflection make the geometry of Paul Löbe Haus and Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus soft but no longer fuzzy:

"Soft Geometry"

"Wege der Demokratie": Stairs, balconies and a bridge linking members of parliament and their staff to each other.

And then, there is Gehry! I did not think one could simply walk past the guard at the entrance of DZ Bank at Pariser Platz, but the guard even holds the door open for you. I had heard about the explosion of "Gehry-forms" behind the stern facade imposed by the city rules around Pariser Platz. But I did not expect this. Magnificent! The meeting room inside the "whale" inside the glass-roofed inner court (“under water”?).

Enfants !

Kinder!

Children!

While making a portrait it is tempting to not just show the person in front of you but also the person he or she may have been and may become. With children, the focus is naturally more on what kind of person they may become or would like to become. No problem with girls: They like to project themselves into the future as soon as adolescence begins. Which is more and more early, it seems.