Three Shots from Aschaffenburg

While the weather isn't particularly pleasant over the next few months and there aren't any state holidays on the Hessian calendar until Easter, we're pretty much staying close to home on the weekends.  It's kind of nice not to have anywhere we need to be.  It gives time for leisurely Saturday morning bike rides to a cafe for a pastry and a coffee, Sunday lie ins, Netflix binges, backgammon tournaments and strolls along the river.  The first few months of the year can be pretty dull now that the holidays are over, and Winter still remains.  But, there is one thing about Winter that makes it worth going out, the light.

Since we don't have anywhere to be, we thought it'd be a good chance to do a little exploring around the area and to take some photos around sunrise or sunset.  Sunrise is around 8:00am, so that doesn't require any ridiculous alarm times.  Sunset happens around 5:00pm, providing plenty of shooting time before dinner.  So, even though the temperatures are polar, Winter is really the best time of year for city night and landscape shooting.  Plus, around here at least, the sunrises and sunsets can be pretty spectacular because of the unique cloud cover and position of the sun.

This past weekend, we headed into Aschaffenburg, one of the larger cities on the Main River, about 45 minutes upriver from Frankfurt.  Aschaffenburg used to belong to the Prince Bishops of Mainz and then was passed to the Kingdom of Bavaria.  Consequently, it has several rather impressive constructions, the most famous being the Schloss Johannisburg.  We ride by the Schloss pretty regularly on bike rides and even after a year, I still can't get over the size.  I've taken many pictures of it, usually with my phone in passing, but never intentionally came to the city to focus on it as a subject.  This weekend it was my second priority so I plan on going back to it again soon.  On our way to the river,  it became clear from the glimpses of the sky through the buildings that we were missing a particularly brilliant light show.   By the time we got down to the river sunset was just ending.  We didn't have enough time to set up before it was over, so I whipped out my X-E2 and snapped the shot below quickly from the bike path.  One of the things I love about this camera is that I can get a shot in low light like this handheld.  I took this using the Vibrant film simulation, but other than adding the watermark I didn't edit it any further.  One of the great things about Fujifilm's X-Series is that they are WiFi connectable.  So, I was able to post this directly to Instagram shortly after taking it.  One of my goals over the next couple of years is to stop using my phone as a primary camera.  Having a WiFi capable camera makes that possible.

Fujifilm X-E2 ISO 1600 18mm f/6.5 1/30

After taking that, we headed down to the bridge over the Main and set the tripod up.  The bridge is the main route over the river from the western bank and sees a lot of traffic.  So, there's quite a bit of shake.  I switched over to the Canon because I wanted to use its wide-angle lens.  I enabled mirror lock-up, disabled image stabilization, and used a remote shutter.  But, with the bridge shake, there was no way to get a perfectly sharp image.  I'm not a pixel peeper, but in editing I noticed there was some blur in the details.  Oh well, there's nothing that can be done about a shaky bridge!

Canon 600D ISO 100 16mm f/9 6.0secs

I didn't do too much with this in post except crop it down a little and remove a buoy in the river that I found distracting.  The image here is showing somewhat brighter and more saturated than it does elsewhere, which may just be a Blogger glitch.  While I like the view and the Schloss, I'm not really "into" this particular shot.  In hindsight, I wish I had made it there while the sunset was doing its thing because I think it would have highlighted the building a bit better than the lights and would have added more interest in the sky and water.  So, this is on the list of things to try again in the future.

Where was I which made me miss the sunset?  There's a rather large park in the center of the city that was part of the royal grounds back when the King of Bavaria had his summer residence in Aschaffenburg.  While the king and kingdom are no more, the palace and park remain and it's full of interesting little sights.  One of those are ruins of a medieval church that are on an island in the middle of a small lake.  The ruins were my primary location and I was hoping to get them while the lowlight of the sun cut through the park a bit.  We spent a lot of time walking around the ruins trying to find a good angle.  But, while it's an interesting spot, it wasn't so interesting to photograph.  The site is closed off from the public with a barred gate and windows that take away from the visual impact of the ruins on one side.  It is one of those things that the eye overlooks, but the lens cannot.  On the other side there's some debris and warning tape that makes the whole spot look like an unsightly construction area.  So, that left me with the back end of the apse, and on the side of the lake furthest from the ruins.  It took some time for me to find a spot that didn't have fencing, trash cans, walking paths, or benches in the shot, but I finally found a little corner (nearly in a bush) that gave a view of the ruins without showing all the uninteresting and somewhat ugly "city stuff."  I originally planned to use the X-E2 when I was thinking about the ruins, but when I found this spot I immediately switched over to the Canon so I could use the 10-22mm wide angle lens.  There was a little brook that fed into the lake with an attractive angle and I wanted to get that in the frame more than I wanted the ruins.

Canon 600D ISO 100 10mm f/9 1.6s, edited with Photoshop

Unlike the other two, I spent a lot of time with this one in post.  With the low light, I wanted to take a long exposure in order to capture the silky movement of the water.  Of course, doing that meant the little bit of sky peeping through the trees was going to get blown out.  I haven't started using ND filters yet, though I have recently picked up a few to begin experimenting with soon.  However, because the horizon here wasn't clear cut, I probably wouldn't have used a graduated ND filter anyway.  So, I decided to take multiple exposures, one long to get the water and the fading light on the ruins in the background, and another much faster to get the sky.  I didn't want a full HDR look for the final result, so I blended the two with a much slower process using multiple layers.  While it clearly has undergone some processing to get the final result, I wasn't going for a completely natural look to begin with.  It was a place that imparted a feeling of mystery.  I wanted to sift through all the junk of a modern city park and create a photograph that might bring that mysterious vibe back to the surface.

So, those were the three shots from the weekend.  Thanks to some early birthday presents, I've replaced my worn out Manfrotto tripod with a slick and funky Three Legged Thing "Brian" and the awkward Lowepro Slingshot with a Hama Daytour 230.  I'm really looking forward to trying them out in the coming weekends.  This weekend, however, we have friends in to town, so I'll be foregoing landscape shooting in favor of just the X-E2 with a new lens (that just came to the door about 5 minutes ago).  More on that next week!