As posted here, this summer I did a F&F (“fast and furious”) photo-round-trip visiting some german cities:
- Hannover
- Düsseldorf
- Cologne
- Frankfurt
- Lepzig
- Dresden
The idea was to shoot the most iconic landmarks of every city in a very short time. The whole trip was planned and executed totally digitally and mobile, which means I only used my smartphone as the device to organize everything: travel, tickets, hotels and walking around.
At first I wasn´t sure if everything would work out fine, as I normally would have planned the whole trip beforehand, which means I would have booked the trains and hotels before going on tour. This time it was all done on the go… while sitting in the train I booked my hotels and while sitting in the hotels I booked my train tickets :-). Everything was acomplished through Apps and I have to say, that it was really easy and efficient. No calls, no paper, no waiting! I wanted to be as flexible as possible, because there is one constraint while producing travel stock imagery that you cannot control: the weather!
Luckily I had quite good light through all the trip and so there was no day where I wasn´t productive shooting images. The short trip lasted 10 days and I visited 6 cities, walked round about 150 km (by feet!) and shot around 4.000 images. The whole equipment (see details here) worked as ment to be and I had no technical failure. The OMD EM-1 and the respective lenses showed me again, why it is my favourite camera for travel photography. Light and small… the perfect combination when you are going to walk a lot!
So, the first city I headed to was Hannover.
[trx_googlemap address=”hannover” zoom=”13″ style=”default” width=”100%” height=”240″]
Located in the north of Germany you can reach Hannover by train from Hamburg within 1.5 hours, so it was my first stop. As I had done my research about the spots and landmarks I wanted to shoot beforehand and marked them on my Google Maps, I knew exactly where I had to walk to the moment I got out of the train:
from the Central Station at the Ernst-August-Platz you walk down the Bahnhofstrasse, which is kind of the shopping-street there. The first landmark you´re likely to see is the “Kröpcke Uhr”
which serves as a very popular meeting point for the people in this city. More details about it here.
If you then turn left and walk a bit you will reach the Opera House, a classical style building built between 1845 and 1852. Allthough it looks quite good during the day:
…it looks even better when you visit it at night:
After visiting the Opera House I went straight to the Aegidien Church, a former gothic church dating from 1347, which was bombed during WW2 and never re-build. It is a reminder of the cruelty of war and every 6th of august (date of the bombing of Hiroshima) delegations from the city of Hiroshima and Hannover meet there:
From the Aegidien Church you´re only some minutes away from the most famous landmark of the city: the Neue Rathaus (the new Town-Hall)
Built in the beginnings of the last century this impressive castle-like building is located near the Masch Lake. Inside the Building you will find really great-looking architectonical details, like this one:
But the most impressive view you will get from this landmark is from the back-side of the building:
If you wait for the right time of the day, you will get some pretty nice reflections and colours on the pond.
Afterwards I went to the nearby located Headquarter of the LB Nord (a german bank), a very modern and futuristic building that looks almost as from another world:
After this I went to make a round around the Masch-Lake and luckily enough, the city was celebrating the anual Maschsee-Festival that night… so, after beeing taking pictures the whole day I enjoyed a cold beer and walked back to the hotel.
While walking I turned back and took a last picture of the Neue Rathaus:
The next day would take me to my next stop: Düsseldorf.
The whole images from my Photo-Round-Trip 2016 are available for licensing through
or at any of the other Stock Image Agencies I work with.
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