black and white | Adventures in Photography

“East” is a photographic record of the historic events that occurred between August 1989 and January 1990 that brought down the Berlin Wall and reunited East and West Germany. However instead of using cliched newsroom photos of people standing on top of the Wall, it is the everyday lives of regular people during that time that is featured in the foreground and the “historical events” that serve as the backdrop.

The book is mainly written in German for a German audience however it does contain an English translation of the Forward, essays and photo captions to be found at the very end of the book. The main body of the book is the Photography section which is divided into the months August, September, Oktober, November and Dezember. Each spread is spaciously laid out with photographs, the Day. Month., name of the contributing photographer and a short caption. The overall effect is one of non sentimentality letting the photos individually stand on their own but all the while contributing to the overall tone and momentum. 90 % of the photos are in black and white with color serving as accents here and there.

It is a powerful testament to how history is written by regular people just by living the way they choose to and changing the course of history in the mean while. Would be great to see more photobooks like “East” that gives a clearer view of the everyday context that accumulate and add up to momentous events that affect all our lives.

If you like this review enough to buy the book, please purchase from the Amazon link here:
“EAST: FOR THE RECORD”

Hyperfocal focusing is a must learn technique for those interested in street photography. It’s not as hard as it sounds and is actually quite intuitive once you understand the concept. To get started all you have to do is to determine the range at which your subject will most likely appear. The trick is to anticipate the action before you execute the shot.

Let’s say your subject is walking towards you and you want to take a photo of them when they are at least 3 meters away. To make sure that everything is in focus from 3 meters to infinity you place the 3 meters marker on the focus dial to the center dot. Then read off the aperture setting at the infinity mark and set the aperture to that setting. Press the shutter button and as long as the subject is within this range they will be in focus.

This opens up all sorts of possibilities as you can then have the camera away from your eye or even body. No longer worried about focusing on the subject new angles and perspectives can be experimented with. And because the camera is not held up to your eye you can also take pictures very discretely. Sometimes this enables you to move right up to the subject and take the shot.