My 2012 Berlin Fotomarathon – Relived – #12fmb (Part 3)

Ah… where were we?… oh yes, I’d left the second checkpoint behind… but I caught up quickly and was ready to move on and work on the last 8 photos of the day.

The second checkpoint was at the Berlinische Galerie, a short walk away from Checkpoint Charlie, so I headed toward the Checkpoint as I pondered what to do next.

Photo 17 is special because it could win the Campari special prize, and I thought that the photo should, naturally, feature Campari—as I called it a day (Feierabend).

Let me just say, Campari is disgusting. I don’t recall what the Campari special prizes are, but if they are bottles of Campari… I am going to have trouble getting rid of them. I cannot imagine that any of my friends actually drink that swill. What you don’t see in the above photo is that I also ordered a Sprite, which I was drinking off to the side as I tried to get the photo just right. The flowers are blocking a man and his wife who were sitting off to the side of the stairs.

From there I had a bit of a puzzle for the next photo: zusammen / together – I actually wandered aimlessly for a bit, before deciding to catch the bus over toward Alexanderplatz – and, along the way, it occurred to me that there was a happy couple along the way: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.

From there I kept walking east – I needed to find chillen / chilling – and my initial thought was that I could find some punks hanging out by some fountains – this did not work out as I envisioned. At the first fountain, there were punks, but more like 20 of them, and I didn’t see an obvious way to capture their chilling – so I moved on. Eventually I found a stage with performers – they were promoting some cause, but I cannot remember what, exactly. Sorry.

After this photo, I took another brief pause and considered what to do next – I already had figured out photo 21 and I had a vague plan for photo 23. Further, I already knew exactly how I was going to shoot photo 24.

Naturally this left me with photo 20: erfrischend / refreshing – and I decided to go for something obvious, so I popped into the nearby Saturn, found the fans, and… I was done.

Back in Alexanderplatz, I stopped to buy my prop for photo 23, and then I headed off to do 21: Naturschönheit / natural beauty. Berlin has many excellent parks, and I decided to pop over to a nearby one and take its photo. By this time it was well into the sunset, so I pulled out the tripod and spent about 15 minutes getting this photo just right.

With this photo out of the way, I was actually stymied with no clue on how to tackle photo 22, leidenschaftlich / passionate. Actually, I could, but the resulting photo would have been too crude, plus I would have had to ask for volunteers… and that seemed inappropriate.

I actually wandered a very short distance to a bench where I was going to regroup, only to find photo 22.

Clearly this would have been better for zusammen / together – but I didn’t know about the bench at that time, so I was stuck using it for leidenschaftlich / passionate.

For the next to last photo, I’d bought props: cherries: kirschrot / cherry-red. I found what I hoped was a reasonable back drop, formed the cherries into my number, and…

The last photo was, for me, clear shortly after I got the list: I wanted to photograph the last checkpoint because that would be Der letzte Tanz / the last dance for the evening. I actually switched lenses, putting on my fish-eye and snuck the shot, before walking a few feet over and submitting my 24 photos.

Some how my last photos went by very quickly and I gained a whole lot of time – I was at the check-in around 9:30, an hour before the check-in was “officially” open. But that was OK – they were taking photos and I was exhausted.

All-in-all, I had an excellent time. I was much better prepared for this year’s fotomarathon, to the point that on Sunday I was merely exhausted, not sore. Somehow I even made it to the gym on Sunday – something I could not have predicted.

This is something I definitely want to do again, next year – although I am again curious how it goes on in other cities. Maybe I could do the Cardiff Photomarathon? Hopefully the one in Berlin and the one in Cardiff will not be scheduled for the same weekend…