Germany - Very Tired

Unfortunately I did not sleep at all during the 8 hour flight over to Frankfurt, so I have been awake for over 24 hours and I’m tired. The flight was smooth and arrived a little early, and we made it through customs without any problems. We were met by the travel agent after clearing customs and baggage claim. It was nice to see someone holding a sign with our name on it and also nice to meet the person I have been coordinating with for the past few months. She went over the whole itinerary, any questions we had then got us to the train station and proper plat form. I think that is where our journey really began.

We had first class tickets (a separate compartment) for the high-speed train to Baden-Baden. There we were met by the second travel agent who picked us up, gave us the rental car, an overview of German traffic signs, and a quick driving tour of Baden-Baden before taking us to the hotel. We are staying at a nice four/five star hotel. The room is huge compared to what we are used to, we also got complement bottles of water and wine, which will be coming home with me. Also a plate of fruit randomly appeared while we were out finding lunch. We have a separate bedroom which can be closed off from the main sitting area and a very posh bathroom. The bathroom has a two and half person tub, a toilet, beday, and a spiral walk in shower with one of those large rain heads, and two sinks and a lot of counter space. The other feature of the room which is interesting is the blackout blinds that come down with a push of a button.

We checked in then went and found lunch we ate at beer garden/café restaurant and had sausage, potato salad, wine and beer. The wine was excellent, the pinot gris from Franken region is crisp and not sweet. We then walked around for a bit then headed back to the hotel to shower. Since it still was around 3:00 PM local time we went back out to wander some more and grab a light dinner. Now it is time to crash and catch up on all the sleep I have missed. Sunday we start early with breakfast at 8:00AM to determine if we are going up to the castle or possibly visit the Maginot Line.

Below is the view from our room, we look out over one of the more modern spas in the area.

Comments

2024 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2025

This year felt a little off for me; I think it was because I was in a mental recovery mode. I finished my graduate program in June and immediately went on a week-long vacation to Palm Springs. I do not recommend Palm Springs in June; way too hot. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the graduate program mentally and physically exhausted me, which I think showed in some of my creative work. But being able to work with great people like Natalie Hanrion , Coralinx Cosplay , and Anastasia B kept me motivated. While I didn’t attend as many Cosplay Photo Shoot events as in the past, the ones I did attend were helpful in keeping the creativity flowing. I also took some time this year to reflect on a few things and will be making some changes for 2025. In 2024, I shot 6241 frames, which is a 30-percent decrease from last year. I edited 3187 frames, which is a 40-percent decrease from 2023. I think this year, I started focusing on being very min...

The Optical Spot

The weekend of November 16 th , I got a little ambitious and did four sessions to test out the Lindsey Adler Optical Spot . I originally rented the optical spot from LensRentals , but that session had to be rescheduled; however, I didn’t want the rental to go to waste, thus a TFP weekend. For this session, I used: Photography Equipment Props/Miscellaneous Cannon R6 24-105 mm Lens Transmitter/Trigger 2 Phottix Strobe 2 FJ400 Westcott Strobes 1 Optical Spot 2 strip boxes 1 bell reflector grids 2 C-stands 2 light stands Sandbags Backdrop stand Savage Fashion Grey Seamless Gobos Gels Spyder Color Checker Card A-clamps Star filter Red Curtains Posing stool The set up While I did four shoots in one weekend, the lighting setup was basically the same for all four sessions; what changed was the gels and the gobos. I started with a fashion grey seam...

Whispering Waters

On July 19th, I drove up to Poughkeepsie, NY to attend the Whispers of Waterhouse photo event held by Everlore Events . This was an all-day event, which included a light lunch, vendors, arts, and crafts areas, and three different styled shooting locations. I was one of the roaming photographers for this event, which means you work with models who are not currently working with a featured photographer (who have schedules), and can wander between all three shooting locations at your convenience. For this event I used: Canon R6 1 Speed light Trigger Umbrella Gels 24 - 105mm lens Camera Settings: This was an outside shoot that had sets in heavy forested areas, out on a pond, and sunny meadows; thus, I was adjusting the settings to the lighting conditions. I used ISO 100 and 400. My goal was to keep my aperture around f/4 to achieve a nice background blur; however, depending on the conditions, I had to stop down to f/9 and f/11 to manage the light...

The Munchkin's Notebook

Search This Blog