Hi friends,

I did lots of portraits in Wrangelstraße and it is very difficult for me to select the best picture. Thus I would like to present you with three choices for each of the five portraits - could you please indicate which one you prefer in each case?

Thank you for your time!
Sonja

Hi friends,

On yesterday's trip to Kreuzberg I focused on my theme "sensitive, revealing gestures", i.e. trying to capture the humaneness and vulnerability in people's portraits. It took me a lot of courage to just walk up to strangers and ask them for their consent to do a picture - still makes me nervous and sweaty, but I think it paid off... please judge for yourself: which one do you think brings out the "humaneness" the best?

Many thanks in advance!
Sonja

I absolutely adore Richard Avedon's work and his portrait of Marilyn Monroe (picture 1). I like how he captures her vulnerability, the face that the public never got to see before. The usual magazine cover picture (see picture 2 for comparison) depicts her showing off the mask or the self-created sex bomb image she tried to embody so vigorously, being always happy & flirty & shallow. Avedon's portrait goes beneath this polished surface and unearths the humaneness of this icon, it let's me comprehend that she too was a human being, someone who can also be exhausted, fed-up, hurt, lonely, sad, etc.

A well-done interpretation of this picture can also be found on http://nymag.com/news/features/31523/

Hi friends,

I have experimented a bit with the color swap feature of my camera, which allows to have a picture in black/white plus one additional color. Do you like these effects?

Thanks,
Sonja

Dear all,

I would love to hear your opinion on these six pictures. Which one do you like best and why? I am asking because sometimes I am not quite sure how close I should get to an object (i.e. how much of the background should I include) and whether I should include reflections or not.

Thanks a lot in advance!
Sonja

Dear all,

thanks for the comments on blurry pictures, that helped me a lot. My learning was that blurry only seems to work if one can directly recognize the intention, i.e. when the blurry vs. sharp sections of the picture are not random but convey a meaning.
Yesterday evening I took a picture that I somehow happen to like a lot, but again it is kind of blurry and looks very abstract to me. What is your opinion - is that too abstract to be art?

Yours,
Sonja

Dear all,

Yesterday I have tried to capture places in a more appealing way - these are the results. Which pictures do you like / dislike and do you have further tips to improve my pictures of places?

Thank you very much!
Sonja

Dear friends,

Yesterday I have made my first blurry pictures. Here are five of them. Which ones do you like / do you like them at all?

Thanks,
Sonja

Dear all,

Please help me to choose my best. I am not sure yet how I can best make places (especially streets with houses and people on the walkway) look interesting and where I should set the borders of the picture (what to cut out, how much to show). May I kindly ask you to take a look at the two pictures and comment which one you like better and why and what you would do differently. Thank you very much!

Sonja