London - Stencil Artists

Truly amazing, check it out (See Links - "London Stencil Artists")

Cuba April 2008

Here is a selection of pictures taken during Yvonne's and my trip to Cuba in April this year. The pictures have been taken in Habana, Vinales and Trinidad.

As always, I hope you enjoy them. (See Links - "Cuba April 2008")

Seb

New York City

Just thought I'd post a selection of my favourite pictures of New York, a city that has grown on me so much over time.

I hope you enjoy them (see Links - "New York City 2007/08").

Seb

Dog-sledding in Ljungdalen, Sweden

From 8 to 16 March, my dad, Paul and I joined Ralf Hewelcke and his daughter, Vanessa, in Ljungdalen, Sweden for a new experience, dog-sledding. Ralf is a very experienced outdoors person. Among the many expeditions he participated in, I was most impressed and moved by his Greenland adventure. In 1997, he and a number of Greenland sled-dogs followed the paths of the famous Sirius patrol*; an adventure that led them through approx. 2500km of Greenland and lasted for about three months.

Our trip to Ljungdalen (slightly shorter than Ralf's Greenland expedition) consisted of three one-day trips and my personal highlight, a two-day trip where we spent the night outdoors. After nearly 30km and three and a half hours of concentrated "mushing", we reached a shelter cabin (photograph), our final destination for the day. Since the cabin only accommodated for two, I (kindly) volunteered Paul and myself to sleep in Ralf's much tested tent, next to the dogs. (Paul, that's what friends are for.) Some of the photographs (see LINKS on the left-hand side (a dear friend of mine brought to my attention that it is actually the "other left")) were taken up there. The remainder of the photographs were taken the next day on our way back home. It still makes me chuckle (at least now) thinking of Ralf's grinning face when he pointed out two endless ascends which obviously we had to surmount to get back home. That said, regardless of how tiring and exhausting it was, the experience was priceless. I hope that the photographs will give you an idea of what we experinced during these five days.

I'd like to send a BIG thank you to Ralf and Vanessa. You two really made this a very special experience for us.

Seb

* A Danish special forces unit and dog sled patrol conducting long-range reconnaissance and enforcing Danish sovereignty. The unit is operationally under the Greenland Command and administratively under the Royal Danish Navy. The patrol represents Denmark's military presence in Greenland. (taken from wikipedia)

Alta - Backcountry Experience

I have just returned to New York City from a very exciting skiing trip in Alta, Utah. For five days the Alaska Mountain Guides (www.alaskamountainguides.com), namely Renata, Ben, Mike, Kyle and Kyle and last but not least Will, took extremely good care of me.

Ben and Kyle made sure that I got some really good powder runs in Alta's backcountry. After having been skiing for almost 20 years now, and after a fairly lengthy hike (at least for me), I finally got to ski knee-deep, untouched powder snow (Kyle, thanks for letting me drop in first, I really appreciate it). It was so good that I could not help but scream out loud while taking my turns on the fresh snow. Those of you who know me a bit better will know that it takes quite something for me to have such outbursts.

The (other) Kyle provided me with a completely different, yet no less exciting or memorable experience: winter camping and rock climbing. Kyle and I spent a couple of nights outside in a tent, somewhere tucked away in the Wasatch mountain range. Let me put it this way, it was cold, yes, but we were rewarded with very peaceful, soothing and stunning scenery. By the way, both Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay would have struggled to keep up with Kyle's stir fry and chili mac both of which will not be forgotten.

I also spent one day skiing inbounds with Will who showed me some of his favourite runs, a blend of groomers and some more technically challenging, narrower and steeper runs.

All in all, a fantastic week. A big THANK YOU goes to AMG - you guys really exceeded all my expectations. Keep up the good work.

For more pictures, please see Links "Alta - Backcountry Experience".

Seb

Our website: Photosoulgraphy

Welcome to "Photosoulgraphy"

Photosoulgraphy (see links) is a project which my friend Stefan and I have been working on for some time now. It is a photography website which showcases a selection of our work. It will give you an insight into how we see the world through our cameras and it is also a testament of our long-lasting friendship.


We hope that you enjoy the photographs.

Stefan & Seb

San Franciso - Thanksgiving 2007

I have just come back from a fantastic weekend in San Francisco. I went to see my friend Irakli and his girlfriend Nora. My stay had two major highlights: Thanksgiving dinner at Nora's parents house (self-made pumpkin ice-cream) and a dream of a car (see picture). Irakli, I still can't quite believe you trusted me with it. But most of all, a big thank you to the hosts, Nora and Irakli, who made this visit another unforgettable memory; a long weekend with great food, great prompts from where to take interesting pictures (see links) and funky clubbing.

Seb

Hong Kong/Macau

Hi guys

I finally managed to make my Hong Kong and Macau pictures available online.

Enjoy. Seb

Bangkok weekend and Junk trip/Pool party

Latest additions, pictures of my trip to Bangkok last weekend as well as of a trip on the Linklaters junk and a private pool party at one of Hong Kong's yacht clubs.

T8

About a week ago, Friday (10 Aug) around lunchtime I received the following message into my e-mail inbox:

"THE HONG KONG OBSERVATORY ANNOUNCES THAT THE TROPICAL CYCLONE WARNING SIGNAL NUMBER 8 IS EXPECTED TO BE ISSUED AT OR BEFORE 3:30 P.M. TODAY ( 10 AUGUST 2007 ). WINDS LOCALLY WILL STRENGTHEN FURTHER.
THE GOVERNMENT ADVISES MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WITH LONG OR DIFFICULT HOME JOURNEYS OR HAVING TO RETURN TO OUTLYING ISLANDS TO BEGIN THEIR JOURNEYS NOW. THE GOVERNMENT IS NOW MAKING ARRANGEMENTS TO RELEASE ITS EMPLOYEES ACCORDINGLY.
ANNOUNCEMENT BY THE EDUCATION BUREAU (EDB) : THE EDB ANNOUNCES THAT CLASSES OF ALL SCHOOLS ARE SUSPENDED TODAY. SCHOOLS SHOULD IMPLEMENT CONTINGENCY MEASURES TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF STUDENTS. THEY SHOULD ENSURE THAT CONDITIONS ARE SAFE BEFORE ALLOWING STUDENTS TO RETURN HOME."

My first tropical cyclone. Admittedly, I got a bit excited. We were sent home at around 3:15 P.M. I was about to get on a bus home when it suddenly occurred to me that I had to capture this moment in pictures. So, I went into the next local photography shop and bought one of those small disposable cameras. Because of the lack of natural light and the high ISO (800) the pictures look grainy but I personally think that the graininess adds to the mood of the pictures.



Warning signs like the one you can see in the picture are put up in all public buildings.



People in the streets trying to get on a bus, any bus.



BUS FULL



"I just want to go home."

By the way, to this day, I don't really know whether there was a tropical cyclone or not.

Seb

City breaks in Asia

I have added a selection of pictures which I took during my weekend trips to Shanghai, Singapore and Beijing.

Enjoy.

It's been a long time - Mongolia 2007

It has been a very long time since the last time I blogged. But I am back and I intend to go back to regular blogging. If you could pay a visit to my blog once in a while that would be great. Nothing really has changed. I will use my blog as a forum to stay in contact with you and to showcase my pictures.

What's new?

Most of you would know by now that I have finally switched to digital photography and with my brand new laptop I am now plugged back into the digital world which should make it a lot easier to share my thoughts and pictures with you.

Mongolia 5 July - 25 July

I have only returned to Hong Kong from my round trip through beautiful Mongolia where we (Katja, Tina, Lydia, Thomas, Alex, Paul and I) spent three weeks discovering a country whose beauty I don't even dare to describe in words. I hope, however, that my pictures will show you why Mongolia is definitely worth a trip.

Just click on "Mongolia 2007" (Links), sit back and enjoy Seb's selection of some 140 pictures. (You might want to click on "slideshow" (top left-hand corner) once the site has opened up.)

Seb

Australia/San Francisco

Apologies for the delay. I am aware that this blog has long been overdue. As most of you know, I have returned to Berlin safe and sound and put all my efforts into creating a slideshow showing a selection of my favourite pictures taken during my travels along the east- and southcoast of Australia. The slideshow also shows some pictures which I shot during my stopover in San Francisco on my way back home. The slideshow contains some 85 pictures. Just click on the link ‘Australia/San Francisco slideshow’. (For full-screen viewing just right-click with your mouse and select ‘full-screen’.)

And now, I would love to invite you to share 'my' Australia.

Seb

My backpacking route

Just thought I’d drop a quick note to say that as of tomorrow (Monday 14 November) I will be backpacking along the east and parts of the south coast of Australia for the next 4 ½ weeks. My travels will start in north Queensland in Cairns where I will stay four a few days having planned a trip to the Cape Tribulation area famed for its ancient rainforest, sandy beaches and rugged mountains. It’s one of the few places in the world where the tropical rainforest meets the sea. On my return to Cairns I will take a boat to the outer Great Barrier Reef going snorkelling and diving. I will then take the bus south stopping at Mission Beach and Magnetic Island. This island is covered in giant granite boulders, hoop pines and eucalyptus. Captain Cook named Magnetic Island in 1770 when his ship’s compass went peculiar as he sailed by. My next destination is Airlie Beach and the Whitsunday Islands the latter of which I will explore by way of a two-day two-night sailing tour. Apparently the Whitsunday Coast has an exotic Great Barrier Marine Park which is ‘hidden’ beneath irresistible waters. This, what I hope will be an exciting trip will be followed by a three-day 4WD safari on Fraser Island. Fraser Island is the world’s biggest sand island. Its ecology is one of the many wonders of the place. Rainforests and some 200 freshwater lakes dot a landscape that contains more sand than the Sahara – reputedly. On my return from Fraser Island I will continue to Noosa where I will join a three-day two night canoeing trip through the Everglades. After this ‘adventure’ I will take the bus to Sydney where after a two-day stop I will resume my travels by air to Melbourne, Victoria. Once in Melbourne I intend to hire a car to drive along the Great Ocean Road which if one believes the Lonely Planet is one of the world’s most spectacular coastal drives. My final destination of this short road trip is the Twelve Apostles. This pretty much will be my Oz experience, at least for now. On 15 December I will fly out of Sydney to San Francisco where I will have a three-day stopover which I will spend with an old friend of mine. My scheduled arrival in Berlin is 19 December.
As I am writing these lines my backpack is already packed and ready to be taken ‘on the road’ and my camera equipment is waiting to be used. As I am still shooting film and travelling light (w/o my laptop) I will not be able to post any pictures from the trip on my website until I return to Germany. Also, I have decided to provide you with an overall report of my trip once I am back home which means that in the coming five weeks I will stay in contact with you either via email, text messages or the phone.

Sebastian

The information regarding the locations is taken from the Lonely Planet – Australia, my beloved travel companion.

Fair Go

Sunday, 6 November. Today’s day definitely ranks amongst the top five days of my travels through Australia. Those of you who have known me long enough will probably remember the times of my wearing baggy jeans and XXL T-shirts (an outfit which I proudly wore during school, much to the embarrassment of my mum who was a teacher at my school – sorry mum) and my spending every single minute after school skateboarding…Skateboarding was a very big part of my life for more than six years. These days I only get to spend little time on my skateboard. Lucky for me that skateboarding is like riding a bicycle, once you got the hang of it, that is it.
So, where is the connection to Australia? This morning I left quite early to go to the Fair Go, the biggest skateboarding event for the Far North Coast at Missingham Skate Park Ballina (see picture) which is 25 km south of Byron Bay. The skate park is rated in the top five skate parks in Australia and the annual skateboarding event has been hosted since its humble beginnings in a Ballina car park in 1999. It goes without saying that I did not leave the house without my camera equipment which included sufficient film rolls. By the way, last night I had difficulties falling asleep, that is how excited I was about event. The contest was split into six divisions each of which was run as a jam session which means that 3-4 skaters were performing at the same time. Most of my pictures were taking during the warm up sessions and during the actual competition of the open men’s and open sponsored division. Since this report is addressed to all of you, I will spare you the details of the tricks and the jargon. In brief, some of the level of skateboarding I saw today could easily be used in a skateboard video there is no doubt about it. With some of the tricks I found myself cheering and whistling; good, really good times. From a photography point of view this, again, was a new experience for me. Everything happens a lot faster than e.g. in landscape or portrait photography; with action sports photography there is simply less or none time to properly composition the picture. Also, I have really worked the auto focus of my lens and camera. In total, I took about 130 frames. Due to trial and error, double images and due to the fact that in skateboarding it is virtually impossible to make every single trick, I ended up with about 30 striking and distinctive pictures. As always I have posted my favourite shots of the event underneath. Even if you are not passionate about skateboarding, can I humbly recommend you to still have a look…

Sebastian

Missingham Skate Park Ballina

 

Air time

Skater: unknown. Comments: speechless. 

FS 180

This shot, like most of the others, was taken during practice. The name of the skater is Russell Grundy. His main sponsor is Billabong. He was definitely Mr. Style. Not only did he go for big airs and technically difficult tricks, he also did them in style - very smooth. He made it look so easy. 

Fly over

This shot was taken during the warming up for the open sponsored division. Unfortunately, the name of this young skater is unknown. However, his airs were seriously big and his style so smooth. See for yourself. I was well impressed. 

Lightning - a new photographic experience

Thursday, 27 October. My Italian landlady, Annalise, her seven-year-old daughter, Poppy, and I had just gathered around the dinner table when the first, rather soft, yet impressing thunder and lightning occurred. We went outside and witnessed how both, thunder and lightning became more intense and impressive, at least for me that was. Annalise and Poppy must have felt the same way as Annalise suggested to take the car and drive up a nearby hill from where we could oversee the entire bay as well as the hinterland. So, I sensed that this could be a good opportunity to try a different area of photography. I rushed into my room, grabbed my camera bag, tripod and the fastest film roll there was (ISO 400) and within less than a minute we set out. When we arrived at the top of the hill, possibly five minutes later, it began to rain; of course. There I was, still sitting in the car, worrying about my camera equipment getting all wet. No need to say that at the same time I was quite excited about this intriguing photographic opportunity. Having been a dedicated admirer of MacGyver since my early childhood, I decided to use my simple, 100% cotton T-shirt to design a “water resistant casing” for my camera and I must have done well because despite the fact that I spent at least a quarter of an hour in the rain, the camera remained dry and I managed to take some frames too. So there I was, standing in the middle of the dark, topless, wearing nothing but my boardshorts and flip flops (or as the Australians say: thongs) – somebody should have taken a picture of that, I guess. Anyway, I have posted my favourites below. In order to totally appreciate especially Lightning 02 you are reminded that it was pitch black. I hope you enjoy the pictures. They are not award winners; yet for me it definitely was an interesting experience.

Sebastian

Lightning 01

Lightning 02

 

Chloe - Little did I know ...

Little did I know when I took this picture at Bondi Beach in Sydney. A friend kindly brought an article to my attention on which this post is based upon. The following story is very touching and sad. Unfortunately its subject matter has made the news again; I am referring to the latest Bali Bombings from 1 October 2005.
The mural represents an “emotional work of art” which helps a grieving father to deal with the death of his 15-year-old daughter, Chloe Byron; she died in the Bali Bombings in October 2002. The picture of Chloe is one of many murals which can be found along the boardwalk of Bondi Beach. The idea for the mural came from Chloe’s father, David, who looked at the other pictures and thought that “it would be nice to have a picture of Chloe” at their favourite surf break. He approached the council and got on to an artist and the result can be seen in the picture I took. David taught his daughter how to surf when she was eight years old. He said that he feels “she is still surfing beside him”. When David is out in the water on Bondi Beach he can look to the sand and see the mural of his daughter. A flower prettifies her hair; when she surfed she wore a flower in her hair. As a committed father David renews the flowers by the mural every day and apparently tells his daughter about the surf that day.

The story about Chloe and my taking of the picture is an interesting “coincidence of life”, at least for me. When I took the picture I did not know any of the above. Yet, somehow I did feel the sadness evolving from the mural and I can clearly remember thinking if it was “just” a piece of art or if it had a deeper meaning. There was something about Chloe’s face lighting up the rather dull day and which inspired me to capture it on film. It is interesting how life sometimes explains itself at a later stage. Now that I know the background of the mural, it makes me appreciate my picture even more.

Sebastian

The perfect 5 minutes

The last three days have been really bad for surfing. The wind was blowing from the wrong direction so that any attempt to even get half a wave failed miserably. This morning I woke up early and instead of the usual 20-minute walk to Tallow beach with my surfboard tucked under my arm, I decided to go for a short run and check out the waves. After having dragged my body, which was still half asleep, up two steep hills I arrived at the beach and yes, surfing seemed possible. All over sudden I could feel this rush inside, adrenaline started pumping through my veins - I ran back to my house, had quick breakfast, took my board and set out.

When I arrived at the beach, the water was already well-crowded. Feeling a bit more comfortable on my board, I decided to walk up the beach and find a more remote surf-break. The first contact with the water made me realise that it was still morning and that I only wore a springsuit (short arms and legs, 2mm). An hour into the surf I paddled a bit further out to get out of the zone where the waves break and where you do not want to be unless you want to get on the wave. After a little while I spotted about ten dolphins at a distance of approximately ten metres which I had done before. What made this time different was the fact that the dolphines were swimming not alongside the beach but towards it, keeping their distance though. Then I lost their sight but not for long. Out of the blue (literally) three dolphins appeared inbetween me and the beach, right in front of my surfboard. They were so close that I could almost touch them. And the beauty of it was that I was alone in the water. All the other surfers were 'fighting' for the waves futher to my right. For these 5 to 10 seconds the world to me was perfect. The encounter with the dolphins had already made my day but more was still to come...the next wave I attempted to take, I paddled really hard, positioned myself well, mounted smoothly on my board, took all the speed of the wave down to the bottom of the wave where I did a smooth bottom turn and surfed up the wave, turned my board again back down the wave, regained new speed down to the bottom and surfed the wave across until there was only whitewater left...it almost felt like I was one with the wave for this ride. As an experienced windsurfer, skate- and snowboarder, I can tell that this feeling was unique as in no other boardsport I do there is a constantly moving element. But at the same time the feeling was familiar in a sense that one only truely appreciates these moments as a beginner when they happen for the very first time, be it the first time that you glide in the footstraps as a windsurfer, or nailing that trick you have been practising for months as a skateboarder or be it the first time you drop into an untouched field of powder snow as a snowboarder. For these moments everything makes sense and you leave with this glow in your eyes and a big smile on your face...

Aloha, Seb.

SYD-Darling Harbour

Not so lonely Skateboarder

New Pictures

I have just posted my latest work. Enjoy.

Little Wategos Beach

The Lonely Stranger