Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Gray Day in Berlin

© Joselito Briones


Nothing's quite right today. I woke up with a headache. It started before I went to bed last night, there was no place I could go to to buy some paracetamol. Or maybe I just didn't know where, but sure enough I asked several places. I went out after shower, hungry for breakfast, determined to go to the first place I see that serves anything digestible. The sky's gray. My only full day here in Berlin and the sun decided to play hide and seek. Bleh.

© Joselito Briones


First thing I saw was KaDeWe. Sure, those Dior clothes look yummy, but not in a nourishing way, the opposite actually, it made me want to not eat ever again so I'll fit in them. I'm sure though that if the store was already open I'd have gotten in and procastinated on getting headache relief. Thankfully, the KaDeWe apotheke around the corner was already open, so I got myself some painkillers.

© Joselito Briones


I wasn't so lucky food-wise. The first place I saw was McDonald's. I had mcMuffins. It did the job. It didn't stop me though from stopping at several wurst vending places while walking and talking pictures all day.

© Joselito Briones


These are all taken with a digital camera, the one I got as a present on my birthday. As you can see, in all the pictures, the sky is consistently gray.

© Joselito Briones


First two pictures, left and above, are of the same building, in the Museum island, something something dome, my map said. The first one was taken while I was walking along the river bank, just before it rained. I let the rain pass while having espresso in a sand bank (made to look like a beach) cafe, then continued on to the island itself, the next picture.

© Joselito Briones


I went around the island, until I got to where I started, the east tip of it, and took this picture (left), which I'm sure so many others have taken before, a visual gag trying to make the TV tower look like it's on top of the dome of another museum. I think this is going to be the theme for today: taking cliche' pictures. Only doing worse version... one with gray sky on every picture. Hmmm... come to think of it, this had always been the theme of all my pictures. Oh well...

© Joselito Briones


The digital camera actually adjusts the brightness, so that instead of dark gray which I see in reality, the images have a very bright gray sky.

© Joselito Briones


It's all museums basically, this area, so I decided to go somewhere else, and headed towards the Reichtag (left). Last time I was here in Berlin was 1999, and the only two places I remember from then is Liebskind's Jewish Museum and this, the Reichtag. The rest are all a jumble of cranes. This city was full of promise. And if anyone's to gauge its fulfillment, now's the best time.

© Joselito Briones


The next few pictures were taken in the same area. Except for the last one and the one before that, taken in Mitte, and the third one from the last picture, taken in Galleries Lafayette (designed by Jean Nouvel), close to Unter den Linden, where I bought a couple of socks.


XXX

2006.12.01
As you may well know by now, i've reformatted my blog, and some pictures are too big (and I now deem unnecessary) to put here, so if the text refers to a picture that isn't shown here, that's because I've taken it off.


XXX

Monday, September 25, 2006

What kinda hellish comedy is that?

Publicity photo for
Publicity photo for "The Breakup"


Sunday night Roxy night again last night.

So yeah, so I got to see "The Break-Up", you know, the one withJennifer Aniston and Vince Vaughn. Jen looked gorgeous. She should give the movie's lighting guy a bonus.

Anyway, the movie's really funny, I liked it a lot, until of course, when, close to the end, it got too close to home. I mean, come on! They might as well have recorded our conversations in the apartment and used them verbatim. So not funny. Damn fools.


XXX

Sunday, September 24, 2006

A family portrait

tom cruise, katie holmes, and daughter suri on the cover of vanity fair magazine

On top of my down-time literature is the Vanity Fair issue featuring the long awaited photo of Suri. It's been long rumored that Annie Leibovitz took photographs of her for this magazine, but for a while it seemed like it was just that, a rumor. I was actually surprised to see it upon tearing up the paper envelope containing this subscription issue. Thoughts, in order, were: "Oh. Suri". "I wonder how much it went for." and "So what happens to whereissuri.com now?" "Wow, Katie looks amazing in this photo". "Ms. Leibovitz did a great job." "Tom still looks creepy."


XXX

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Eye Candy

© Joselito Briones


Someone notified me that he featured one of my older photographs as the first of a series of "eye candy" in his website. I always appreciate it if someone (especially strangers) shows some appreciation to things I do, so I thought I'd cross link his site here.

The photo was taken in the spring of 2003, when I lived in New York, with a Rolleiflex, Tmax100, and Mark Citret's +3 developing technique.


XXX

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Sunday, September 17, 2006

The house by the lake

© Joselito Briones


Ahahahaha!!! What a laugh! Keanu Reeves as an architect. Sandra Bullock as a doctor. A dog as cupid. A mailbox as a time machine. A sorry exercise as a movie! I had so much fun I'm still laughing. Ahahahahaha!!!!

Yep. Been to Roxy again..


XXX

P.S.
Photo is another one from the looong ago trip to Amsterdam.


XXX

Friday, September 15, 2006

Photographer, interrupted

wild flowers, erlangen, germany - photo by Joselito Briones
© Joselito Briones


Photo, above, are wild flowers that simply refused to be contained by the fence, in a construction site.

I wanted to go to Milan today, for the weekend. It was mainly to test the theory that Germany being central enough in Europe, one can just hop in on a bus and go to any major European city. Almost got away with it too, no advanced booking, no advanced planning. How far did I get? Nuernberg. I'd have made it to Milan too, had I left the apartment an hour earlier. By the time I got to the bus station, the ticketing office was closing in five minutes, and they had no more bus connections from Nuernberg to Munich, where the bus going to Milan is originating.

I could also have bought a bus ticket from Munich to Milan and just take the train to Munich, but I didn't have the train schedule with me, and there was no time to check before the bus ticketing office closes. So in theory, I could've also made it if I left the apartment only five minutes earlier, and took the time to get the train schedule from the Nuernberg Hauptbahnhof for trains going to Munich.

Oh well, next time. At least I didn't bother to unpack (there wasn't much to pack to begin with), just in case.


XXX

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