Every year for the past 59 years European countries have competed against each other once a year in a song contest. This year the event is in Copenhagen because we won last year (only third time ever) and I have a press pas. So I’m going to deviate from my usual blog principal over the next coupe of weeks and post images that I just took.
Let’s start out easy with a classic celebrity shot, the Portuguese contestant Roxy signing autographs after the first press conference.
Don’t they just look like toy soldiers? 🙂 They even have instruments. They’re not, though. The guns are real and being chosen for the guard is one of the highest honor for the young men in the army.
Here is the guard at the Queen’s residence. Every day at noon the change of guards starts at Rosenborg Castle where the barracks are. The guards walk through the city to be in place for the change at noon. It is not uncommon for people to follow them from Rosenborg to Amalienborg. I always feel very fond of my hometown when I accidentally come across the uniformed soldiers with their music corps marching along in the middle of the street.
Time to play the tourist…
View of the Marble Church across the square of Amalienborg. You can’t call Amalienborg a castle though the Queen lives here. They are four identical but separate buildings that were not originally meant to house the royal family.
I like how there’s free access to the area. You can walk right up to the buildings, even drive across the square. All you’ll see is the famous royal guard with their bearskin hats in front of their little red houses.
This used to be a news stand. It’s on Sankt Hans Torv – a great place to sit in the sun and drink coffee / wine / beer and eat brunch / lunch / croissants / dinner.
The square is within walking distance from the inner city (across the bridge from Nørreport Station) but the feel is very different. It is a multi ethnical neighborhood with many cafés, designer shops and ‘antique’ shops.
Most visitors to Copenhagen never leave the inner city. It’s such a pity. This string of lovely, artificial lakes can be found only a few minutes from the main tourist route. They were created when the battlements were torn down, about the same time as Tivoli.
Same location, same model – different camera…
This is taken with my Nikon D5100. Here I’m able to indicate the surroundings by blurring them and focus more strongly on what I really want to show – the young woman. A matter of taste. By using different settings I would be able to keep everything in focus as well.
This is a fun little experiment. One day early in the fall I took a friend and two cameras to Søerne in Copenhagen. This is the result of a portrait taken with a Leica D-Lux4. It’s a compact camera without interchangeable lenses but it shoots RAW format and lets you adjust aperture, shutter speed or shoot manual if you feel the need. And it looks cool. So I bought it used without being completely sure what my plans were for it. I thought it would liv win my car so I would never be without a camera but that didn’t quite work for me.
As you will see when I post another portrait in the same surroundings tomorrow, there is a big difference between the images the Leica and the Nikon will produce. I’m sure preference will be personal. I really love my Nikon so I don’t use the Leica much (as in ‘hardly at all’) but I think it might well be a better choice for street photography – if I was to get into that at some point 🙂
Last detail from the steam trains – showing my love for shallow depth of field and things that are well worn 🙂
Tomorrow I’ll begin a feature on Copenhagen…
A close-up of the engine room…
A tip – if you go to Tilden on a Sunday between noon and 3 pm. you can walk the length of the tracks, passed the ticket office and go under the tracks through the tunnel. You will emerge at the home of the Golden Gate Live Steamers. It’s a non-profit museum running a miniature rail way that’s even smaller than the Redwood Valley Railway. On most Sundays they offer rides against donations on their small trains.
Karins Fotos 