This pictorial feature is based on the gallery:  Rügen and Stralsund – January 2010 where all images taken on that trip can be seen, not only the ones published in this feature.

In January 2010 I had a trip to the island Rügen in the Baltic Sea (Rügen Wikipedia article: Link). I was there with my spouse and we had a very nice accomodation in an old house for pilots in Sassnitz near the harbor. Rügen has many old Baltic resorts and Sassnitz is one of them, though not the most mundane. These resorts typically have a long pier leading into the sea and some beautiful old (or not so old) health resorts. Sassnitz has a shingle beach and the famous chalk cliffs painted by the romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich.

This trip has been a challenge for me, and it has a special meaning, because it was the first bigger occasion to take photographs after my long hiatus. I had given up photography for over 20 years for various reasons. I felt I hadn’t back my photographic eye  (maybe I never had one and just wished I had – I can’t remember). And I wanted to improve technically and artistically.  I had this new camera (Canon Powershot G11), I had a lightweight (not lightprice  ) carbon fiber tripod (Gitzo GT0531), enough SD Cards, charger and spare battery pack all packed in a nice Lowepro slingshot bag and I was ready to return to some serious photography – even with a pesky P/S Camera.

I was after the light before and after sunrise. The “blue hour”. And I was after nature and landscape. But how? I didn’t know why to take photographs any longer. I knew it was fun. But what did I want to tell? Why take the zillionth photograph of the chalk cliffs or overthrown trees? Could my subjective view of the things be of interest to anyone? Well – obvious its you to answer this question. I myself just know one thing: Once I have taken a photograph MY view of the situation is documented. So – taking photographs is a documentation of my moving through the world and how I see it. And now I am back to find my new photographic identity. And that makes me happy.

In the following sections I’m going to describe some of the things I have seen in Rügen and I will write about some of the photographs I have taken there as a part of this photographic-identity-seeking. Its not all Rügen specific, but a subjective experience. An important part of this new identity is a plea for subjectivism. This MY view of the things and I am free in that.  I also am happy about any sort of constructive feedback. Exploration and curiosity are an important part of this new photographic self too. Playing, toying around. One aspect of this is the finding of captions for the images. I believe one thing is “an image speaks for itself” - but that is not entirely true. You always have a context. And my subjective feelings, thoughts and attitude as the photographer are a part of it. Thats why I find captions not only allowed, but actually an integral  part of the image. An image changes once the caption is changed. And often many different captions are possible.

Most of the days on this ten day vacation I went up very early, before sunrise to take photographs in the twilight or short after sunrise. One morning, when the sky was very colorful about sunrise  a swan came by and stayed watching us curiously. But I had no food with me – poor chap!  Despite the great colors of the morning I decided to make a simple b/w conversion which I also like. But after some tweaking the postprocessing I now prefer the colored version (b/w version->gallery).

If you walk along the shingle beach towards the chalk cliffs north of Sassnitz you’ll see how changing this shoreline is and how weather and sea take back a little land bit by bit. Nag, nag! Sometimes it looks really dangerous and I wouldn’t dare to go there at stormy weather – something might fall right on your head at a sudden. Maybe a tree. Maybe a house. Or a mountain. Or the other photographer from the top of the cliff …

The dim morning light also had the advantage I could try long time exposures (up to 15 seconds with G11) with the tripod. I also love the G11 for its grey filter. No need to stop down (saves you from refraction penalty). And I wanted to check this fog effect and tried various times. The photographs became quite what I wanted. But the biggest surprise for me was, when I tried to convert them to black and white: I was shocked. I never ever had expected to get these pleasing results with that little camera. Digital has developed incredibly.  I feel like a postprocessing newbie. Was there any justification left to shoot film? I will have to try – my Mamiyosaurus Universalis is back from sharpness adjustment at Mamiya / Munich. And my very old photographs from the Alps and Tuscany aren’t too bad. I believe using modern films like T-Max for well scannable b/w negatives will be one of my next interesting photographic technical adventures. Technique is important. I never feel like being good enough technically. Advance in art has often been due to technique, not content, e.g. if you compare styles in painting.

We had the luck to be in Rügen at an unpopular time for seaside visitors in the year. Rügen is fully organized towards mass tourism. In summer it must be hell. But January is a great time to discover the beauty of this island. And its much cheaper too. We had a great snowy winter this year and these 10 days on Rügen we had a very nice mix of sunny, cloudy and snowy weather.

There is not only Sassnitz, of course, though I believe for a first time visit its a great place to be on Rügen. In the northeast there is Cape Arkona. Lots of wind, and when we were there it was damned cold. But at the bottom there were some nice rocks in the sea covered with ice. The dim evening light was extremely blue and in the postprocessing I had many options how to deal with it. After a lot of trying I decided to leave out color and try a b/w conversion, which looks to me as being the best solution.

An interesting place is Prora. Prora was an attempt of the nazi organization “Kraft durch Freude” to create a mass recreation area. They built this huge complex behind the dunes of the long beach for thousands of tourists. It was in a time where Germany was quite isolated for obvious reasons and they needed something like this, because visiting neighbour countries wasn’t common or really working in that time. With this background knowledge I found the place creepy. Today it is used by some shops and organisations and you can get a nice “Bratwurst” there, but the majority of the complex is spooky and empty. Its a memorial of decayed nazi megalomania. Therefore I called the image “Trace of Death” – because death was, what the Nazis really brought to Germany and the world. It seems that the poor hooded crows have to suffer the image title because of the atmosphere of decayed evil I felt there.

We visited various Baltic Resorts and had some strolls along their beaches and the piers. One day, in  the Baltic resort Göhren the weather was dim and the colors of the sea and the beach magic. I felt mesmerized. There was hardly wind or waves. Just very calm and almost tender the shallow waves were petting the beach. I stood there and took about 8-12  images with the same camera adjustments and viewpoint. Sometimes birds appeared, sometimes not. It was extremely calm and peaceful. You might begin asking questions like “How can people hate?” or “Why is there war?” and don’t understand anything of it anymore in such a calm and peaceful place. But if you wait a bit more even these questions fade and theres just peace. Guess what? You can’t experience that in summer, in the peak season, when these places are like beehives,  catwalks for real or wannabe models or chicken barbecues for the mass tourism industry!

One day, when the weather was bad, we decided to visit the “Ozeaneum” in Stralsund, a famous oceanographic museum. I had to pay money to be allowed photographing – insane – just insane! After I had paid I decided to take images of the visitors, not the fish, except the live-sized models of whales and giant krakens. I don’t know why the blue light is so magic. I have no skill in color theory and such. After the museum and some cake and latte macciato I took a stroll through the harbour, which is not overly big, but the weather together with the frozen water and some other features gave some nice motives. We moved more inside the city and visited the Jacobi Church, an old redbrick gothic church. I wished I had had a technical camera. I (over-)corrected the image perspective in postprocessing, but I’m not really happy with that. The image must be right from the beginning. And I don’t like skewed lines. Straight lines must be straight with only few well designed exceptions.  I straightened a bunch of images I didn’t like because of that in software, and though not ideal the results seemed quite pleasing to me – maybe I’ll once make a article out of this. So however: Who’s going to donate me a technical camera?

For me the predominant features and graphical challenges were the light and texture of the seaside: Withered wood, sand, water and snow along with the sometimes extreme light. Getting up early seems to be the best trick to me: New snow is still mostly pristine, the extreme contrasts between snow and wood are manageable and the light falling in at a flat angle adds a lot of threedimensionality to many objects and textures. I also find black and white more appropriate in many situations here, since texture is independent from color in most cases. Of course this is not entirely true. But using black and white to bring out the structure of the large areas of sky, sand, water, driftwood and the cliffs is completely enough. Color most of the time doesn’t really add something here and in many cases its even irritating. I’m not an enemy of color. I love colors. But my approach seems more and more to go like: 1. Desaturate/BW-convert all images except the ones where color is a really important part of the statement, where the image “pops out” because of its color. 2. Check which of the b/w images are not satisfying and see if color can save it. Usually (2) is not really a good idea, because the image has not popped up in (1) and the image will get dumped  3. Re-check the colored images that have popped out in (1) and see how they work in b/w, and if they do better, convert them. Maybe this sounds not completely logical, the goal is to clearly give b/w a preference over color. But I believe I will have many more thoughts about this in the future. The b/w versus color issue has an important meaning to me.

This is the end of this short story of my visit to Rügen and Stralsund. This form of presenting my photographic work is an experiment. I believe the form of a photo story is a good one and it suits me. I hope to improve over time, but as a starter I am content with it. I hope you enjoyed it too.

Should I have enticed you to want to see more or all of the photographs be invited to have a look at the Album:

Rügen and Stralsund – January 2010.

If you want to comment you can do so at the bottom. Comments get published after being quick-checked by me for being appropriate.

Thanks for reading and spending your time

Christoph C. Feldhaim