Random Acts of Photography: Tales from Berlin
Brandenburg Gate, Berlin at Sunset
Way back at the end of March of this year (2025) I was in Berlin for a couple of weeks. I blogged about this before and promised to post the second part of that, and then promptly forgot all about it. Well, better late than never! So here is part two of that trip.
In the first half of the blog, I noted that I had been using my iPhone camera for most of the shots that I took, however, I did bring both my little Fujifilm X-E4 and my bigger Canon Eos R6 Mark II as well. We had stayed in two different spots while we were there. The first week we stayed near Alexander Platz, by the old TV tower.
The weather while we were over that side of the city was pretty dismal, although that kind of played to the mood. It was constantly damp and cold and there were only a couple of days where it was actually sunny. Much of the architecture here is clearly a holdover from the former east Berlin, and you can see remnants of it everywhere. Brutalism is certainly the order of the day. On the few days I headed out with my camera, I wandered the nearby neighbourhoods, and tried to take in some of the details of the area and the architecture. And of course, the ever present TV tower, which seems to be visible from everywhere. We were also near to museum island, so I ventured over there on one of the days, but I didn’t get a great many shots with my camera. I actually got better photos with my iPhone.
For the second half of the trip we moved over to a place near to Podstamer Platz. This was in the former West Berlin and the difference in the architecture was stark. While we were settling in and had a free day, we took the train over to the famous East side gallery to see all the artwork on the former Berlin Wall. I also took one time to try and do some Street(ish) type photos but didn’t get many in the end.
On our final day, we visited Podstamer Platz and walked towards the Brandenburg gate as the sun went down, and these were perhaps some of the best photos of the trip.
All in all, I wasn’t really happy with the images I got on this adventure. There were some ok shots, but It wasn’t an actual photography trip so I wasn’t that upset. Part of me is always a little annoyed at myself that I could have done better. I wasn’t feeling well the whole time we were there so thats part of my excuse, and I think thats part of the reason it took me so long to write this blog post and these photos. Having said that, I did like the images I got of the Brandenburg gate, even if they did require a bit of Photoshop to remove the barriers that had been erected for the marathon that was due to be on that weekend.
If you haven’t seen it already, check out my other post, where I shared the iPhone photos from this trip. These actually turned out pretty well and I’m much happier with those!