An early morning Sunday photowalk with a fellow photographer, looking for interesting architectural views around the BMW World and Olympic Park area of Munich. Join me for some black & white classic shots!
I met up with my photographer friend Johannes early on Sunday morning (today in fact!) for a photowalk around the BMW World and Olympic Park area of Munich. He is a digital photographer, we can forgive him for that, and he has some great work, including experimenting with amazing old Canon manual lenses, check out his work here. We were both shooting black & white and the theme was pretty simple: interesting architectural views.
With that in mind I brought along 6 sheets of Fomapan 100 and my entire Linhof Master Technica 4x5 kit, obviously including my tripod. Unfortunately for our photography the lighting was a bit flat with murky clouds, although at least it was dry and without any wind.
First shot of the morning. I’ve taken this before, but never in large format. Oh, and the irony of a Tesla parked on a BMW electric charging point cracks me up.
The final shot. I really like this shot, nice greys and contrast in the bridge overhead.
Getting setup with Johannes upfront with a much wider lens on his setup.
The final result. I was happy with the composition but unfortunately not so much with the final exposure. I did not use any filters and I am surprised the dull cloudy sky created such a high dynamic range and caused part of the shot to be overexposed. Pity. But nice idea anyways!
We did in fact want to go further back but then there were a lot of other distracting elements in the composition.
A pretty standard ‘touristy’ shot, but I liked the fact that the scene was so empty.
I would have preferred a bit more contrast in this shot; hard to do on a cloudy and ‘flat light’ day. This shot would probably be very good on infrared film, or at night with some cool light trails from the passing traffic.
Intrigued by the original ticket booths from the 1972 Olympics, we figured this was a good place to explore some interesting compositions, especially thinking about the very cool canopy that covers a lot of the park.
In actual fact this sheet of film was colour film (Kodak Ektar 100 to be precise), I had forgotten it was in the holder with my black & white Foma film (2 sheets per holder). Luckily for me it was also the same ISO, so exposure wise it all worked out. What I was surprised about was that it produced a decent result after being developed in black and white chemicals with the rest of the black & white film. The colour version is all brown/orange tinted, but black and white scan came out fine, even nice and contrasty!
I love showing off the details of a large format 4x5 negative!
We spent ages looking for a decent composition of the canopy. I think this one was a good choice and I like the ‘heart’ shape from left to right.
Did I ever say 4x5 negatives are ENORMOUS?
My super advanced negative hanging solution
Overall observations
It was great to be out so early on a Sunday morning with loads of empty spaces and a patient fellow photographer for company, who was happy to discuss all possible options around a shot. This part of Munich has loads of architectural compositions and you could really spend all day here. The BMW World/Museum connects to the Olympic Park by foot there are loads of interesting overlapping lines and unusual elements, not least the amazing Olympic Stadium to go investigate. I highly recommend this part of Munich for anyone interested in architectural photography, even if you end up taking some of the usual touristy shots that many others take.
The great thing about large format and taking 6 shots is that I had loads of time to take the shots, develop everything, scan, and load onto here (I can’t say the same for loads of rolls of 35mm film!).
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you enjoyed the photo as much as I enjoyed taking them!
Cheers,
Neil
