The Big Picture

Call it my Virgo rising but, when it comes to taking photographs, I've noticed I'm not really interested the big picture. No sweeping landscapes, not many street scenes or portraits. Usually, what I'm drawn to are funny little details and/or squalor. What does this say about me? Sometimes I think I should expand my horizons (a Virgo's love of self-improvement?) but other times I remind myself this is all about having fun. Am I having fun? Yes, mostly dear. Yes, mostly. ;)

Passion on Potsdamer Platz

No, this blog entry is not a dimestore romance about a young lass ravished on the steps of the fountain at Sony Center. Rather, it is about my new-found passion for photography. With the camera, you can never truly be objective. Yes, you can document. Yes, you can try and capture "a moment". But the very essence of the medium is subjective. This is your Wahrnehmung, your perception. I love this.

The camera is not always truthful. With the camera, you can easily lie, flatter, deceive, manipulate....

But it is also just a machine. In the photography class I'm taking we are learning how to handle our cameras; to really see, first hand, the difference between, for example, high key or a wide angle. On Tuesday we went to Potsdamer Platz at Dämmerung (sunset)to get a feel for the difference in light and how to set the white balance, etc. We took at least a hundred pictures on different settings to illustrate the differences. Though these were really only practice shots, I ended up liking a few of them. Strangely enough, almost all the ones I liked featured feet or someone walking. Maybe you can figure this one out for me...Here are a few of them.

Beneath Your Feet

Sometimes, in life, what is most interesting is just beneath your feet. No where is this as clear as in Berlin. The streets are not only paved with concrete and asphalt, they are often also still made of cobblestone. The sidewalks are also never one singular unit, but have different stones to make the bike lanes, crosswalks and various patterns.


I have seen workmen laying these stones many times: the stones are laid out organically in a bed of sand which means plants and weeds and flowers can push their way easily to the surface. Tree roots sometimes cause a bulge in the stones, like some giant mole is trying to break through the ground.


These streets are where I ruin my heels and wear my boots to a nub. On these streets is where I'm raising my children.

My daughter thinks her daddy is a suave black man....

So obviously I find my husband sexy, sweet and attractive but I realize different people have different tastes and not everyone will see things exactly the same way I do. Still, personal tastes aside, I think everyone will agree that my husband is, well, white.

I found it interesting to discover the other day that my daughter can't yet tell the difference. How I know is she was going through our c.d. collection (something she is forbidden to do, so of course, she does it every chance she can get!) when she pulled our a copy of Bobby Womack's Greatest Hits. For anyone who doesn't know what Bobby Womack looks like, here are a few pictures.


She handed me the c.d. cover, pointed at Bobby and said repeatedly, "Daddy, daddy. daddy!" In the picture he looked even more suave and studly than in the pictures above, all decked out un a felt fedora and super tight 70s jeans. "Ok," I thought. "They both wear glasses, they both had a wide, toothy smile (his Hollywood smile, my husband's brother calls it.) Astrologically they are both really watery (my husband and I met in an astrology class, the "real" thing, not the trashy newspaper style...) I guess I can see how she could mix the two of them up.

But then yesterday, whilst raiding our c.d. cabinet yet again, she pulled this one out:




"Daddy, daddy, daddy!" She said as she handed it to me. Which proves she is truly comvinced her daddy is a suave and very fine black man. As for my husband, he is simply flattered. He knows how to take a compliment! :)

Who am I?

Whether you've come to this blog on purpose or stumbled onto it by accident the question still remains: Who am I?
I am the girl with the camera taking self-portraits. The insomniac who lives to dream. The woman who believes in the power of the heart.



At twenty-five I moved from California where "winter" means a few weeks of rain in January and a scarf is a fashion accessory


to Berlin where spring and summer are optional and fall and winter inevitable.


I've been married twice. Once for all the wrong reasons, once for all the right. The second time was in the San Francisco Court House under a giant Christmas tree covered in origami. My father could be there which made it extra special. He died of bone cancer four months later.






My husband
may be German, but he knows the good in an old fashioned American hamburger.




What do I believe? I believe you are as
much where you came from as where you
are now.




I believe in love and in the family.








I believe in the creative life.