As promised, here is the next installment from our Fotomarathon series (for Photos 1-8, click on over here)…

Photo 9: I want to have fun / Ich will Spass by Markus. Mostly because we were soaking wet and wanted to get somewhere warm and dry, we intended to take a series of photos inside the Science Center Spectrum museum.  However, the museum had already locked their doors by the time we arrived.  Doh!  By this point, it was already 6pm (so, seven hours after we originally started), we hadn’t really even given any thought to Photos 9-16 yet, and we would need to go to the next meeting point in about an hour.  We were mega-stressed and desperately needed a new approach.  I immediately started looking for ideas while we were standing in the empty parking lot of the Science Center and this photo is what I came up with.

Photo 10: Chaos / Chaos by Herbert Grönemeyer. By this photo, we had switched strategies: mein Schatz would go home to give some thought to our final photos and I would continue on, trolling the streets for inspiration.  In other words, we were flying much more by the seat of our pants than in our first eight photos — but that creative-treasure-hunt kind of adventure is also a lot of fun.  After this theme, I already had to make my way to the next meeting point and was given the final list of themes for Photos 17-24.

Photo 11: Invisible / Unsichtbar by Farin Urlaub. Wow, how to photograph invisible, right?  Luckily I came across an empty playground and immediately had the idea of trying to capture motion that would give the sense of invisibility.  It took about 60 shots to get this photo to turn out the way I wanted, but in the end, I think it was worth it.

Photo 12: Monotony / Monotonie by Ideal. Originally I wanted to photograph patterns to represent the idea of monotony, but found it difficult to do that and also incorporate our streamers of “music” into the photo.  In the end,  I decide to go with the most monotonous object I could find (and perhaps even more so when it’s out of its element) — a group of shopping carts in a garden behind a housing complex.

Photo 13: Change of scenery / Tapetenwechsel by Hildegard Knef. I walked for a long time while searching for this theme.  I eventually arrived at Potsdamerplatz and came across these life-sized murals of what Potsdamerplatz looked like when the city was still divided into East and West.  Somehow, I found it totally fitting to the theme when you contrasted the murals to today’s cityscape.

Photo 14: Unknown creature / Unbekanntes Wesen by Linie 1. Uh, I have to be honest here.  For this theme was I totally grasping for straws and went with the first thing that came to mind.

Photo 15: Punk wedding / Punkhochzeit by Nina Hagen. For the rest of the photos in the competition, I combed the streets of Friedrichshain, which is the area of the city that I know the best.  And indeed, I was not disappointed.  I began my search underneath the Warschauer Straße U-Bahn station and found evidence of grafitti love, which represented the theme of this photo wonderfully.

Photo 16: I am never there where you are / Immer da wo du bist bin ich nie by Element of Crime. Not far from Maria y Copo, I found a superhero who definitely looked like he would never be there when you needed him to be.  While setting up the shot, I was fending off alcoholics and mentally ill passerbyers, but (fittingly) this superhero did not come to my rescue.

—

If you’re still with me on this adventure, I’m impressed!  With only three hours left to take the remaining eight photos and select our final 24, can we make it to the finish line on time?  Or does the pressure final crack us?  Stay tuned for the next and final installment of photos to find out!