Autumn Announced


Autumn is approaching, the rain and grey skies are more and more the new normal. Luckily there is the occasional sun to enjoy.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.


Autumn is approaching, the rain and grey skies are more and more the new normal. Luckily there is the occasional sun to enjoy.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
From the roof of the Reichstag. A member of staff has a smoke break. A slightly less common street detail nowadays for LAPC #371.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The last time, before this visit in September, I saw this part of Berlin was in November 1989. This side was West Berlin, the Spree and across was East Berlin. The Berlin Wall cut straight to the right. It was just 20 meters from the East wall of the Reichstag.
Now the Bundestag offices connect both sides of the river. The tension of the Berlin Wall is literally out of sight. But not forgotten. Seven crosses are just outside this frame on the right side. They remind us of the people who tried to flee East Germany and were killed.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version. The monochrome photo of 1989 was shot with Nikon F301 on Kodak TriX.
This high rising can be found near the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche.
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A street in Charlottenburg.
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Berlin has a wonderful (and cheap) public transportation infrastructure. One of the building blocks is the U-Bahn. Station Hausvogteiplatz.
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Every big city has its own mall, a big shopping center. Most of the times the shops and brands are the same as in the mall next to where you live. And the food court can be slightly different. The Mall of Berlin is no exception to that rule. The location (Leipziger Platz) makes it interesting, as does the architecture.
As always I can not choose: color, or mono?
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Food in Berlin is cheap (and in the right places) good!
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A landmark you can not overlook. The TV Tower (Fernsehturm) at Alexanderplatz. Here seen from the Paul Löbe Allee, next to the offices of the prime minister of Germany.
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Views from the roof of the Reichstag. The panorama in the middle of the topline is from the iPhone15promax. On the bottom row on the left, you can see several notable ‘towers’. There is the television tower on Alexanderplatz, the International Trade Center, Berlin Cathedral, and the Red Town Hall. On the top right on the left the dome of the Französischer Dom, and on the right the Deutchser Dom (on Gendarmenmarkt).
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Panorama shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max.



The dome on the Reichstag offers a wonderful panoramic view on Berlin. And you can walk the rest of the roof as well to look over the city. Here an impression in monochrome.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
A view from the roof of the Reichstag, overlooking Tiergarten. On the left The Victory Column. On the right side is the Carillion, a 42 meter hight bell tower. And in the background the Teufelsberg.
I am not sure this photo is dreamy enough to enter Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #369 ‘dreamy’.
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Human measure on Potsdamer Platz. During the time of the Berlin Wall people were a spic in a vast open space. Now they are a spic being over towered by high rising.
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Brandenburger Gate (Brandenburger Tor) is a much used backdrop for photos in Berlin.
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One of the beautiful squares in Berlin: the Gendarmenmarkt. On one side you find the Deutscher Dom a.k.a. Neue Kirche (German Cathedral), and opposite the Französischer Dom (French Cathedral). The top photo reflects the latter in the doors of the Deutscher Dom.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.



One of the memorial landmarks of Berlin is the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche. In its simplicity it is a powerful landmark and memorial.
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Walking through Berlin was sometimes causing some disorientation. Lots of places that were ‘void and empty’ in November 1989 are now (re)build. In 1989 I just saw a small part of former East Berlin. It was a challenge to figure out what I was looking at. An old building, a refurbished one or a new build? I have a slight preference for old buildings. Lots of them are beautifully restored. This is one of them: the Bundesrat in the former Prussian House of Lords. As seen from the Mall of Berlin.
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September 2025 I visited Berlin for the second time. My first visit was in November 1989. That coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall. After 46 years I wanted to see how Berlin had changed since ‘die Wende’.
In 1989 we just spent one day in East Berlin. This visit the first day we looked around in the former East Berlin area. The television tower still towers over the city at Alexanderplatz. There is still a lot of construction activity, and along the roads you see pipes in blue and pink. First I thought that it was a smart concrete transport system. In reality it is a way to pump out groundwater from construction sites into the Spree river.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
September 2025 I visited Berlin for the second time. My first visit was in November 1989. That coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall. After 46 years I wanted to see how Berlin had changed since ‘die Wende’. The coming days I will publish some photos of this trip.
Friends had ‘warned’ me about the changes I would see. What in 1989 was a vast open space (e.g. the Potzdamer Platz) is now completely filled with modern architecture. But what struck me the most was the vibrant vitality the city breathes now. It is cosmopolitan and a magnet.
One of the landmark squares of Berlin is Alexanderplatz. On a building just a few hunder meters away I saw this text ‘Allesandersplatz’. Everything is different square? German humor? Or the basic conclusion after the first day. A lot changed. At face value.
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A small bird in a big Amsterdam Central Station. The things you see while waiting for a train.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
On the platform waiting for a connection being connected by mobile phone.
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A more detailed view of the photo I published yesterday of Leiden. Leiden used to be famous for fabrics, and canals provided the infrastructure for the logistics. Some of the canals were filled up in the second half of the 20th century. However, there are debates about opening a few of them again. These discussions focus on sustainability and environmental quality.
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A view on the city where Rembrandt van Rijn was born, Leiden. It was the home where he grew up. There he started his now famous career as a painter. Later, he moved to Amsterdam.
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #366 is ‘City Mouse/Country Mouse’. I am not familiar with the story. But as the brief puts it ‘there is no place like home’. Home is where the heart is.
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After rain comes sun at Scheveningen beach.
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A spell of heavy rain, on the border of Summer and Autumn at Scheveningen beach.
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Detail from a front in the Breestraat in Leiden. In den vergulden Turk used to be a restaurant. It moved decades ago to a different spot in town. It then changed its name to Wienerwald. The top of the original front is still there, and recently brought back to its old splendor.
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A detail of a front in the Breestraat in Leiden with the tower of the townhall.
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Red and yellow fronts of houses in the Breestraat in Leiden.
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The Breestraat in Leiden with the townhall.
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Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
In the front garden, next to the Japanese Anemone, there is a Knautia Arvensis. It is more easily known as Field Scabiosa.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
In the front garden, next to the Japanese Anemone, there is a Knautia Arvensis. It is more easily known as Field Scabiosa. It is literally a star.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
To close the series of the Japanese Anemone, a last one in color.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
I like monochrome photography for many reasons. One of them is the ability to play with the mood in the photo. Just by adjusting the aperture time or the opening of the lens, the same light delivers a different mood. This one and the photo I published yesterday, were shot on the same day.
Lens- Artist Challenge #364 is ‘Quiet Moment’. Close ups of natural beauty are a wonderful instrument to just be quiet, enjoying the view. And to realize all is connected.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Lens- Artist Challenge #364 is ‘Quiet Moment’. Close ups of natural beauty are a wonderful instrument to just be quiet, enjoying the view. And to realize all is connected.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
Lens- Artist Challenge #364 is ‘Quiet Moment’. A bicycle ride to clear the head. Seeing the bulbs for Spring being planted.
Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
The aim is to get up into the light and find your place among the rest of the garden.
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The Japanese Anemone in the front garden at close look.
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Shot with iPhone 15 Pro Max edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version
Meet the edge of the polder, the dyke.
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The morning sun reflecting the drops of rain that the night left behind.
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A long dry Summer with a garden begging for rain.
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On a warm Summer’s day, there are traffic jams on the canal.
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This is the famous Cley windmill at Cley next the sea. It’s by far the best name for a coastal village. Interestingly, it actually does not have a sea front. The mill was owned by the family of James Blunt.
Shot with Nikon Zf, edited using Snapseed and Marksta. Click the picture for a larger version.
A plant in the front garden offers months of beauty in the sunlight of the morning sun. Using the portrait mode of the iPhone results in ‘hovering’ effects of parts of the plant that seem now unattached.
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A plant in the front garden offers months of beauty in the sunlight of the morning sun.
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The garden of castle De Keukenhof.
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In Spring this field produces either hyacinths, daffodils or tulips. In Summer this year it produces Dahlia.
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