Street Photography In Berlin

It’s Been a While

Although I’ve visited Berlin a few times in the past it’s been a good ten years since my last visit and that was before my obsession with street photography took hold. It’s a city that is featured heavily by other street photographers so I thought it was about time for another visit.

As I live in South East London, it made sense to fly from London City Airport, especially as the flight prices were reasonable at this time of year (mid-March). I travelled fairly light in general, but in terms of photography kit I brought my Fuji X-T3 along with my 35mm f1.4 lens as well as my 50mm f2 lens. The latter was just in case the weather turned as it’s weather resistant, but generally day to day my preferred choice is the 35mm f1.4. I was also expecting to take some wider landscape shots on the trip. On arriving at the airport the departure board indicated a delay of over an hour for our flight which wasn’t ideal, however after getting through security and relaxing with a coffee the flight appeared to be setting off on time. I’d definitely recommend City Airport if it’s close enough as it feels much more relaxing than Gatwick or Heathrow and is more of a business airport with solo travellers rather than groups of families with kids running around.

Arriving in the Snow

After landing at Berlin Brandenburg Airport (formerly Schonefeld Airport), we headed for the train station and took the S9 train into the centre. This train goes directly to Alexanderplatz where we were staying, but did stop at quite a number of stations first. The journey was busy as it was close to 4pm and rush hour. Unfortunately once it reached Treptower Park there was an announcement in German which didn’t sound particularly good as everyone decided to get off the train, we were sat there wondering what was going on until a kind German gentleman saw the confusion on our faces and translated that the train wasn’t going any further. As we stepped outside onto the platform we walked straight into a blizzard with snow and sleet coming in horizontally! Not quite what we were expecting. We quickly worked out that the best option was to get the next train to Ostkreuz and change from there onto a train to Alexanderplatz. Not a great start to the trip, but we eventually reached the hotel in Alexanderplatz and I rather resembled a drowned rat.

The First Morning

After a few drinks and something to eat we headed to bed and got up the following morning to a lovely breakfast. We were staying at the H4 Hotel Berlin Alexanderplatz which on first impressions seemed very nice indeed. The rooms were very comfortable and at a cost of around £230 for 3 nights between two of us, you can’t complain!

We ventured out of our hotel and although the snow and sleet had stopped it was immediately apparent that it was very cold. It was an overcast morning too so not ideal conditions for wandering around taking photographs! The plan was to walk west from our hotel to the Brandenburg gate as per the route below:

Along the route were a lot of grand government type buildings, but limited photo opportunities on what continued to be a dull morning. Once we reached the Brandenburg Gate, there were tourists everywhere, mainly annoying school children! We continued through the Gate to the German Parliament building, known as the Reichstag:

Out of shot is a lot of building and scaffolding which gave it a much less aesthetically pleasing appearance. Also, in order to gain entry to the building you need to book at least a couple of weeks in advance which we failed to do unfortunately. We therefore headed back past the Brandenburg Gate and towards the Hotel Adlon as I had it on good advice that there was a nice cafe at the front of the hotel. Unfortunately the seating there was very limited and occupied with people on their laptops rather than buying and drinking coffee which is always rather annoying.

Friedrichstrasse

We decided to look elsewhere and headed south past the British Embassy and stumbled upon a rather lovely coffee shop come bicycle repair shop called Steel Vintage Bikes Cafe on Wilhelmstrasse. After refueling with an oat latte and croissant we headed over towards Friedrichstrasse and past the Westin Grande Hotel. I always remember this hotel from the film The Bourne Supremacy and have made a point of visiting it on previous trips to Berlin. At this point the sun began to break from the clouds and created some fantastic shadows with the sun still fairly low. The scene photographed below appeared in front of my eyes so I couldn’t resist. I grabbed my Fuji X-T3 with my 35mm f1.4 lens and took a few shots. To really add contrast with dark shadows I ramped the aperture down to f9:

The last photograph in the set was my favourite in terms of composition and the way the subjects lined up. I loved the way the harsh light hit the corner of the building and the large plastic ice cream added some nice colour contrast.

Checkpoint Charlie and Potsdamer Platz

We continued to walk down to Checkpoint Charlie which as expected was saturated with tourists, therefore not many photo opportunities. It seemed appropriate to stop for a minute to think what it must have been like living in a city which was so divided and not being able to freely move between the east and the west. It was getting close to lunch time and I remember from previous visits a place called the Sony Centre in Potsdamer Platz which wasn’t far from our current location. I remember it being a buzzing place with restaurants and cafes so we thought it would be a good opportunity to check it out again. On arrival it was clear that it had now turned into a very different place to what I remember. It was basically one big building site. The whole of the central area underneath the large roof tarpaulin had all being dug up, most of the shops and restaurants that used to be open had closed. It was a shadow of it’s former self which was a big shame, especially as we were hungry! However, every cloud has a silver lining as I managed to take one of my favourite shots of the trip which came out of the blue as we were heading out onto the main road:

Both taken with settings 35mm, f11, SS: 1/150 ISO: 1600

I really like the colours in these photographs, you can see the hoardings on the right from the building work, but they actually add even more colour. The second one is my favourite with the person on the left reaching out to his partner. By default I usually have my Fuji X-T3 camera set to the colour simulation profile of Pro Neg High v2, it brings the contrast up a bit from Classic Chrome, but also adds a bit more punch. For the photos above I changed the simulation to Velvia Vivid v2 in Lightroom as I wanted the colours to really pop which I think works well here. I try not to overuse this simulation if I can as it can look over the top if you’re not careful.

Taking in the View

After quickly grabbing some lunch at an indoor shopping centre we walked along Potsdamer Strasse and noticed an entrance to a building with a roof top viewing gallery. It was called Panorama Punkt and boasted having the fastest elevator in Europe, at only 9 Euros each we had to give it a try especially as there was no queue! The lift was indeed very fast and when we arrived at the top of the building we stepped outside to some fantastic views of Berlin. We had previously thought about going up the famous TV tower in Berlin, but the only problem with that view is that you can’t see the TV tower itself, which is one of the most iconic sites of Berlin. Even though we were out in the open here, the view was slightly obscured by spaced out brickwork. I did manage to get my lens into a gap though, so after taking in a few shots of the skyline, this was my favourite:

Berlin Skyline — 35mm, f11, SS: 1/900 ISO: 320

After taking in the views we visited the cafe located located next to the lift back to the ground floor. The views were fantastic, this time indoors and the coffee was to my taste, however after going to pay at the end and realising they only accepted cash and not card, we began to realise this would be a theme going forward.

On the way back to the hotel we visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which I’d visited around ten years ago on my previous visit to Berlin, that time it was a very quiet and peaceful area, clean and tidy and felt very poignant with the message it represented. Unfortunately this time was very different. For those unfamiliar it has rows and rows of concrete blocks, 2710 in total representing the Jewish victims of the Holocaust in a maze formation getting deeper as you walk through it. This time the blocks of concrete were quite dirty, there was a lot of scaffolding in the middle blocking access and there were several groups of unruly school children treating it like they’re own personal playground, very disrespectful. Due to these reasons I didn’t even take a single photograph, if I had I would have tried to do it in a respectful way, unlike those I witnessed taking smiling selfie’s with the memorial behind them.

After a slightly disappointing ending to the day, we headed back to the hotel, on the way we booked into a Mexican Restaurant for later which we also discovered was cash only, oh well, maybe should have brought more Euros! We followed the meal with some excellent cocktails at a bar called Mr Susan, highly recommended!

Day 2 - Kreuzberg

After waking up the next day with a slightly heavy head we had some breakfast and walked out of the hotel to a fantastic day, the sun was shining and not a cloud in the sky! The plan was to head to an area of Berlin called Kreuzberg, a hip and trendy part of town, but still slightly gritty, rather like Shoreditch. Rather than catching the Metro, we walked from the hotel which took around 40 minutes. First stop was coffee and a croissant, the reward for all that walking! On the way we walked down a street called Oranienstrasse and found this shop window which I just had to capture:

Kreuzberg Shop — 35mm, f11, SS: 1/320 ISO: 640

I loved the light and shadows combined with the orange and red, just a shame a subject didn’t appear. We carried on walking and found a lovely coffee shop called Cafe Tres, if not a bit of a minimalist vibe, we were also the only customers in there! I tried to get some shots of people walking past the window, but I didn’t capture anything to write home about. I did however quite like this shot of the cafe interior with the shadows and colour:

Kreuzberg Cafe — 35mm, f11, SS: 1/400 ISO: 320

After spending a an hour or so sipping coffee we headed out to explore more of Kreuzberg by heading south towards the River Spree. Kreuzberg has quite a large Turkish population due to an influx of immigrants in the 1960’s, many of which were artists and students. This became apparent as we reached the river, although it appeared slightly too gritty for any great photo opportunities.

We decided to walk back north over the Oberbaum Bridge which spans the river, this bridge also features in the Bourne Supremacy. We headed towards the East Side Gallery which is a 1.3km section of the Berlin Wall and features some fantastic artwork by 118 artists from 20 different countries, it officially opened in September 1990. Unfortunately the sun was cast on the wrong side of the wall, I was hoping to capture some human silhouettes with the artwork in the background. These two are my favourite ones of what I managed to take:

East Side Gallery — 35mm, f1.4, SS: 1/4000 ISO: 320

After stopping for some late lunch we took a slow walk back towards the centre of Berlin, the light was still creating some great shadows, but I just couldn’t capture anything else worthy of posting. We had a couple of local beers at a bar called BraufactuM and headed back to the hotel. Whilst drinking we managed to find a fantastic steak restaurant called Steakhouse Las Malvinas close to the hotel in Alexanderplatz, one of the most tender fillet steaks I’ve ever had. It was the perfect end to a great trip! You can see more images from my Berlin trip on the Gallery page here and on my Instagram account here