Or what to take pictures of when everything is grey
End of summer in Hamburg: bachelor-party groups finally leave the city! But right the next moment rain starts sprinkling from all sides and the whole city is being absorbed by a thick and opaque fog that sometimes doesn´t leave till May the next year.
When it comes to photography, this can be a tough time. So, this is what I did last year. One early foggy Sunday morning I made my way to the traditional Hamburg fish market, where you can buy fruits, plants, obviously fish and: budget-friendly flowers that make a most welcome blur of colour in your harbour pictures.
On my way home, I took the pictures you can see above. While fumbling with my camera in the cold morning, a drunken couple passed my way. They had done the fish market thing right – which is going there straight from the night before and not like me that day – getting up early and sober. They confessed their love to each other – and involuntarily to me, as they were very loud, and we were the only three people at the pontoon at that early hour of the day. I handed them a rose and the fog swallowed their sight as they departed, their happy giggles could be heard for some time longer.
Back at home, I put the rest of the roses in a vase. During the week, the sun decided to push through the mist and spread some nice light-spots all over the bouquet. I picked up the camera, happy about a reason to postpone some of the mundane day-to-day-things I was about to do.
Days passed, and some of the roses slowly started to wither. The film in the camera had some frames left so I picked the buds that still looked ok to take some final pictures before I would be throwing them away.
The sun had been out the rest of the week as if to say: as long as there are roses, there is summer! When bringing the leftovers of the bouquet out to the trash bin, I took one final rose out of it and took it with me for a walk to a pier at the Alster lake in Hamburg. I had to think about the couple from the fish market. How did their week proceed? Did the rose I gave them ended up being a requisite for a drunken proposal? Or did they just wake up with a headache and later that week found a smoked mackerel in their pocket that they had bought at the fish market and had totally forgotten about?
I left the rose on the pier, took one last picture and brought the film to the lab, finally ready for autumn to come.
