• Poland,  Travel

    A Photo Tour of Katowice: Street Art, Neons, and Architecture

    Katowice is where your childhood dreams of living in space, like the Jetsons family, can come true. While there are no flying taxis, the city has its own ‘flying saucer,’ non-pneumatic (yet!) glass elevators, and the Cosmos Cinema (Kino Kosmos). At night, the neon-lit streets are full of little alien-like figures called Beboks. Fans of the space age and modernism will never tire of exploring the city’s out-of-this-world architectural gems. I visited Katowice for the European Science Open Forum 2024, held at the International Conference Centre (which sits on an old mining waste dump site!). It was my first time in the city, and during the day, I soaked up presentations about transformation, innovation,…

  • macro photography
    Gardens

    Mini Stories #3: Nature Photography Contest

    In 2020 Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry organised the Nature Photography Contest. It was the very first photo competition I took part in. The goal was to explore and document the diversity on the campus in Martinsried. This research institute is surrounded by the city forest and fields full of plants and wild animals. Employees built bird tables and squirrels are their frequent guests too. The gardeners make sure that the meadows are not completely cut in summer to leave space for bees and butterflies. And it is not uncommon to meet goose families walking around the pond, which is also a home for fish, dragonflies and moorhens. However, it…

  • Heart algae
    Poland

    Macro photography ideas – Baltic Sea beach

    White sand, green water and blue sky – Baltic Sea beaches are raw and cold. The subtle colour palette and a lot of empty space create perfect conditions to experiment with a simple, minimalistic photography style. The challenge is to find the object worth capturing and which isn’t too obvious. Typical photos from the Baltic Sea include sunsets, pier, beaches, shells and boats. What if your camera is already full of such photos and you experience the creative block? Try macro photography! In this post I share my ideas of objects worth shooting. Sand There is so much of it on the beach that we tend to ignore it. Sand…