Our World Tour: A Photographic Journey Around the Earth

The Americas

USA Washington, DC

The United States Capitol in the blue hour · I wanted to shoot from a frontal perspective with the subject as central and symmetrical as possible. I used a cable release and turned on my camera’s mirror-lock setting to avoid unnecessary vibrations. 28 mm · ISO 200 · f/18 · 8 sec

Jetlag! It’s 5:30 in the morning and the five-hour time difference is making itself known. I can’t sleep another minute for the life of me so I jump up and take a shower. At such an early hour, I decide on a piece of dry toast for breakfast while I prepare myself for the day with a travel guide and an iPad. Researching sights to visit, transit connections, weather, sun conditions, museums, and countless other things about the city are just as critical as making sure I have fully loaded camera batteries, empty memory cards, and a purposeful selection of lenses. The weather is fantastic: a blue sky with the sun shining and no indication of the forecasted snow chaos.

My first outing brings me to the White House. Wow, what an impressive building! Click, click—my first photos of the tour. I attach my polarizing filter to intensify the blue sky. A quick change of perspective...click, click...portrait, click...landscape, click, click. I’m also impressed that there are no other tourists around. Why is that? Finally, I realize that the building in front of me is the US Department of the Treasury. There’s a certain similarity between the two buildings, but the actual White House is about 500 yards to the left. Embarrassing.

While I’m standing in front of the president’s residence my every move is eyed suspiciously. To an outsider, my tripod could be mistaken for a weapon, so I remove it from its bag as slowly as possible before I assemble it. The fences and security presence prohibit me from approaching the White House too closely, so I use my telephoto lens and a tripod and try to capture photos that are as sharp as possible.

Tip: If you’re using a lens with automatic image stabilization, you should disable this feature when your camera is attached to a tripod.

Next I head to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which has been featured in many famous movies, including Forrest Gump. I already have an idea of the photo I want to take, but when I arrive at the landmark, it’s empty due to construction. There goes more precious time down the drain. I promise myself that I’ll research my plans more thoroughly going forward.

I pass on the Korean War Veterans Memorial to visit the Lincoln Memorial. Good old Abraham is sitting where he’s supposed to be, but other tourists are constantly in my way. I don’t actually want to feature them in my photo so I search for solutions. There are various options for dealing with this, but I opt for the simplest: cropping.

The Pentagon is off limits to me because photography is not permitted on site. Instead, I head over to the Arlington National Cemetery, which is an expansive graveyard with countless white gravestones. John F. Kennedy is buried here, but his gravestone is always surrounded by tourists, so I poke around for a different subject. I don’t have to look for very long.

Arlington National Cemetery · A long focal length and a wide aperture enabled me to position the focal plane directly on the gravestone. The colorful flag immediately draws the viewer’s attention. 147 mm · ISO 100 · f/2.8 · 1/800 sec

Washington Metro · I positioned myself directly between the two escalators so that I could create a perfectly symmetrical composition. Because I didn’t have a tripod, I rested the camera directly on the handrail. 8 mm · ISO 400 · f/7.1 · 1/4 sec

USA New York

Radio City Music Hall · Manhattan offers striking subjects around the clock. Using a long exposure made the moving cars disappear from the photo. The remaining traces of light make for interesting accents. 16 mm · ISO 100 · f/9 · 2 sec

Bright lights, crowds of people, noise, sirens, honking taxis everywhere; my head is spinning, my eyes are bulging, and my feet are burning. I feel dizzy. Diagnosis? Overstimulation. New York is exactly as I imagined it—the city that never sleeps.

Sleep isn’t on my personal agenda either. I’ve got two days to explore this metropolis. That’s a short amount of time for a city that defies comprehension and has so much to offer. During the day I admired the Flatiron Building, the Statue of Liberty, Times Square, the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, and a number of other attractions. Now it’s time for nighttime exploration. Armed with a heavy backpack and a tripod, I head off into the illuminated city. My eyes are on alert for the perfect subject. I’m hoping to find a vantage point from which I can document Manhattan’s skyline. I feel a little uneasy as I walk through the dimly lit alleys. Statistically, someone is murdered every day in this city. I tighten my grip on my tripod with the hopes that I won’t be separated from it. After what feels like hours, it’s finally in front of me: the fantastically illuminated skyline of the city. It’s the perfect time of day, with the blue hour just beginning. I quickly set up my tripod and choose my desired image area.

Tip: It’s best to shoot evening skyline photos on weeknights because buildings will have more illuminated windows during those times.

I could spend hours taking in the view, but nightfall’s chill forces me to pack my things and head home. Then, all of a sudden, I feel a sharp ache in my knee. I can’t walk properly anymore and it becomes painfully clear to me that I’m not used to walking around so much with a heavy backpack. But how am I supposed to go on? In a panic, I limp to the nearest drug store. The sales clerk gives me a cream for my knee, adding, We normally don’t sell this without a prescription.

Only when brushing my teeth the following morning does it occur to me that the medication comes in a tube that is remarkably similar to my tube of toothpaste. With tears in my eyes and my mouth ablaze I try to rinse out my mouth and assuage the pain. (It took a good three days before I could taste anything again. On the plus side, however, I haven’t had a toothache to this day.)

Early in the morning on my second day, as I am walking through the empty streets, I come across a crowd of excited people who are jumping and jostling outside of a shop window. I push my way to the front and am rewarded with no small surprise. I’m standing right next to heartthrob Leonardo di Caprio, who is pitching his latest film directly inside of this ground-level studio. The poor lighting and reflections on the windows rule out anything but a quick snapshot, but better that than nothing at all.

The Statue of Liberty · Instead of taking a picture of the entire statue, I decided to take a portrait of just her head. Because the contrast was especially stark, I used exposure bracketing to generate several images, which I later combined to create an HDR image. 400 mm · ISO 200 · f/5.6 · 1/320 sec

Leonardo di Caprio · This photo is not perfect, but it’s still one of the highlights from my trip to New York. When else do you have the chance to get so close to a real Hollywood star? 200 mm · ISO 800 · f/2.8 · 1/100 sec

Taxi · For this photo, I followed the taxi with my camera and released the shutter while my camera was in motion. This panning technique results in a sharp subject against a blurry background. It’s best and easiest to use a wide-angle lens for this sort of photo. 8 mm · ISO 400 · f/5 · 1/6 sec

The dazzling skyline of Manhattan with the Brooklyn Bridge in the foreground · I took this photo from the bank of the Hudson River during the blue hour. I walked along the river until I found just the right spot. I used exposure bracketing and created an HDR image out of several individual photos. 42 mm · ISO 100 · f/9 · 8 sec

USA Los Angeles and Hollywood

Santa Monica · I discovered this colorful, comical musician on a pier at the beach. The glaring sun produced harsh shadows, but that’s not a problem for this sort of subject as the shadows only add to the photo’s authenticity. 55 mm · ISO 200 · f/2.6 · 1/1600 sec

My rental car was driven away by a chauffeur and my luggage was delivered to my room by a bellhop. I feel a little underdressed when I enter the magnificent lobby of my hotel. Lush carpets, lofted ceilings with stucco accents, and antique chandeliers—it’s all very classy. I’ve arrived in Los Angeles, the city of the stars. And this time I have just one day to show myself around.

L.A. has nearly 4 million residents and is geographically huge, which means I need to limit my objectives to only the most essential. Off to Hollywood.

After I take in nearly every one of the 2,500 stars on the Walk of Fame, I want to visit the Hollywood sign. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to do so on foot, so I sign up for a bus tour that hits all of the key highlights—Beverly Hills, Rodeo Drive, and so on—before finally arriving at my Hollywood sign.

The next morning I jaunt over to the Disney Concert Hall, a thoroughly marvelous architectural gem. After a quick detour to the beach in Santa Monica, it’s time to resume my travels. I’m certain that my efforts in Tinseltown have put me solidly in the running for an Oscar of my own.

Plastic golden Oscars · Replicas of the highly coveted trophies are sold on street corners all over L.A. Unlike the real thing, these ones are small and plastic. 34 mm · ISO 400 · f/2.8 · 1/80 sec

Los Angeles hotel lobby · In a place like this, everyone feels like a star. The HDR editing (Photomatix Pro) gives this photo a slightly altered and somewhat surrealistic appearance. Seconds after taking this shot, hotel security stopped me from taking any other pictures. 10 mm · ISO 100 · f/13 · 4 sec

Walk of Fame · Here you find one celebrity after another. I picked out the star for the late king of pop, Michael Jackson, and tried to get a central perspective directly from above to accentuate it. 24 mm · ISO 200 · f/4.5 · 1/400 sec

Walt Disney Concert Hall · This futuristic-looking building designed by architect Frank Gehry is one of the world’s most famous concert halls, owing to its modern architecture and acoustics. I emphasized the shiny steel and the curved, sail-like roofs with light and shadow. 10 mm · ISO 200 · f/7.1 · 1/200 sec

USA Las Vegas

Elvis impersonator · I decided to blur the background of this photo but leave the Las Vegas sign just legible enough to let viewers know where I ran into Elvis. 200 mm · ISO 100 · f/4.5 · 1/640 sec

A nerve-wracking, extremely loud, high-frequency alarm sounds. What now? Where am I? A quick glance at my alarm clock shows that it’s 5:00 a.m. Attention, please. Please evacuate the building, says a deafening voice coming from a speaker in my room. I get dressed in world-record time and frantically await something along the lines of a magnitude 6.0 earthquake. Oddly, when I arrive in the lobby I appear to be the only guest there. A kind hotel employee finally informs me that it was just a false alarm and I can go back to bed. Good joke!

Because I’m already wide awake, I take a quick walk through the casino. Today I’m in Las Vegas, the glitzy city of gambling and shows. It’s hard to describe this city; you really have to experience it for yourself. Kitsch par excellence! You can find everything imaginable: fire-spewing volcanoes, huge fountains, lions, dolphins, and countless Elvis impersonators. The hotels are gigantic and it takes an eternity to walk through the casino and return to my room.

As soon as darkness falls, Las Vegas turns into a sea of colorful lights. It overwhelms the eyes. Here, you can find a number of world-famous cities in one—Venice, New York, Paris. Dead tired, I finally fall asleep late