Doing the Stepdance at Potsdamer Platz

I know that many of you will want a fine selfportrait like this before you leave Berlin next year. If, for nothing else, then to indicate to family and friends, that you really are a high flyer .

Here is the recipe for how to take it. It is not as easy as it looks: On my second day in Berlin I took the U-Bahn to Potsdamer Platz. About 10 minutes from where I stayed in the Kurfürstendamm area. Among other things Potsdamer Platz is a traffic hub, so I came up from the underground and found the high glass buildings, and the mirrors to accompany them.

Interesting, I thought, if I could catch myself in on of these mirrors. So for the next 15 minutes I stepped back and forth on the platz trying to find myself in one of the mirrors. The spot you need to find is a square of some 50 centimeters, and you have to move back and forth and sideways to find that exact spot. All the time you look into the air at the mirror. People startet stopping up to observe this maniac doing the slow quickstep at Potsdamer Platz. Eventually I got it fixed.

 It was not until later the same day, that I looked over the images I had boxed, and it struck me that this was pretty funny image, and that I had to go back later the same day to take some shots with the G, as well. First round of pictures was with the D20.

So I went back, I think, about 6.00 p.m. the same day. What had happened?  I looked for MY position in the platz. I had marked that in my head. The mirrors were gone. Could they have removed the mirrors, were they sunken into the ground? I started counting, since I remembered that there were three mirrors. I had to move around to find them, now located at different places, and not at all with the glass backgrount that I was set to shoot. The stepdancer had returned this time adding some long leg movements of foxtrot. I could not believe what had happened .

It finally occurred to me, that the mirrors actually could move. I found one and could  see, and hear it moving. How clever, I though, to make people spend time at Potsdamer Platz by simply confusing them. The mirrors moved with the sun. No wonder that my former spot did not fit any more. So, eventually, I got some shots with the G and the 90 mm, but with a wholly different background than in this shot. Clear, blue sky, which however, was not what I wanted. One of those shots I posted to the Contax G Pages.

Sigh, I had to come back to Potsdamer Platz the next day as well, about the same time I had been there for the first round of shooting. I wanted this DB (Deutsche Bahn) building in the background. Defenitely.

 So the next morning I was up early. From the hotel I took the 200 meters to Wittenberger Platz, where I could catch the U-Bahn. First U1 and them U2 (from which the rock group took its name, btw. Did you know that?). As I was not quite sure about the time, I had been there for the first shooting the day before, I landed at Potsdamer Platz about 10.00 a.m., and looked for the spot and the mirror. I was 2 hours early. It was then I tried the coffee at the Sony Center. Once more, and it was still good.

Final round of stepdancing coming up. I was half an hour too late this time, but got some shots with this background with the G. Not the same, but slightly like it. That time the stepdancing really took off. Other lost people looking for the same spot in the sky and at the plaza, and there is only one. And  I had it . You have to stand here, I said to a Japanese tourist searching the air for mirrors. You have to stand here. I pointed to the ground. He took the spots, called for his family and the stepdance continued. The Japanese way.

Who said shooting comes easy. At Potsdamer Platz, no way. But you learn to stepdance .