The Brandenburger Tor, or Brandenburg Gate in Berlin is an iconic structure that can elicit emotions all over the map. At one point in my career I kept finding myself in historic cities like Berlin for only a few days, which often led to serious jet lag issues and loads of very late nights or very early mornings. I started a series of “architecture at night” photos (which is very convenient—interesting lighting and no people at 4am!), and some of my favorites images came from this amazing city. Berlin remains one of my most-loved cities in the world, and one that I hope to live in one day. It’s full of artists and creatives, has a very progressive mentality, and the clash of old East and West architecture, idealism and of course the rebuilding of the city since the fall of the wall has made Berlin an intensely vibrant metropolis that everyone should visit one day.

Brandenburg Gate (Brandenburger Tor) in Berlin, Germany @ Sept 2006 | Canon EOS 5D & 14mm ƒ/2.8L Aspherical @ ISO 800, ƒ/3.5, 1/20

I have several more photos from this series, and most have never been seen. I’ll continue to share them over the upcoming posts.

Our Cross Country Drive

I’ve only had a few suggestions for our upcoming cross-country drive, and we leave in a week! Last time I had dozens of tips and modifications to my map by this time, and they made the trip so much more enjoyable. So again, if you live along the way, or know the region well, please do share some traveling tips. You can leave comments here (or on the original post, preferred), and the Google map is fully editbale—just click that map on the top right of this page! You can see I’ve been advised to take a slightly more southernly route between St. Louis and Salt Lake City, putting us through Kansas and Colorado (the red line) instead of Nebraska and Wyoming (the blue line). Any contrary opinions?