Photo Friday: Photographing Signs

Sara Naumann photo Friday

Last month we spent our annual family vacation in Schliersee, Germany. This is a small lakeside village about an hour’s drive outside Munich—you can actually take the train directly into the city for a day’s worth of museum-hopping in just under an hour.

Given that we’ve come here every year since Anna was born, you’d think I would have photographed enough mountains, lakes, flowers and plates of käsespätzle to last me for awhile. True—but, something I love to photograph, especially when I’m away from home, are signs. Street signs, shop signs, building signs…I think they uniquely capture a sense of identity and location. Of course, it’s even better when they’re quirky little signs like this one hanging outside a local guesthouse.

(And even better when you manage to capture the one blue-sky day in the entire week, which was otherwise full of rain, rain, rain!)

As a side note: Earlier in the month I was in Frankfurt and stopped by the Museum für Kommunikation (Communications Museum), which covers styles and technologies in communication from Mesopotamian writing tablets to the postal system to texting. I really enjoyed the “Signs, Writing, News”  section, which talked about how simple signs with pictographs were instrumental in directing a largely illiterate population in the past. Fascinating—and such a fun spin on this week’s photography, too!

What about you—do you ever take photos of signs, either on vacation or around home? I’d love to hear!

Happy Friday!

 

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3 thoughts on “Photo Friday: Photographing Signs

  1. You sign is super cool. I take pic of signs when I am hiking so I can remember the trail name and signs of cities I visit. When on a supervised tour, I also take signs of the tour sites. This is so helpful when I revisit the photos to help me recall exactly where I have been. If I see an interesting sign, I will take a photo or a simple sign in a weird location, like a ‘do not enter’ sign in front of a door and the bottom of stairs.

  2. Great idea to take photos of signs to help you remember where you’ve been. And yes, I love signs posted in weird locations, or signs that have funny or strange messages!

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