Tag: Sunderland

Higher and higher

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“Vertical lines” – #7 from Cee’s Compose Yourself. I thought photographs for this challenge might be easy to find in my “archives” but … not so much.

This face of a building is interesting but I needed to crop it to get rid of the cars driving in front of it.  Keeping the same dimensions as the original,the windows to the right and left are distracting. I have the same problem with many photos of similar buildings (usually in fairly narrow streets) but this style fascinates me, nevertheless, it is typical for inner city buildings in the west of Germany, dating from around 1900.

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This strange sculpture of two naked children was difficult to photograph as there was no suitable background on any side (cheap grocery stores etc., all in this not very attractive architectural style).  The tree trunk in front of it doesn’t help either but it strengthens the vertical line.

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Street lamps are usually thin and pointing upwards,

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so are church spires.

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This picture of this flaming orange tulip works in landscape format because of the close-up.

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But even though the background is more cluttered in this portrait shot, I think the picture works better that way..

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After having snapped the first shot of my husband walking between these houses in Sunderland, UK, I tried to align the lamps so that only the front one showed (husband plodding along unawares). No question which is the better photo, is it?

This a man-made attraction is highest cold-water geysir in the world.  The Andernach geysir shoots water up to 60 metres high at regular interval during summer.  It’s situated on a peninsula and ships bring about 300 tourists at a time, they watch the eruption and go back. In the first shot it looks pretty unspectacular, the vertical line isn’t strong and it basically just shows people milling around a fountain. D’oh.  The second shot is still nothing spectacular.

In the third shot – again I switched to portrait format to show off the fountain – the viewer joins the crowd in watching the fountain go up, enhanced by many of the onlookers pointing their own cameras upwards.

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I prefer the close up of the erupting geysir itself, though, with nothing distracting from the water.

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Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge: Week #7 Vertical Lines

CCY

 

The lighthouse on Roker Beach

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I came late to Cee’s Compose Yourself photo challenge.  It’s now into week 20 – but since the topic is “Review and Practice” I am taking the opportunity to start at challenge no. 1 and work myself up (without posting my blog entries on her site).

So, here are ideas for her topic: “How your camera is not like your eye” which is all about composition.

 

I first saw the lighthouse of Roker Beach (Sunderland) from this perspective:

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The friend we were visiting is truly blessed to have this view from her breakfast nook.  The photo was only a quick snapshot to document her bliss.

We were there for a few days and of course, one is always drawn to this landmark. Here are a few shots taken at various times of day resulting in different light effects even though the basic shot remained more or less the same, even though one is from the other side of the beach:

Getting closer in a flat perspective proofed to be boring in this case, mainly because the top of the lighthouse, bar of any life, is kind of boring:

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Getting even closer and picking out details proofed more satisfying:

Or showing off the curved pier:

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The tighter framing in the shot above makes for a better picture than the one below, by the way:

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But there is a sculpture on Roker Beach, a camera aperture in fact, which makes for the ultimate framing of the lighthouse.

C2C shutter
C2C shutter

 

 

 

 

I wasn’t there on 4 September when one can apparently see the sun rising in this camera angle but this was good enough for me:

 

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Cee’s Compose Yourself Challenge: Week #1 How Your Camera is Not Like Your Eye

CCY