An entry for the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge.
Tag: Pictures]
A, Registered
Paleica just started a photo challenge involving twelve magic mottos for this year. This month’s theme is Schilder und Schriften (signs and fonts). Since the season is still dark, I decided to look for letters that glow.
Hello … My Name is … YOR7
Looking for traces of use and abuse around Wiesbaden’s former courthouse, I spotted these pictures painted on metal doors. I found them absolutely gripping, and immediately decided I had to show them to Jörg from Dosenkunst. Then I checked with his blog and found out he had photographed and posted them quite a while ago. So what was the point of photographing them again?
I told my wife I had to show her some photos of graffiti, and upon seeing them she replied: “Are you sure you want to call these graffiti? They are art!” So here’s another interpretation of art…
Uzès
Uzès is a town in the south of France, and it is definitely worth a walk (or two). So what could be more appropriate than entering this post as a contribution for Jo’s Monday Walk? Jo collects walks from all around the world. I also enjoy her project because walking and photography are a perfect match … ain’t they?
Flora
Happy Place: Museum (Metz)
Man is only himself when at play, claims Friedrich Schiller in his Letters upon the Aesthetic Education of Man. For me, museums are not just places that deal with aesthetics but also adult playgrounds – especially when I am allowed to use my camera: Museums encourage taking the risk of looking at things differently; the whole activity feels like getting the head massaged. | A contribution for the Weekly Photo Challenge: Happy Place.
On Doors
Coming home with a bunch of photos of doors I found that Paleica’s Magic Letters Photo Challenge features T – Türen und Tore (doors and portals). So here are some things I found upon closer inspection.
Connected
2/3. Perspective
Three Pictures with Little Colour
Close Up: Going Abstract
Half and Half
This week’s photo challenge is Half and Half, and though I try to avoid halves, I think the idea is here. (The first picture even sports half a pair of socks.)
Le bonheur dans la rue (II)
Le bonheur dans la rue (I)
…and some more patterns for Paula – from a shop offering vintage clothes where I always find fancy things I can photograph, right in the street.
More Metal for Paleica
In my eyes, metal is one of the most fascinating materials (along with stone, wood, and glass): Different metals allow for different uses, display different grades of lustre, and corrode differently if at all. So Paleica’s photo challenge is a welcome occasion, although I feel I’ve already posted loads of “Metall.”
2/3. Geology? Archaeology?
A quick reminder because I love getting myself distracted by photo challenges: The 2/3 series features a simple formula: composition by the so called rule of thirds. The idea is to focus on structures and colours rather than composition while giving the pictures a uniform look. Based on this unifying ‘grammar’ it should be possible to arrange and re-arrange picture series according to different criteria – and tell different ‘stories’ – without losing a certain coherence. Here, the story told might be of rocks, or the remnants enclosed inside them.
Come In!
Getting these pictures ready to be published, I just realized that the light is kind of special in all three of them (little light as there might be). So I guess this might as well be an entry for Paleica’s Magic Letter Challenge: Licht / Light.
Alla Veneziana (Decay)
Decay can look quite quite pretty in a romantic or decadent way when the dosage is moderate. A bit of laissez faire, a bit of savoir vivre; after all, enjoying life is more important than maintaining old houses. Buildings that have decayed to a degree we find charming may remind us of Luchino Visconti’s Morte a Venezia.
However, the famous Italian city might be more rotten than the pictures in our minds suggest, and there are buildings that are way beyond charming here in Wiesbaden. They literally fall apart (the glimpse through a hole in the tarpaulin hints at the whole). Some of them are protected as monuments or national heritage (“denkmalgeschützt”): They must not be knocked down, so the owners let them rot until they pose a security risk and demolition becomes inevitable.
To see more decay – and to read a great yet outrageous story about an ambitious hospital project – visit Paula’s Photo Challenge which inspired the idea that while we might like that bit of decay, more of it is not too good.
Way Home
This is what I see on my way, some of it in my way (by the way).
Kafkaesque
After deciding this was the story for Paula’s Guest Challenge – How to Tell a Story through Colour Photography – I first thought I should add a narrative text. But then I decided on the title, and I will say no more.
empire of lights 