Taken at Den haag during December holiday by freezing cold weather (no wind, it would have been unbearable). I wish I processed it sooner but life happen …
I tried to play with the dynamic, did not intended to do a B&W edit although I think the desaturated style put emphasis on the frozen everything. I failed to retain some significant colour presence (wish I could have had more pronounced dark blue in the sky maybe ?)
Is it just me, or is there no lens info in your raw files? Its absence makes Hugin protest, and prevents using lens correction…
As for the bikes, there’s a culture of bicycle use in the Netherlands, perhaps helped by the absence of slopes. Also, there are a lot of dedicated bicycle paths, some allowing shortcuts unavailable to cars. Which makes using a bicycle to move around faster than a car (in time, not speed, luckily).
Sorry, the lens was 28mm no crop factor. It’s a vintage lens used via “dumb” (no electronic) adaptor. I did not take the time to edit the metadata in the camera to have it properly report the focal in the exif…
(lens used Yashika 28mm 2.8 @ 4 aperture)
On that note I quite like the approach Pentax took on it’s K-01 who at first startup with no lens detected will pop-up a quick menu with a focal lens selector for the metadata.
I had to scroll through some menus to prevent hugin from “correcting” the exposure… the default semi auto operation mode on my distro activates that by itself.
No slopes sure helps, but proper infrastructures are keys I guess, where I live you feel in danger half the time on your trip across the city …
Interesting video with some valid points, albeit based on an implicit assumption: That living in an urban context is desirable. My house / property is in a small US town, but literally next door to apartments (our properties meet). And that’s the single worst thing about where we are, although there are others.
I’m a fan of zoning and wish it was stricter where I live. But infinitely better would be to live totally, completely and far outside of any population center, where my nearest neighbor is on the horizon at best. I’m really tired of having no privacy.
I own a bike and (although it’s not really a commuter style) like the idea of theoretically using it for localized transport. But with our level of car traffic it’s a suicide mission. Plus, 90% of the time my shopping errands can’t be carried on a bike.
But I guess my viewpoint is heavily influenced by my dislike of humankind’s impact on the natural world. I’m not opposed to development, but would like to keep it in check and in balance.
That helps of course… But there’s no excess of space where I live either…
But I felt (reasonably) safe using a bike in the Netherlands, where the infrastructure is good.
I don’t feel safe at all in the French cities I’ve lived in over the years. Bicycle paths were largely unknown, or placed such that using them was more of a nuisance than help (there are exceptions, but mostly outside the cities), although that’s slowly changing. And one other very important factor: car drivers have no familiarity with cyclists, making cycling more dangerous than it needs to be…
The sky in your edit makes much more sense although I still like the immersion provided by the cropped foreground twigs in the original. The colour saturation better than what I came up with, well done
Overhaul very balanced edit !
I’ll try to take a minute to load your xmp and see what module you used.
Thank you for your comment. The sky wasn’t really difficult but I cheated with a mask. Overall I’m not a big fan of local contrast: most of the time, for me, what gives a photo a mood is the non-local contrast. So I tried to emphasize large contrasting areas more than details (more or less ).
That fits where I live quite well… nearest house is about 1 km away and that’s only a holiday home. We do have neighbours, and they have been know to be a nuisance (like leaving gates open so that our garden is full of cows!) but all in all it’s very private (come to think of it). There are downsides though… no popping down to the shops if you forgot something. 45min to town, or at some times of year add an extra 30 min when a river is flooding.
You make it feel like a late afternoon western movie scene the funny thing is that early in the afternoon !
But hey, it was near the shortest days with the lower suns …
Unfortunately it’s either urban living or becoming dependent on roads and cars. Pick your poison in the end. I agree with your view of human’s influence on the natural world, but that goes against the idea that we could all have a property more or less isolated from others and with current population numbers that would be hard to implement. I believe urban planning needs to improve a lot(privacy, noise levels, natural spaces, transportation etc) even in Europe, let alone the US, and there should be large natural spaces close by to most people, even in an urban context. Seeing concrete all around is just soul crushing.
Yep, definitely. I’d say the same thing about individual houses, not just concrete.
Even where I live (which is not far from rural spaces) “open” green space in town doesn’t exist. If the space it open, it’s a sports complex with buildings, ball fields, parking, etc. So that reduces its value for me (not to mention the typical excessive nighttime lighting).
100% agree. Unfortunately where I live it’s the same, sometimes even a few wild flowers growing in empty fields they mow down which takes the life out of it.
Gonna take the chance to post my try, so I don’t make two replies
A wild flower is a menace to civilization! An insect is a deadly weapon! Let’s exterminate them all in the name of progress
This world is a Koyaanisqatsi.
To be fair, a couple of decades ago or maybe more (in at least my part of the US: south), wildflowers along roadways became a thing. They were planted in medians, rights-of-way, overpass approaches, etc. and allowed to grow. At first they looked a little unnatural due to the artificial density of the planting, but they’ve evened out now and make a nicer backdrop than just mowed grass.
Yeah, yellow fields I see driving to work in the middle of winter are driving me crazy …
Amazing documentary done with this title ( Koyaanisqatsi (1982) - IMDb ) amazing photography done by “Ron Fricke” wich most recent work “Samsara” is also a piece of art…
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