Mixing the Old with the New in Historic Cities

On May 14, 2021May 14, 2021 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Photo Challenge5 Comments

In almost every historic city that you visit, there will be an old town area where the buildings have been preserved. There is often another part of the city that is new and modern and they are usually in different parts of the city so that the traffic associated to tourists and that of the businesses can be kept separate from one another. Every now and then, though, you will find a historic building right in the middle of the modern skyscrapers. It is often a church, but not always as it could just be a historic landmark. The juxtaposition of the two can sometimes be visually interesting.

Church in Chicago with a Skyscraper Rising next to the Bell Tower

Old and New Side-by-Side in Cologne, Germany

Modern Paris as Seen from the Eiffel Tower

We have seen several examples throughout our travels, especially in Germany where so much of the cities were rebuilt after WWII, but it certainly isn’t limited to European cities. We have seen many interesting examples here in the United States, especially in Chicago, which is a city with a rich history of its own. We find the contrasts to be so striking that we often pause to take a variety of photographs to capture the differences and similarities between the old and the new.

Another Bell Tower and Skyscraper Image, but in Denver

Apparently We Really Like Building Towers Transitioning to Skyscrapers

The Effect of Lighting on Your Environment

On April 30, 2021April 30, 2021 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Photo Challenge11 Comments

Whenever you are traveling, one of the things that you can rarely control is what lighting you will have for your photography. Whether it is the lighting inside of building that was never meant to have electrical lighting or the direction of the sun from where you are viewing an area. Obviously, we all try to take advantage of good lighting when it exists and minimize the impact of poor lighting when we can’t control it. We rarely have the time during a trip to try and plan to visit a place when the lighting is at its best, so we fall into the camp of people who take pictures of their trips versus trying to create the perfect photograph. That doesn’t mean that using the “point and click” approach doesn’t sometimes produce wonderful photographs and it is also why we take so many pictures during a trip in the hopes that a percentage of them turn out the way we wanted them to.

Fountain Lights in Piazza Navona in Rome

Light and Shadows in Cochabamba, Bolivia

Inadvertently Capturing Our Shadow in Iceland

It is Always a Matter of Perspective

On April 9, 2021April 9, 2021 By Isobar ExpeditionsIn Photo Challenge4 Comments

We’ve all seen photographs of places that we intend to visit and seen images of things that look very large and grand. In almost every case, the impression that one gets from the photograph either is smaller or larger than what you expected. We very often try to take photographs with people in the foreground so that we can truly appreciate the actual size of the image. Whether it is boulders, sand dunes, pyramids, artwork, etc., having people in the foreground will certainly give you a perspective on the actual size. Here are just a few photographs where we have tried to ensure that we are able to understand the actual scale of what we were looking at.