Tag Archives: #Köln

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Bridge Fantasy Silhouette

On occasion I’ll make some heavy adjustments to photo to create a vision, an interpretation, and perhaps something more than just a straight unfettered image of reality.

Working from an RAF RAW file I exposed of the railway bridge and famous Dom in Köln in September 2016, I made series of alterations to compose a fantasy image.

First step was to convert the image to a DNG file using PureRaw. Next I imported the DNG into Adobe Lightroom and made a series of modifications, including some heavy exposure, color, and contrast adjustment to the sky. I then lowered overall contrast, made broad use of the ‘clarity’ slider, and boosted saturation.

Notice all the pad locks, thousands of the them, attached to the bridge in the final result.

While I made some major changes to color, contrast and exposure, I didn’t add any elements to the photo. This is just one image exposed using a FujiFilm XT1.

Unmodified RAF RAW
DNG conversion without cropping.
DNG with cropping to overcome field distortion.
DNG file following modifications using Lightroom.

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Köln—September 3, 2015.

Three views from the Köln tram subway exposed on my visit ten years ago.

An uneventful passage during a journey through Germany.

Yet, sometimes this U-bahn finds its way into a dream.

2229 glides below ground on 3 September 2015.
Exposed using a FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a 27mm prime lens.
Exposed using a FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a 27mm prime lens.

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Under and Over: Box Boat and Trams

September 2, 2015—ten years ago—my friends and I crossed the Rhein on foot at Köln, Germany by using the walkway on the massive six-track railway bridge over the river .

From the big bridge, I made this sequence of photos looking up-river featuring an approaching container ship and trams crossing a distance bridge.

Interestingly, 45 years earlier, my father made Kodachrome slides of trams on that distant bridge. At that time both the bridge and the trams were new.

For these photos, I worked with my FujiFilm XT1 fitted with a 18-135mm Fujinon Zoom. I’ve always liked the geometric repetition of shapes in these images.

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