Written in Fire?

 I know these may n0t be to everyone's taste but I rather like these images. I enjoy looking for the abstract images that can be found in ripples and reflections. I posted some shots on a similar theme on a website about two years ago and got barely any response but about 6 months later I saw very similar posts by other regular contributors who were using the same approach so I thought I may have influenced their own experiment.

Here the shots were taken at night of a hotel sign reflected in one of Bruge's canals, different angles, exposures and crops have produced very different images of the same thing, all of which I think are quite effective and interesting. Water that had appeared flat and smooth is revealed to have lots of movement and miniature peaks and troughs each catching the light and reflecting it back in different ways. Walking by the reflections just look like splashes of light but frozen in time and looked at more closely there is so much detail and beauty to be found in something simple and fleeting.

It's A Fairy Tale

 I told you in my last blog that Bruges is like a fairy tale city and at night that is even more true as you can see from the images above.

These buildings are all in the region of 500years old, they have so much character and charm and at the end of the day when the traffic has left the city it is easy to imagine this part of the city as it was when it was new.

I love the lights and reflections in the colour images, as the canal is mirror calm. Lots of people were admiring these views and I have used long exposures to really capture the reflections but also to "erase" the people who were walking by.

I have used black and white for the images of the market hall as I think that best suits the structure. I tried to imagine these stalls fully occupied with traders (even the following day there were only a handful of stalls in use) and the variety of produce that would have been on sale.

I loved visiting Bruges and having the opportunity to capture its sights at night. 

In the coming days I will share some more abstract images and some street photography as I explored the city on a busy Saturday morning so be sure to look out for those.

A Room With a View

 On the drive back from Alsace I had decided to break up the journey with a stopover in Bruges. I had visited the city before but had never stayed overnight and I wanted to see it after dark; It really is a fairy tale city and I hoped to capture some of the magic of the beautiful architecture and the reflections in the canals.

I booked a room in what was once a brewery and I paid a supplement for a room with a canal view and the images above show the view of the canal and the courtyard below both in daytime and at night.

I love the architecture in Bruges. The city has a really interesting history and is famous for the production of handmade lace for hundreds of years. The street on which my hotel was located (Wollestraat) is very old, it is a busy thoroughfare with lots of shops one of which is a fabulous lace shop. The shop was built prior to the Napoleonic era when Belgium was under the rule of the Napoleonic empire. A curious hangover from that era is the window tax. I say curious because the tax is still applied today but only to buildings that were in existence at that time, so the owner of the lace shop has to pay an annual tax on each of her windows but the shop next door which was built slightly later is not liable to the tax. 

Anyway, over the next few days I will share a few more pictures from my wanderings around this beautiful city which I hope you will enjoy.