Today, after a long time, I managed to go out and shoot something. This is the magnificent Gothic cathedral of Cologne, also the tallest Gothic structure in the world. It is one building that overpowers your senses with its sheer size. Even after being in Cologne for more than two years now I never got around to photographing the Dom (as it is called in German) properly. So I’m glad that I finally got some decent shots. This will be the first in a series of three shots. This one was shot towards late evening. I blew out the sky during PP to let the building stand out better.

The Dom has a lot of interesting history behind it. Including interruptions, it took more than 600 years for the building to be completed (1248-1880). It was even the tallest structure in the world between 1880 and 1884! It’s Sarcophagus of the Magi is thought to contain the remains of the Three Wise Men. It was hit 14 times during aerial bombing in WWII but managed not to collapse. And it also has the world’s largest free-swinging bell!

One suggestion, this photo is best viewed full screen. Press F11 to go into full screen mode (and press F11 again to exit it).

This was just an experimental shot but I like the way the composition works. I cropped it a little to make the composition even tighter.

I seem to be posting only b/w photos of late here. But I could not think of posting this in color. Instead of doing the same old thing with such shots I tried to do something new, as the title of the photo suggests. I hope you like the result.

I’m still depending on photos from about ten days ago as I haven’t shot anything in between because of the terrible weather here. This is from the same place as the one I put up yesterday. The lake had frozen and so people were having fun walking, skating and playing over it. Didn’t realize what the guy on the extreme right was doing until I came home and was reviewing the shots!

On another note, I finally decided to order the Minolta Dynax 7D as it was very attractively priced. I’m eagerly awaiting its arrival!

Quite surprisingly, this was selected as the photo of the fortnight in one of the photography forums I’m part of! Even without that this would still be one of my favorites as I’m happy with the way it came out. And oh, I think this is the first photo here with my recently acquired Minolta 17-35mm zoom lens.

As I mentioned yesterday the original idea was to post another macro of the bouquet. But I just wasn’t happy with the results I was getting after post-processing of those shots. So I decided to post this macro instead, from a different shoot. At least this came out decently.

A lab colleague was given a lovely bouquet. So I requested her to leave it behind for a day so that I could shoot it to my heart’s content! Being the nice person she is she agreed. So starting with this I’ll be posting some macro shots from that shoot. The extremely shallow dof in such shots is a pain to work with, especially without a tripod. But I liked the way this shot has come out. I hope you do too.

This is a scene that transpired about a week back here. One of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen and I almost missed it! I regret that I was not in a better position or with proper equipment to capture the gorgeous beauty of that evening. All I could manage was this by going onto the roof of the building I work in. I took a bunch of photos but as it was very dark for hand-held shooting this is one of the few that came out decently.

Inspite of some minor quibbles with the composition I quite like the way this shot has come out. It didn’t need much post-processing either except for some sharpening. The only thing I had think a little about was what white balance to use. I finally settled on this.

Here is the same cut down tree stem from yesterday but shot from a different angle. I’m not sure which one of the two I prefer. Both appeal to me in different ways!