The Artful Engineer

My time in Belgium was very short: only two full days, plus a few hours on either end. But in a city setting where I am always on foot, I can take a lot of pictures. In this case, about 1,200 in Bruges and a few hundred more around Damme. Even though the weather was generally dreary, it fits the mood of northern Europe in December. And the overcast sky eliminates most of the shadows—certainly the harsh ones. That makes it easy to feature building details, but that featureless bright sky can seem unredeemable, so excluding it altogether, as in the picture above, is often a sound strategy. But Bruges has lots of nice towers, too, and it’s hard to take a rectangular picture of a pointy tower without including the sky. So you do the best you can. In the case below, since the cobbles were wet, the reflections of that bright sky give the ground texture and help balance the image top-to-bottom. I don’t think the sky is objectionable here.

This next image would be more problematic in direct sun. Since I know that my tendency is to shoot doors and such straight-on, I look for opportunities to shoot them from an angle so I have some variety in my images. In this case, I like the way that each section of the wall—not to mention the street—has a different type of brick.

This next image is shot straight-on, but the angled wall gives it a little variety. The light behind the glass is great, but I do regret not zooming out just a touch—the door is too crowded on the top and bottom of the frame.

The image below is a fun one, unless you think about how disgusting it must be behind that door. I don’t like pigeons—essentially rats with wings—but the two in this image are pretty essential. They seem perfectly placed: one walking out the door and the other watching it from the opposite corner of the frame. The two gray birds match the two gray buoys, and their green necks match the green doors. When I look at this image, I ask a lot of questions: What is behind that door? Why did someone leave it open? Why is it still open? How long has it been since a boat stopped at this door? And, is it as bad as I think it is behind that door?

I suppose my penultimate picture of Bruges was not terribly flattering, so we’ll end this series on a more positive note with a moment of sunshine that highlights the beauty of this medieval city:

Well, that’s the end of this series that started in York and ended in Bruges. The entire journey is available here.

Next week the blog returns to Colorado, where there is plenty of catching up to do.