The Artful Engineer

After a long walk along the canals, we reached the little town of Damme proper. There were quite a few nice doors decorated for Christmas, but since we are now in the back half of February, I decided to forgo showing any Belgian holiday decorations. The image above was a little bit of a surprise to me when I processed it: I lightened the shadows a little and realized that there was a neat reflection in the window, so I lightened that even more to show it off. I think it adds some mystery to the image. The reflection goes well with the overall color palette, too.

The next image is, I suppose, similar to the previous one, although I kind of like the outlier pair of bricks that are anchoring the top right corner:

Since we are highlighting a lot of brickwork this week, I thought I would show the following unusual assortment. I’m not sure what the motivation was, but in this one narrow area we have a semi-circular arch above the window, some 45° bevels along the window, a squashed curved arch above the street-level grate, and the strange triangular protrusion on the left side. Since this last feature doesn’t seem to have the same glossy finish as the rest, I’m suspicious that it was added later to provide some structural support to the wall.

This next image is my favorite from Damme. Unfortunately the tall, narrow crop is not ideal for viewing on most computer screens, but I love the two backlit windows from the far side of the building showing through the windows on this side.

Since this next image was set up on a tripod, I’m not sure why—other than carelessness—I stuck with ISO 500, but I am glad I did because at ISO 64 the shutter speed would have been 1/30 second and the two birds would have been badly blurred. As it is, I think they add a nice detail that breaks up the gloomy sky.

I had a very narrow view between trees of this next upstairs window, so I really had to crop in tightly to this view. Fundamentally, I like the contrast between the pretty lace curtains and the ugly exterior—I was tempted to mock their decorating efforts with the title “Lipstick on a Pig” but decided that was perhaps unkind.

One of the reasons that I decided to keep this image in the set this week was so that I could show something that I don’t recall actually encountering before: moiré. If you look at the left close-up, below, you can see weird bands of orange and blue showing on the curtains. This is caused by the interaction of the fine texture of the lace with the camera sensor’s Bayer array. I believe this is most frequently encountered with textiles (like wedding dresses) and this instance follows that pattern, no pun intended. I admit that I was surprised to see it, especially with a zoom, because you need a really sharp lens for it to happen. I am always plenty happy with this lens’ sharpness, but do notice that it is not at the same level as my 14-24mm and certainly not my 85mm, but if this lens can show moiré it is no slouch. Fortunately, Lightroom allows you to locally apply a de-moiré effect with a brush. The repaired version is on the right. You do want to be careful with the brush, though, because it causes a noticeable color-bleeding effect if you get it on other areas. (Yes, I learned that the hard way.)

I’ll wrap up this post with one of my traditional subjects: a seldom-opened door. I’ve decided that subjects like this are my equivalent of a minimalist image: rather than the usual black-and-white, though, mine have a limited color palette and interesting textures.

As always, I appreciate you taking the time to look at my photography! This is the first post composed on my new laptop, too, so in the future I won’t (necessarily) have to frantically get all my posts done ahead of time when I am going to be away from home.

Next week: Bruges!