My Third Eye

As a born-again agnostic, I feel a bit conflicted when making images with religious themes. I am still drawn to religious architecture and some liturgical music, but right now that’s as far as it goes. The image below is from the Dome cathedral in Cologne. I was drawn by the atmosphere, ritual and sense of history, but that’s about as far as it goes right now.

I was tempted to make the theme of Monday images digital manipulation, but the jury is still out on that one. The image below is an example of a photo that is digital from start to finish; digital camera, manipulated with an HDR plug-in from Nik software. Both “digital” and “HDR” are red flags these days in these eyes of certain purists (and I am guilty of dissing HDR as over used).  Scott Bourne once wrote that the only thing that matters is the image. A very simple statement, but a very profound one. Does the image, however produced, deliver on what the photographer was trying to do? This is the only metric that matters.

I took the image below last week in Cologne. The image is looking up at the Cathedral in Cologne. This structure is large and imposing, and dominates its space, in a not entirely positive way in my opinion. I joked with some folks (perhaps unfairly) that this massive structure would not out of place at the gates of Mordor. This image, with some HDR added, captures this feeling I had, better than the straight image does. And that is the only justification I need.

In a couple of hours I will be on a train to Frankfurt to catch a plane back to Toronto, so time for one more image of Cologne. I have crossed this bridge at least a dozen times this week, so it (and the cathedral in the mist) have become iconic for me. Photographs make the best souvenirs.

Normally, Tuesdays on this blog are reserved for “Time-warps”, pictures taken some time ago, as opposed to recent images. Today things will be different; since it’s my birthday, I will indulge in a break from routine and post an image I captured a couple of hours ago. As I write this, it is a beautiful sunny morning in Cologne, but the day started out with the city wrapped in a dense, swirling fog. I grabbed my camera and ran out outside the hotel to capture it before it burned off. My favourite image is below.

There is a symbolism here; the bridge shows the direction of travel, but the destination is a shrouded mystery; I won’t be able to see it until I get there. The bridge is life, and the destination is the future, and getting there is half the fun.

I am in Cologne, Germany on business this week, and of course I am taking advantage of the location to do some photography. This morning the light was amazing for a brief interval, and it was breathtaking to see the Cathedral across the Rhine take on the ruddy colours of a red-sky morning.