Tag Archive for: urban

Under Marasti Bridge

Under Marasti Bridge. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2017.

Under Marasti Bridge, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2017. Get a print.

The Marasti bridge is a famous piece of infrastructure in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Beside its main purpose, being a bridge 🙂 , it is also a place where the street artists of the region can express themselves. It has been chosen as the main canvas for a grafitti contest for the TiMAF, the Transylvanian International Music and Art Festival, a few years ago. This mix of architecture, street art and partial urban decay is a great start for a new Urban Exploration project that will be my main focus in 2017.

I wanted a contrast, with those static but illustrated pillars. Something moving, dynamic. Luckily for me, the roundabout under the bridge is a good opportunity for playing with lights. I just needed to way for the night, and let the magic happen. The magic of longer exposures, 30 seconds in this particular case. I have movement, I have dynamic, and I gain a fantastic light with those curvy rays.

While it was not necessarily a complicated photo to take, I’ve had to be a bit more creative to get an interesting, dynamic framing and avoid boring features such as walls. The solution? My dear dutch angle, that helped me maximise the light rays area, while creating a bunch of diagonal lines and helped me pushing the walls just outside the frame. There was only one caveat: it was a windy night, the camera was hanging over the road below me, it was not very confident. Hopefully, my sturdy tripod didn’t fail and kept everyone at bay!

Do you like this photo? Why not getting an original, signed fine art print in limited edition?

EXIFs:

  • Camera: Canon 6D
  • Lens: Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
  • Aperture: ƒ/11.0
  • Focale: 24mm
  • Shutter speed: 30s
  • ISO: 100
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2017, all rights reserved
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Exit

Exit. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2017.

Exit. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2017. Get a print.

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While I love winter for snowy, high key landscapes, it’s a bit the dead period for my urban photography. It’s cold, boring, there is no one in the streets. At least, I can play with the shops’ showcases and surprise people but, well, that’s a bit limiting in a small city like where I currently live. So, there is still a solution: finding closed spaces!

It got materialised with the newly extended underground passage at the Cluj-Napoca’s train station. The first set of corridors has already been featured on my Strangers in the Dark project, it has actually initiated it! The very first shot of this project was taken in this very underground passage. A new leg has been recently opened to the public, in the form of a looooong corridor. Great!

There is only one caveat: no one goes through this corridor! Besides the classic, full symmetry with leading lines to the exit dead in the center, I wanted to experiment with other, more creative framing. Well, with just 4 people (!) passing by this corridor in 90 minutes, I was quite far from being able to try them all. At least, I’ve been able to get one of the shots I’ve targeted from the beginning, this shot. Framing at an angle, with a clear exit sign, and a person passing by, going through the corridor to the exit. I really like the dynamic of this shot, thanks to the use of negative space and of the dutch angle.

Now… I just have to go back there and hope I’ll be able to get the shots I wanted, including some crazy long exposure ideas. But I think I’ll wait for hotter temperatures, even if it was indoor, it was not heated, waiting in the cold is not that fun 🙂

Do you like this photo? Why not getting an original, signed fine art print in limited edition?

EXIFs:

  • Camera: Canon 6D
  • Lens: Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8L II USM
  • Aperture: ƒ/5.0
  • Focale: 24mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/60s
  • ISO: 2000
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2017, all rights reserved
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Baker Street Underground station

Baker Street Underground station. London, Great Britain, 2016.

Baker Street Underground station. London, UK, 2016. Get a print.

Baker Street is not only known for the 221B, house of the famous Sherlock Holmes! It also hosts a fantastic underground station. I found this during a short business trip I recently did in London. This tube station opened in 1863, as one of the stop of the very first lines. It has since been extended with 3 additional lines. Because of that, its layout is quite complex, mixing different architecture styles across the platforms. While I was looking for this particular platform, I started by the newest one, getting back in time the further I progressed. Interesting trip in time, really 🙂

The older platform, pictured here, hosts the Hammersmith and City Line, one of the 2 first lines that opened in 1863. It represents quite well the Victorian architecture that was en vogue then. The pseudo arches with white tiles mimic the light from the outside. Pretty interesting! It’s really a fantastic place that deserves a visit! It was already quite late in the evening, so the platform was not too full. I noticed this well dressed woman, I rushed to place myself so that I can frame her between two men, the one sitting, and the one on the poster. An almost perfect symmetry! Once again, I love to mix architecture, geometry and people in my urban photography, and this photo does is pretty well I think. I hope you enjoy it !

Please also note that no saxophones were hurt while taking this photo 😉 However I have been having Gerry Rafferty’s song in my head for the past week!

Do you like this photo? Why not getting an original, signed fine art print in limited edition?

EXIFs:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/4.0
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/60s
  • ISO: 3200
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
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Night call

Night call. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016.

Night call. Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 2016. Get a print!

Wandering in the streets at might, I passed by a building I like. It’s a choreography and dramatic art boarding school which is painted in a bright blue, perfect for a vivid and colorful photo. It also has an interesting entrance, looking like a former factory, with square patterned windows. While the blue color of the wall is great during the day, this entrance comes alive at night!

Luckily for me, this time there was someone in the entrance. Being a dance oriented boarding school, a lot of teenagers stay there, waiting for the end to come to call their family, their lover… Who knows! But there was definitely some emotion in the way she behave there… It’s a photo I really like, the light was just fantastic. The square shaped window give this graphic feeling that I love in street photography. Definitely a nice photo to hand on a wall!

This photo has had quite a lot of success of social medias, I hope you’ll like it too!

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

EXIFs:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/60s
  • ISO: 6400
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
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Electric stairs

Electric stairs. Bucharest, Romania, 2016.

Electric stairs. Bucharest, Romania, 2016. Get an original, limited edition signed print.

Continuing my very own “Bucharest Festival of Lines 2016”, in a similar environment. This time I’ve installed myself at the bottom of an underground metro station entrance, and waited for my subject. It was already late in the afternoon, the sun had already started to set for a few tens of minutes. This way, I could capture the difference of light between the dark inside and the shinier outside, but without a too large difference in light quantity. Unlike in a previous photo of mine, Stairway to…, I didn’t want to have a high contrast between the inside and the outside, so I needed to wait for the right time to get the right amount of light. As I’ve already said, preparing and owning the scene are very important!

Next to that, I had 3 goals for this photo. First of all, I wanted to get lines. Recurrent readers know that I love lines 🙂 Look at all those diagonals! It’s a heaven for me, it makes the photo so graphical and so dynamic in the same time. Second, it’s a scene with a lot of textures. There is this stone wall, the battled metal of the electric stairs, the steps, all of them have their own texture that I wanted to be very visible. That is why lightning was important for me, avoiding to have a too strong contrast. Lastly, I wanted to anonymise my subject. People are often only an element of the urban landscape, and she definitively is only an accessory to the real subject here, the stairs. All of that gives a punchy photo that I really like. And I hope you like it too, don’t hesitate to give me your feeling in the comments below!

Do you like this photo? Click here and get an original, signed print in limited edition!

EXIFs:

  • Camera:Fujifilm X100T
  • Aperture: ƒ/5.6
  • Focale: 23mm
  • Shutter speed: 1/250s
  • ISO: 800
  • Copyright: Pierre Pichot 2016, all rights reserved
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Tag Archive for: urban