An occasional Photo Blog
Yesterday, as part of the ‘Around the Edge‘ project, we decided to spend a few hours in Geneva.
The city is quite large, and in just a few hours we could only hope to scrape the surface. But we did manage to have lunch, drink a coffee, capture the material I wanted for the project and even take a photo with my smartphone just for fun. I used Snapseed to develop the image and gave it a contrasty, dramatic look because I thought the original colour photo looked a bit drab.
During my stroll about town last weekend I captured these images of Winterthur’s railway station. There has been a ‘main’ railway station in Winterthur since 1855, but it wasn’t until the mid 1890s that it achieved its current form. As with most larger railway stations of that time, a certain grandeur is apparent.
Nowadays most railway stations of any size seem to have there own shopping centre. Winterthur is no exception and at the turn of this century ‘Stadttor’ was built, providing the station with a light, friendly shopping area.
Train stations also usually have a bus station not far away, and as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago (Taj Mahal) the bus station roof is perhaps not one of the prettiest constructions ever made.
Holidi has been laying under the trees in Winterthur’s ‘Graben’ for about 20 years. The 10 metre long wooden sculpture is very popular with the locals, but is unfortunately slowly rotting away. Although children do still climb about on him, his state of decay is causing safety issues, and so he will be moved… to a cemetery.
Thoroughly enjoying my stroll through the town last Saturday morning, I decided to repeat the exercise this morning and was pleased to see that Holidi was still reclining gracefully under the trees. Just a couple of streets away the Saturday market was buzzing with people, but at 8.30am the place where Holidi lives was still very much asleep.
It’s difficult to imagine that in 1980 these trees and restaurant tables were simply car parking spaces. (above)
Despite another thirty degrees summers day, Autumn is beginning to make its presence felt and is surely just a cold front away.(below)
Not only did I stroll around the town’s railway station last Saturday morning, I also ventured off into the town centre. Before the day warms up the place is just littered with empty chairs. During the day the Cafés begin to fill up of course, and during a balmy summer evening there will most certainly be not a free seat for miles.
Busy enjoying the long, sleepy days of summer I tended to neglect Vic’s Blog recently, but with the mornings becoming decidedly cooler, I thought it would be nice to go for a stroll with the camera once again. Wanting to avoid all the Saturday shoppers, I took the half past eight train into town and wandered aimlessly through the pleasantly empty streets.
The railway station is currently being built, changed and improved, and I stumbled across this temporary pedestrian walkway upon leaving the rear of the station.
There are still some magnificent old buildings around this part of town, let’s hope nobody decides to build yet another shopping centre.
I’m sure the back of the station will be wonderful when it’s all finished.
The front of the station was modernised a few years ago, providing the station with nice new shops (the white building on the right). Then the bus station was revamped, and the somewhat tired bus shelters were replaced with this, a large modern construction regarded by many as an engineering masterpiece, which I’m sure it is. It has 180’000 holes in it, providing a light and friendly atmosphere, which I’m sure it does. But somehow I just can’t get to like it at all. Although undoubtedly both artistically and technically a fascinating building… in my very humble opinion it’s in the wrong place. The once inviting entrance to the nearby department store has been plunged into eternal shadow.
The thing is simply in the way…
as if someone had plonked a large dustbin in front of the Taj Mahal.
During the last several weeks it would have been easy enough to capture sun drenched images of ice cream licking, sun bathing folks quenching their thirsts with anything wet whilst enjoying the hot lazy days this summer has brought us. However, taking photos of people is not really my thing, so after waiting for a group of sweating tourists to fill their water bottles, it was the birds I pointed my lens at.
There’s nothing quite like having a weeks holiday when the sun is shining. The heatwave is now entereing yet another week (I’m not complaining!) and the few days spent travelling for the ‘Around the Edge’ project were quite fantastic. I’m now working ‘intensely’ on the project, and hope to publish (at least parts of it) on the site quite soon. I was quite taken with the yellow parasols often found in cafés and restaurants, and although cooler indoors, we were determined to get the most of the good weather.
No of course it isn’t, but it’s been well over 30 degrees for about a week and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed doing very little. Laying about on the lawn (too hot and lazy to go out and photgraph) gave me ample opportunity to explore the delights of not only the smartphone’s camera but also the photo app ‘Snapseed’. It’s certainly different working with a very small screen, but quite fun nevertheless.
This image of Zurich’s main railway station is not only my very first attempt at developing with an app, but also my very first post directly from the phone.
Being a nice hot Sunday afternoon I decided to give the sun a nice starry effect by using a very small aperture (not post production), then a stroll through some nice secluded, shady alleys.
I’ve seen it a few times on the TV adverts, but up close Coke’s big red lorry really is quite impressive. Standing in the main railway station’s hall this evening the Coca Cola lorry was drawing considerable crowds… well perhaps not crowds, but there were several people milling about. Thank heavens for the smartphone.
