Project 12

This was going to be a tough one, living in a city distant horizons are non-existent.  Even if I had the time and facility to head out into the countryside, the surroundings of Munich are mostly either hills or woods, horizon lines are rare.  From many trips to the tropics I have had plenty of time to experiment with placing the horizon, trying to balance reef, sun , and sea.  However, for this course a horizon needed to be found in the city.  I had two ideas, first to use an artificial horizon created by buildings and then use a road to provide a foreground without too much clutter.

The following sequence was taken from a traffic island in the middle of Ludwig Strasse looking north and taking in the buildings of the University

The second image in this sequence with the high horizon is the most striking.  However, at 17mm the foreground is far too prominent and the buildings too small, this would have worked better with an intermediate telephoto around 100mm.

The second sequence is from a bridge on the Isar river, the horizon being provided by a bridge downstream:

In this case the final image in the sequence works best, but I cannot say I am happy with the exposures or the green colour caste, naturally formed as the water is very green with algae this late in the year.

In both cases the images lack foreground detail to compensate for the lack of detail in the background.  In both cases the horizon works best either low or high.

To finish this project, I would like to provide a few images taken during my vacation in August, each using the horizon as a prominent element in the composition.  The first is a very simple image, a study of the colours of the sea and sand.  I have placed the horizon more or according to the rule of thirds:

The next image pushes the horizon close to the bottom of the image, emphasizing the threatening nature of the incoming storm:

Alternatively, in the next image I have pushed the horizon up to the top of the image.  In this case I could have composed without the horizon, however, it acts to emphasize the loneliness of the subject in the vastness of the ocean:

Finally, on a rare day when the wind stopped blowing and we could see the Sun, this early morning image places the horizon at the centre balancing the light of the Sun and the reflection in the water, but taking away any drama from the image: