I’m happiest in a city - the bigger, the better. Guangzhou, which I currently call home, is a city of 16 - 18 million people (depending on which source you consult), so it works for me. From time to time, I do venture away from urban streets into the countryside and on a rare occasion I have a bash at landscapes. I don’t put the resulting images on my website, nor do I print them. So, I thought I would dust off my meagre collection and post some of them here. For this first post I’ve picked out three with a common theme - a body of water, a low horizon and a big sky.
I arrived in Munich in 2008 with my first serious digital camera, a Sony A200. This first picture was taken with my A200 from the northernmost point of Ammersee, one of five lakes that make up the Fünfseenland which is easily accessible from Munich via the S-Bahn. My first trip was not so much to see the lake but to visit the town of Andechs just east of the lake and the terminus of the S-Bahn, where there is a lovely little monastery brewery run by the Benedictine Order.
On later trips I walked some of the trails that circle the lake, and on this particular day, in November of 2008 in the mid to late afternoon, the view over Ammersee and to the Bavarian Alps beyond was washed with a beautiful blue light. I subsequently discovered that the region is known as Das Blaue Land - The Blue Country. This description of the landscape came from Franz Marc, the best known of the German Expressionists who hailed from Munich. Marc was part of Der Blaue Reiter movement, together with Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and others. The movement originated with Kandinsky, Münter, Alexej Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin in the small town of Murnau, which lies just twenty miles south of Ammersee. On an afternoon like this one in November 2008 it was easy to see why the area inspired artists.
A seascape rather than a landscape strictly speaking, or perhaps a skyscape, this is Manila Bay. I took this on a late January afternoon, around 5pm, and I find the warm, golden light a wonderful contrast - or perhaps complement - to the cool, silvery blue light of the previous image. This picture, I should add, is only very lightly processed - no saturation adjustments, no colour adjustments of any kind. This is what a Manila Bay sunset looks like. I lived near the bay and spectacular sunsets were so common we hardly noticed, though many people came regularly to the bay front to watch the sun go down. On this occasion the sunset was even more striking than usual because of the presence and pattern of the clouds, and the gap where the blue sky shows through.
There is just one sliver of land resting on the horizon on the left-hand side of the image. This, I believe, is Mount Mariveles on the far side of the bay. The ships to the right are lined up outside the Port of Manila waiting their turn to load or unload their cargo. I did wonder if the ships’ crews ever took a moment to admire the view or if they had seen it too often to care.
Finally, for now, Jökulsárlón glacier lake. The lake is on the south-east coast of Iceland and was formed when Breiðamerkurjökull glacier, which once reached to the sea, began to retreat inland. Icebergs, some up to 100 feet in height break off the glacier and float in the lake, before eventually reaching the sea.
The wind and water carve the icebergs into these complex shapes as they slowly melt, while the colours and patterns in the ice reflect the climate and volcanic activity at the time the ice was originally laid down in the glacier.
The lake is stunning, yet there were relatively few people there, despite this being one of Iceland’s key tourist attractions. Despite the many photographs I took, none of them came close to doing it justice, but this is one of the better ones I managed.
Out of my comfort zone is most likely the other way around ;-) The largest city nearby where I live has about 125k people, and that's more than enough for me.
16-18 million! that's more than many countries, how wild!