Day 41: Pub Tunnel Lighting

2026-03-19

First, a correction.

On a previous article, I took a picture of a fire escape that didn't quite go to the ground. I thought this was dangerous.

After looking further into this, the counter-balanced stairs are probably fine, so long as they're maintained and cared for. And if your outdoor clearance is limited, these might actually be an advantage. I'd imagine they're spring-loaded and can be deployed quickly, but that's just speculation.

Hello!

When I run out of creative ideas or find myself in a rut like yesterday, I try taking photos of the same item from different angles. This is a fairly simple creative exercise that you could try.

For example, I have a bowl of apples at home. I've taken a photo of the apples from above and from the side. I have separated the apples and gotten angles from each of them. I stack them (to the best of my ability) or just take a photo of the bowl itself. There's loads of possibilities. At least five.

Outdoors, there's more exciting subjects than a bowl of apples. But if a mountain or a pair of bald eagles don't show up right outside your backyard, you can still take those creative angles and apply them to boring subjects.

Like this example. I could have taken a picture of the clouds or something, but I wanted to take something boring and take a picture of it from an interesting angle. This is also another example of leading lines, where the frames of the window panes lead your eye to the lamp.

In editing, I made the far left of the frame darker and kept the outside at a reasonable brightness — not too bright to be distracting, but bright enough to create a general gradient from dark to light, left to right.

Sure, it's not a great photo. I could make changes here and there, and optimize to a "perfect" image, but that's not my style; if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a bike. I get to be experimental on this here website, and so I went and made it monochrome. There are a dozen reasons why monochrome photos can be appropriate, but I did it to simplify.

It also looks cool. I found this monochrome timelapse of the Swiss Alps, taken on the exact same model of camera that I have. And it's simple. Park the camera somewhere amazing, and watch the clouds roll in.

Finally, another web game? This time, to test your color perception. (If you have more stuff on the Internet you want people to know about, please contact me!)

Cheers,
David