Fun With Cameras IX
Of Colors & Silhouettes
The next running video that I’ve promised for a while now should finally materialize this upcoming weekend. But before I can invite you once again to see how my marathon endeavors went earlier during this whirlwind of a year, it’s time for pictures fresh out of the digital darkroom.
The weather hasn’t been too kind these past few weeks. Between weather escapades and life happening, however, I squeezed in a couple of photowalks.
My goals were simple. Explore a little closer to home. Make new discoveries. Capture the beauty of the fall season before it’s all gone. Have fun.
The destinations I picked are in the northern parts of the city of Oberhausen. That’s largely unfamiliar (or at least not too familiar) territory to me. There’s also plenty of nature to comb through.
I’ve curated the pictures for this post in six chapters that, mostly, follow the locational structure of the two walks I made this past November.
The first location wasn’t planned. I stepped off the tram. Set off east toward a small woodland area. Instead of following the traffic, I turned into a little footpath. And saw a church, some grasses, and lots of trees. There’s also a bonus picture from this area at the end of the post. But for now, here are the first seven signs of colors.
I’ve written most of my thoughts and observations in these text parts this time. Any additional context can, as always, be found in the captions. And you can enlarge the smaller pictures by clicking on them.
The end of the footpath from above connects right to the second location. I had noticed the little nature reserve called Reinersbach on my first walk and filed it for the second walk. Days are short at this time of year.
When weather and time finally allowed me to return, my goal had been to walk to the final destination of the walk (next chapter), look for pictures along the way, and cover this little gem on the way back.
But the light was so beautiful, I couldn’t resist exploring this colorful nature reserve first. And I was right in doing so. When I walked back, the light had gone and the colors had fallen mute.
I’m still a little puzzled about this place, though. There are information signs like the one in the first picture below that speak about the protective nature of the retreat. They don’t prohibit one from continuing one’s exploration but ask to be considerate. Whatever the posters mean by asking for the public’s “participation,” I stopped at the signs, captured the scene, and explored the remaining parts.
What I meant with the muted colors earlier, you can see in the first two pictures below. About 70 minutes after my initial visit, the scenery had changed. The fire, the pop had been extinguished together with the sun. I still liked what reached my eyes, though.
But a few minutes before those two pictures, I saw the third scene below. You know the church from the first set of pictures. I saw it silhouetted with the dying sun next to it, got low to the ground, and tried to frame it all up with the trees and shrubs as foreground interest (and a moderately successful sunstar — while the 35 is one of my favorite lenses, my much older 50 is more capable in that department).
Chapter three brings us to the main location for the second walk. I had found the small woodland area called Sterkrader Heide while browsing maps. What lured me wasn’t only the potential for some fall colors but the vantage point for the waste tip Halde Haniel.
It took me a while to find a decent access point because what looks straightforward on a map sometimes “hides” itself in a residential area.
I wasn’t thrilled about the waste tip views. I had visualized this a bit more grand for some reason. But I found a peaceful landscape, muted but beautiful colors, and even some distant human activity.
As a quick side note: the woodland area is located in the city of Oberhausen. But the waste tip lies within the borders of the city of Bottrop. The location information in the captions is based on what is shown in the pictures.
Chapter 4 brings us back to the first walk. The small valley Alsbachtal is only a short walk from the Reinersbachtal. The five pictures below are the reason I pushed the latter to the second outing.
The light wasn’t great. I struggled with squeezing what I saw into individual frames. The quiet, leaves-covered path comes close to what I had been visualizing.
Switching to a longer (macro) lens helped a bit. It’s a beautiful part of town, but it’s not necessarily all photogenic. It’s visually messy — for the lack of a better word.
The close-up of the three yellow leaves I find more pleasing than many of the frames I made.
I noticed that one tree in the picture that’s in portrait orientation and how it was separating just a wee-bit from the rest of the red and yellow mishmash. The longer lens punctuated that separation a bit more. I’m not thrilled about the frame.
But it had to do. I had some colors on the cards. Some new paths had been explored. And the light had gone. More of the latter (and in more exciting qualities) would surely have helped.
At this point, I hadn’t hoped to advance to chapter five. Because the location lay on the way back to the tram anyway, I could at least still include it in the walk.
Almost lost in thoughts, I walked past the tree in the second picture below. It was the entrance path to the park Volkspark (or shortly before the park officially begins).
The sun was setting behind the clouds. The colors were muted, but I reacted to the simplicity of the fall foliage against the darkening sky. The clouds had received some texture. The visual chaos from before had calmed.
And to the boombox blaring of a local St. Martin’s parade, I arrived at the pond in the center of the park. And the sky suddenly did its wondrous thing that I so love about the darker parts of the year.
I sadly was in the worst location to capture the sunset/post-sunset skies over Oberhausen that day. I saw the potential pictures floating past me while looking out the tram windows.
But at least I froze a little bit of it behind the pond a few minutes earlier (paired with a slight hind of wildlife in two of the frames). I’m not a big tripod fan, but I wish I’d have one with me, for it would have opened a new layer of opportunities for this scene.
Finally, the bonus scene I was promising earlier. The footpath I used to access the Reinersbachtal crosses over an autobahn. It was on that bridge, at the end of the second walk, that I was stopped by another silhouette paired with a small pop of color.
Modern photographic opportunities make such silhouettes unnecessary. But just because something is possible doesn’t mean it has to be done. The parts hidden in a scene are sometimes as important as the parts seen.
My initial reaction was to favor the first of the three pictures below. The deeper I went into the editing process, the more that view shifted.
So much for my fall explorations. I have more locations on my list. The weather (and time) isn’t making it easy to head out at the moment. That means, when I do get out eventually, it’s going to be more wintry than in November.
But before new pictures are going to materialize, the third episode of my running video series “Of Miles & Minutes” is on the schedule. It’s coming.
