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Hotel and pylon #1

Alpine hotel and cablecar pylon at night, Schladming, Austria

The story behind this image

What do you do when there's a great ugly cable car pylon in the middle of your shot? - Make it a feature of course!

This is ostensibly a photo of the hotel that Liz and I were staying in during our holiday in Schladming, Austria last summer.

I'd just finished photographing the town at twilight and was walking back for a nice cup of coffee when I thought 'just one more'. It was such a lovely night and I didn't want to waste the opportunity for a photo as normally evenings here were spent under a cloud (literally, not metaphorically).

What to do with this enoromous great pylon though? I tried setting up just beyond it so it wasn't in the frame, but I just wasn't happy with the result as having just the hotel in the shot was quite boring really.

In the end I decided that, if the pylon was going to be in the scene, then it would make a significant contribution, so I ended up using it to frame the hotel and to break up the vast expeanse of featureless sky.

In the end, I'm rather glad it was there, but it took a bit of effort on my part to fully appreciate this steel tube stuck in the middle of a beautiful scene.

Image data


Filename - hotel pylon 01.jpg

Camera - Canon 5D

Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 90mm

Exposure - 25secs @ f11, ISO100

Location - Schladming, Austria

This image - 533x800px JPEG

Conversion - ACR & PS-CS2

Comments - Tripod, mirror lockup and cable release used to prevent camera movement.