Shadows – Spotted Photo Challenge

I have been looking forward to the spotted photo challenge Hanna has announced back in November. The first theme I was all in and had multiple photos in mind to share. But then reading through Hannas post made me stop and I had to rethink. Hanna is totally right – shadows are something different than light. My selection of photos was all shadows & lights. That got me thinking and I went back to the archive and started focusing more on shadows and less on light. I did find better fitting photos to share today that focus much more on shadows. I just hope light will be another theme because I do have some lovely photos in my archive. But let’s dive into the shadows for now. I decided to tell you a bit about where the photo has been taken.

Shadow Play on House Wall – Header Image

This is the wall of the house across the street from where the husband and I lived for 16 years. It has been our first apartment. We lived on the 4th floor. During spring and autumn the streetlights threw the most whimsical shadows of the growing trees on the wall. I spent a few hours capturing the magic but as always I didn’t quite manage to.

photo taken November 8th, 2019 in Berlin Friedrichshain

Shadows in Copenhagen

This was a wonderful vacation – short but wonderful – we took in Copenhagen that year. We fell in love with the city and immediately looked into buying an apartment in the new harbor area. Of course it was more a dream than a realistic option. Cities with water are just the best. Instant happiness. Instant relaxation. This shadow play is from a bike stand.

photo taken May 7th, 2019 in Copenhagen

Shadows in the Christian Garden

This installation is part of the “Gärten der Welt” a park in one of the outer parts of Berlin. The name meaning gardens of the world and it features gardens from all over the world (duh). They bring in landscapers from the respective countries to design a typical garden of their home country. You can enjoy a stroll through a Balinese, Japanese, Chinese, English, Italian Renaissance, Korean, Oriental-Islamic garden. There is a Jewish garden which seems to be new as I have not seen it. This image was taken in the Christian garden. It features words of the Bible that are combined in these dividers. In this park I took one of my very first photo classes at the community college (early 2000). I shot with my dad’s old analogue Practica camera and unfortunately the roll of film was not transported. So I do not have any images. I went back later on my own and I think I have been there three or four times. I think I need to plan a trip to this place again. It is always worth a visit.

photo taken August 23rd, 2014 in Berlin Gärten der Welt

Curated Shadows

This photo was created as part of my 100 day project back in 2019 when I did a photo a day. Every week I would pick a topic from a jar and then a daily prompt to learn more about my camera. This week’s topic was “Lights&Shadows” and the daily prompt was “camera hack”. The original plan was to use a sieve to create shadows. Unfortunately my sieve didn’t cast strong enough shadows and so I ended up using the baby breath twig to create the shadow. I didn’t have too much time experimenting as the ice cream started to melt.

photo taken April 24th, 2019 in Berlin Friedrichshain, balcony of my apartment

Canadian Shadows

In 2012 we had a 3.5 week vacation. We spent the first ten days in Vancouver. Besides vacationing we also had two other half hearted goals with this stay. First we wanted to check if we could imagine getting married here (half the family is based in the Dominican so we figured it would be half way and Canada has snow) and the second part was if we could imagine moving to Canada/Vancouver. At the beginning we were disappointed to be honest. It all looked shabby somehow. I can’t really explain it. It was so loud – our airbnb was across a major building site which might have had to do with this impression. And gosh… Canada is expensive. But by the time we had to leave we had fallen in love and always wanted to come back. However, we decided to not get married here because a) prices b) research showed Vancouver hardly gets any snow. Our travels then took us down to Seattle by train for a few days before we flew to Idaho for a wedding. We ended the trip with a week in New York.

photo taken July 25th, 2012 in Vancouver, English Bay

Winter Shadows

I am in love with winter light and this was one didn’t disappoint on Christmas Eve casting the best shadows too. My dad was just in the midst of preparing dinner when we arrived. It is always a big happening. He is throwing around flour like no tomorrow and working up a sweat kneading the dough. It is all part of the tradition and makes me feel homey and takes me one step closer to the peak of the holiday.

photo taken Christmas Eve December 24th, 2019 in the country home

Without planning to I have picked most images from 2019. Interesting. In recent years I have not done a lot of personal photography so this may be the reason. And some of my images prior are not up to my standards of aesthetic anymore. I am my worst critic. Or I wasn’t paying too much attention to the shadows. We never know.

Do you prefer shadows or light? What is your favorite photo from this lot? Have you visited any of the places these photos have been created?