I enjoy doing high-contrast, gritty urban landscapes, especially this time of year when the overcast skies and denuded trees make it easy to render the city in harsh tones. I think it was after seeing pictures by Bill Brandt, Ralf Gibson (to a lesser extent) and later Michael Akerman that I thought that the high-contrast gritty look had something to offer me.

It’s a style I like a lot and use often with urban landscapes.

For some the look is a little too bleak as it’s more often than not employed to show the harshness of living in economically deprived areas, whereas this is Old Town Spandau, which is really a nice part of the world with a Christmas Market that went up yesterday being well worth a visit.

 

28-300mm, f5.6, 1/250 sec, ISO250