Yesterday i was exploring Berlin with a good friend.
It was a wonderful sunny day. One of the finest days of this summer despite the weather of the last couple of weeks.
Going back home i took the bus from main station to my little suburb.
This route shows a really nice part of Berlin.
You pass some of the administration buildings. Like the former east meets the former west.
The bus serves the middle class of Frohnau as well, as the blue-collar neighborhood of Wedding.
Close to the Ministry of Traffic i was smitten.
On the right the ministry building, granite slabs on the stairs, posh entrance made of glass. Very high classed.
Left side of the street, close to an apartment building. You could see the meadow from the ministry, and there it was: laundry on a clothes line: White bed sheets streaming.
This could only happen in the middle of Berlin.
These complements make life so exciting. It really spices living up.
And I have found the subject of the day
contrastive pairs
East – West
Old – Young
Warm – Cold
Politics –Citizens
White Collar – Blue Collar
Keeping this in mind, people would talk about contrasts.
Contrast is a word of Latin origin. It includes the words contra = contrary to; against and stare = to stand – so contrast is a “standing against” – roughly translated. I just had to realize that English is sometimes not very far away from Latin. Contra and contrary are so much alike.
Anyway contrast leads again to our contrastive pairs.
Contrast is very important in photography, you want your pictures looking brilliant.
And to be brilliant they need the right amount of contrast, which is the difference between the lightest dot of a photo (usually white) and the darkest dot (usually black).
If the difference is not big enough pictures tend to look a bit dull, not really blurred, but flat and low or poor in contrast.