This hometown of mine is not the prettiest place on earth
the towns around here are pretty ugly
the architecture is all over the place
but the landscapes are very beautiful
And this is what we are doing to them
This fire happened only a few days ago
You can still smell it, it smells like burnt
Luckily, no one got hurt
but everything around here is burnt
everything but a few things
as I said, this happened 10 to 15 days ago
and you can already see new trash
you know it's new trash because it's not burnt
So yeah, it's very sad to see these things happening
I've been coming here for the last few days because I want to document this
I want to create images here
It's almost like documenting the destruction of my hometown little by little
Today, I'm back here because of the fog
I think it creates an incredible atmosphere
When I woke up this morning, it was so foggy
I rushed out of the door, I went up to the castle that is
pretty close to the apartment where we are
hoping to photograph that fog and those old streets with the lights
but they turn them off very early
I might have made a couple images
The problem was that my camera gear wasn't ready this morning
because I was photographing a storm last night
that storm was what created this atmosphere this morning
I tried to capture some lightning but I wasn't that successful
what I'm gonna be doing now and while this fog lasts
is to photograph this burnt forest, not always an easy task in black and white
but hopefully, I'll be able to make a few good images this morning
So yeah, let's do it
The Sun is rising and the fog is clearing up
I really can't see many more images around here
As I said at the beginning, this is a hard place because everything is dark
and you need that contrast for black and white
that's why I wanted to come here this morning
because of the fog and the contrast between that white
atmosphere and the black landscape
Otherwise I had to look for trees that were partially burnt
not completely burnt, or had some mushrooms or some brighter stuff attached to them
Other things I found around here creating that contrast were spider webs and snail corpses
This is like a snail graveyard, there are hundreds of them around here
and the shell when it burns it becomes white
So it creates that contrast with the dark soil
They don't make for great images but it's just an example of that contrast I was looking for
Now, I'm going to walk to a nearby town, pretty close to here
It got a little bit affected by the fire, nothing bad happened, as I said
but there are some dead trees around there next to the buildings
So I'm hoping to find some cool scenes, who knows?
Okay, so this is going to do it for today
The one last thing I wanted to mention is that to make most of my images here
I was using rather long lenses, either the 30mm Sigma or the 56mm also Sigma
I've been finding myself using prime lenses more and more often lately
My zoom lens stays in the bag
This is a trend that started in Chicago and Washington DC
I kept using them in New York and Amsterdam, and it looks like here as well
I'm going to head back down now, I'm going to head back home
because I wasn't expecting to be out this morning making any images
and I wasn't ready, as you can see. I didn't have any breakfast
It's already 11am, I'm a little bit hungry
I hope for this video to be a little reminder that we can find beauty everywhere, even in destruction
and we can always, always, make an image no matter what
I hope you enjoyed it
Thank you so much for watching and see you in the next one