There are so many open spaces and big squares in Zaragoza. Moreover, it’s not overcrowded, and you can find really nice angles and perspective for photographing panoramic views. The architecture of El Pilar Basilica in Zaragoza, as well as the oriental style of the city, makes you feel like in a 1001-night story but in Spain.
I find tilt-shift photography especially efficient on photo images as this one because it lets your eyes lay on the background, recognizing the City Hall, the Cathedral, the TV Tower in Berlin and also the Park Inn by Radisson Hotel on the right. In other words, it gives you the essence of the city, captured in one picture.
First, I photographed the background – I captured the sun just before it went down and at the same time when the clouds were amazingly illuminated from the below. Then, half an hour later, I photographed the foreground, by shooting 7 – 8 images. At the end I used the Time Blend effect to combine images of the Storkower Straße in Berlin, taken at a different time, into a single picture.
Being a symbol not only of the city but also of the state, Gediminas’ Tower is mentioned in traditional Lithuanian poems and songs. It all started with the Grand Duke of Lithuania – Gediminas, who had a dream, hinting that he should start building a city in this place. First, he erected wooden fortifications, which later were turned into construction, made of bricks.
In ancient times on the place of the White Tower there has been a Byzantine fortification. In the 15th century, when the city fell under Ottoman Rule, the construction has been used as a prison and also as a place for mass executions, which explains why its name was ‘The Red Tower’ then. As soon as the Greeks were free from the Ottoman Rule in the beginning of the 20th century, they whitened the construction and gave it the name “The White Tower”, as a symbolic purification from the burden of the past.
