The Old City Walls

One of the joys of Dubrovnik, apart from the scenery, are the amazing textures in the walls. (“Wow”, we hear you say. “Walls! You need more excitement in your life!” Just you wait. We haven’t even started to extol the virtues of the roofs of Dubrovnik yet!)

 

Dubrovnik City Roofs

Dubrovnik City Roofs with beautiful colours and textures

 

Our day on the city walls was slightly overcast with a tiny bit of blue sky. Initially this might seem a bit of a downer but in fact it made making images a lot easier because we didn’t have to worry about bright sunlight and harsh shadows. Of course, sometimes hard light can give you beautiful textures on walls, but we’ve compensated for this in post-production by intensifying the micro-contrast in RAW, known as Clarity.

 

The Old city walls with old harbour

Dubrovnik City Walls from Fort Lovrijenac

 

Starting from the Pile Gate entrance (pronounced Peelar and is the main entrance to the Old City) , we walked up and even though we’d spent a few days looking at the buildings, it was jaw-droppingly spectacular from this new angle. There is just so much to photograph, but you need to be aware every time you make a new image, of your composition, because it’s so easy to get distracted by the beautiful architecture and then you just end up recording the scene. The first half is undoubtedly the best. Being able to look down onto “King’s Landing Harbour” with part of the wall in the foreground, adding depth to the scene produces some spectacular images.

 

dubrovnik city walls

Dubrovnik City Walls

 

There are a number of cafés and toilets along the top where you can stop for ice creams and coffees etc. We really enjoyed photographing the oubliettes and produced some incredibly interesting and surreal images from these. For a slightly different view, so you don’t keep getting the wall in your shots, Tim ended up holding the camera high above his head, having first focussed and checked exposure, using the angled viewing screen on his Sony to compose the shot. This works particularly well on Tim’s Sony with an adjustable back screen, but is a bit more hit and miss with my fixed screen Nikon.

 

Using the swivel screen for a higher vantage point

Using the swivel screen for a higher vantage point 

 

This is quite difficult because of the bright light and would have been worse had it been sunny. NB: A lot of mirrorless and DSLR cameras have the ability to transmit the live image to an iPhone or iPad and this can be useful in these sort of situations, where one of you photographs and the other directs from the tablet screen.

 

On one afternoon as we were sitting for a rest, just outside the Pile Gate, Tim thought he’d drop his Zeiss lens onto concrete. It rolled into a gutter of the same diameter, narrowly missing falling through the gutter and out the other side and plummeting down 2 storeys. Phew!

 

Pile Gate

 

Pile Gate

Pile Gate

Cable Car

Some great images can be recorded from the top of the mountain, looking down onto the Old City. To do this, you need a trip up in the cable car. Sadly we did this on the only day it rained. But as it was our last day, we still managed a romantic meal in the Panorama restaurant looking down over the town as the lights came on and illuminated it all. Romance 8. Photography 1!

No Comments

Post A Comment