Like A Harp’s Strings II – Harmony – Calatrava Bridge Athens

Like A Harp’s Strings II – Harmony

Katechaki Pedestrian Bridge, Athens – design by Santiago Calatrava

AWARD-WINNING IMAGE

– SWPA 2013 – Sony – World Photography Awards – Finalist Top 10 Shortlist

– IPA 2012 –  International Photography Awards – Honorable Mention

“…and tears are heard within the harp I touch” – Petrarch

I thought this image was going to be easy to process. I thought I knew what I wanted to do with it and expected its editing to go like a breeze. Wrong! I was so wrong! It was eventually one of those images that turn out to be a total mystery once you sit down and start processing them. You think you know what you want, but this ends the moment you open it and see it on your screen.

The only thing I knew was that this is the composition I want, but there my certainty ended. I had to sit there and stare at it for hours asking myself a hundred times: “what do you want to do here? What do you really want?”. I had to do and undo things a couple of times, close the computer and open it later, go for a walk and come back again to try some more, even decide to leave it for another time, because nothing I was doing was what I really wanted.

Then, at some point and out of a sudden it struck me. And everything became clear: I had to draw it. Yes, exactly, just draw it. Simply imagine that I have a pencil in my hand and all I have to do is just draw everything the way I’d do on paper. And then everything came so easy and so smooth, that I wonder how could I not see it from the first moment…

Have you ever “drawn” your photographs?

This is the second or third I’m posting of the same bridge and it’s actually funny because I’ve shot this bridge a few times, but none of the times by day, despite the fact that I had planned a few times to go there by day, but for different reasons (lack of time, weather not collaborating) never seemed to be able to succeed it. So, a day shot it’s still on my “to do” list.