Today it’s the fifth anniversary of this Blog, i.e. five years to the day since the very first post appeared here. To mark this occasion, I’ve selected five of my favourite photos ever to have featured on the Blog (and made sure none of those featured in the Blog post on the first anniversary four years ago are repeated). For the new poll, scroll to the bottom …
I’m particularly fond of this first photo, taken from the Blog post about the ghost town of Pomona in Namibia: it shows an oryx skull in the desert sands with very sharp shadows replicating the distinctive shape, especially of the horns:
The next photo featured shortly after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 (which I marked with this post), namely on 8 March, also commemorating International Women’s Day, and I also used it again as the featured image for the post on the 1st anniversary of the start of the war.
The statue in the background is the giant Rodina Mat in Kyiv, and the guns in the foreground are part of the war memorial complex around her – commemorating WWII, rather than the current war, of course. The image is basically a play with perspective, making the guns appear gigantic, while the actually much larger statue (over 100m tall with the pedestal) appears smaller. I found that evocative of the situation for Ukraine – under threat.
The next photo was taken from a Blog post about Budapest and shows the “Shot into the Danube” monument on the river’s bank near the parliament building, marking the arrival of the Holocaust in Hungary relatively late in WWII when the Nazis took over in 1944:
The monument consists of a row of life-size empty shoe replicas made of metal and affixed to the stone below. Given what they stand for I found this monument a very poignant one. And the photo tries to emphasize this through the application of what’s called ‘bokeh’ in photography, i.e. a sharp focus on just one element with others outside the focal point appearing blurred out of focus. It kind of “pulls” the viewer to the element in focus, in this case that first pair of women’s shoes in the foreground at the bottom of the frame.
The next image appeared in October last year as the featured photo for a post about Hiroshima marking the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the Japanese confederation of A-bomb survivors.
The photo shows the extremely iconic “A-Bomb Dome” (so iconic it can be considered dark tourism’s equivalent of the Eiffel Tower), a ruin left as a memorial in Hiroshima. Here the photo is composed so as to feature the golden sun just above the horizon shining through one of the ruin’s missing windows, while the hulk of the building appears as a mere silhouette.
Finally, the fifth photo to feature here was picked from the themed blog post “DT and Reflections” and was taken at the Marienborn memorial site on the former border between the GDR (East Germany) and the FRG (West Germany).
For this image I applied an effect called ‘colour extraction’, here set to red, so that only the rusty frame of the mirror appears in colour while the rest of the image is in black and white. I apply such electronic effects only rarely but in this case I thought it really has a very agreeable, atmosphere-enhancing quality.
And there we have it, the five photos selected to mark this Blog’s fifth anniversary.
Now for the new poll, reviving that tradition of getting readers involved in choosing a Blog post’s topic, most recently used at the end of November of last year, namely at the bottom of this post (and yielding this winning theme).
This time around I give you these four themes to choose from (all beginning with <s>):
A) dark tourism and shadows
B) dark tourism and shoes
C) dark tourism and skulls
D) dark tourism and stairs
.
As usual, please cast your vote by stating your choice in a comment below this post, or, if you are a subscriber to the DT Newsletter (if not yet: see the box on the right above for signing up), you can also send a reply by email to the associated Newsletter sent out today.
UPDATE 16/06/2025: this poll is now closed and the winning theme, DT & Shadows, has been posted!
26 responses
Skulls please Peter
thanks, noted!
Skulls please. Happy Anniversary!
many thanks!
and your vote has been noted!
Skulls. Don’t know what happened the first time. :). I always look forward to your blogs. Thanks
thanks. Your vote has been noted – don’t worry about that first empty comment, I’ll just delete it
Skull please
noted! And it will be several skulls (provided the theme does win in the end).
Shoes for me please!
noted!
The shot of the shoes by the Danube is very, very evocative. Has always been thus from the first time you posted it. So for me it’s shoes Peter
thanks! Your vote’s been noted.
Notwithstanding the darkness of Kyiv’s Rodina-Mat and the gun barrels, the shoes by the Danube wins this one for me.
can I take this as a vote for the shoes theme then?
I was going to vote “shadows”, out of curiosity. Would you be going to just display dark tourism photos that show some shadow, or would the theme be more philosophical about the shadowy side of some developments.
Anyway, I already counted many Skull-votes, and I also agree that the shoes photo in Budapest is very powerful.
‘shadows’ in the more metaphorical/philosophical sense would apply to most of dark tourism (remember that conference I attended called “visiting the shadows”), so that would be too all-encompassing. Hence my shadows theme would take it more literally, actual shadows at places with a dark connection … and evocative appeal in many cases. Like those shoes in Budapest. I shall count your comment as a double vote then, both shadows and shoes 😉
happy anniversary.
they are all interesting.
for me shadows please. I am very curious.
thanks! Your vote has been noted.
shadows!
noted!
Congrats on the 5 years of blog posts! As for the vote, I initially was going to go with shoes, but I’m pulling for shadows, as I think I’d like to see your take on it.
Thanks a lot! Your vote has been noted … it’s en route to winning so unless more votes come in for other things you will see my take on “shadows” (even if it comes second, those themes usually get another chance later).
Happy 5th Anniversary!!! Fantastic blog!!!
My vote goes to shadows.
Best regards
many thanks! Your vote’s been noted …
If it’s not too late to vote, then my vote goes to shoes. On the basis that a girl can never have too many pairs of shoes. S x
😉 noted!