In the latest theme poll – at the bottom of this previous Blog post – the theme garnering the most votes in the end was ‘DT & Shadows’. So that will be this post’s theme. Of the other suggested themes, ‘DT & Skulls’ and ‘DT & Shoes’ landed on a par in second place, so will be given another chance in the near future. Only the theme ‘DT & Stairs’ didn’t get a single vote (even though this would have been my choice, actually), so that one will be out of the game for a while.
So, shadows … Let’s kick off with an example of shadows that are an almost symmetrical “mirror image” of what’s casting the shadow, in this case a set of fire escape stairs outside a warehouse in the harbour of Riga, Latvia (which is a prime dark-tourism destination, even though this warehouse is not actually part of the city’s DT portfolio, but never mind):
And then there are shadows that are distorted and/or angled, such as those of the balconies on this house in the fabled ghost town of Varosha in Northern Cyprus:
The next photo was taken while urbexing in what was apparently a former arms factory, namely at Dubnica in Slovakia – here a strange wire-mesh object casts an intriguingly elongated shadow in the beam of my torch:
One of my all-time favourite photos involving shadows is this next one, with two circling birds of prey casting shadows of themselves on to the inner walls of one of the unfinished cooling towers of Chernobyl NPP’s Block 5 (which was also never completed):
I especially like the fact that the shadows appear so much larger than the actual birds, which can almost be overlooked.
And here’s another example of mysterious shadows that don’t seem to align with the structures casting them, namely that mangled mess of metal from reinforced concrete poking out of an unfinished part of the old Tempelhof Airport in Berlin (of Berlin Airlift fame) – the neatly parallel shadows that look like hooks do not seem to correspond to the mangled metal above:
A rather funny shadow photo is also this next one, taken in Nicosia, Cyprus at night and showing the disproportionally enlarged shadow of a cyclist pulling the front wheel up (you can just about make out part of the real thing poking out from behind the tree in front):
And here’s another photo taken at night, one that has featured on this Blog before, namely in this post about an after-dark tour of Vienna’s legendary Central Cemetery:
This is in fact one of my favourite tombs in this venerable cemetery – buried here is a mining magnate, so the guide told us, hence the design with the mock mine door guarded by dwarf sculptures with red lanterns and shields. In this theme it is that shadow of the head of the sculpture in the foreground cast on to the mock mine entrance that makes this image special.
Staying with Vienna’s Central Cemetery, here’s another shadow cast in daylight on to a tombstone by a statue of a mourning woman:
But now for a series of images where you can only see the shadow, but not the object/structure casting it. First the shadow of the Interhotel Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, cast on to the murky river below:
If you want to see images of the real thing (a brutalist masterpiece!) and learn about its history and fate, the best place to go to is this fellow blogger’s excellent post (external link).
The next photo was taken at sunset from a moving jeep in the desert in Turkmenistan, en route to the otherwordly Darvaza flaming crater:
And here’s another photo taken just before sunset, this time at the summit of Mauna Kea on Big Island, Hawaii. You can make out the shadow of the mountain’s massive volcanic cone cast on to the cloud layer below (one of the reasons Mauna Kea is one of the world’s most prized locations for astronomical observatories is the fact that the summit regularly pokes out of any cloud layer, plus up there the air is crisp and clean and there’s hardly any light pollution):
Next up is a photo with some nice playing with perspective on a series of shadows cast on to a corridor’s floor by the bars on the windows at the Cellular Jail in Port Blair on the Andaman Islands:
The next photo shows the shadow of a single object, namely a CCTV surveillance camera from the 1980s cast on to another prison’s wall, namely at Adelaide Gaol, Australia:
The inscriptions on the wall, by the way, are grave markers, namely of prisoners who were executed here and buried by this wall.
And now for one of my favourite shadow-only photos I’ve ever taken. This is the super-sharp shadow of a twin engine of a Titan II ICBM lying sideways in the open air and glaring sun at the National Museum of Nuclear Science & History in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA (same photo as the featured one at the top of this Blog post):
Yet another of my favourite shadows-only photos is this next one, taken at the Thompson Graving Dock in the “Titanic Quarter” of Belfast, Northern Ireland:
The stairs that cast the shadow here lead down into the old dock, which was where the legendary RMS Titanic was outfitted before her fateful maiden journey in 1912. I took this photo on my first visit to Belfast back in 2012 and at the time there was some film production going on inside the dock and all sorts of film crew personnel were running around hectically to get things sorted … including that guy racing up the stairs you can see the shadow of in this image. I love the way in which this element seems to make to image “come alive”. It’s also a lucky shot, as he was really fast; a fraction of a second later and I wouldn’t have captured his silhouette so well.
As a final photo in the series of shadow-only shots (i.e. without the structure casting the shadow being visible itself) here’s one I took at Bełżec:
If you are not familiar with the memorial at this site of one of the Operation Reinhard death camps in south-eastern Poland, it will probably remain a mystery as to what it is you are looking at here. But take a look at the photo gallery of my main website’s chapter for Bełżec and you will understand. Just so much here: what you see at the top of that big black mass in the centre of the frame is not barbed wire shadows …
Proper barbed wire, however, features in this next photo, which is the newest in this lot, taken only last month when I revisited the memorial at the former concentration camp of Neuengamme near Hamburg (see also this recent Blog post):
If you look closely you will see that this barbed wire is actually modern-day razor wire. And indeed it’s not a relic of the Nazi-era concentration camp but of a modern prison that was built on the site in the 1970s and only torn down in the 2000s after years of protests and campaigns. But in order to also cover that unsavoury aspect of Neuengamme’s post-war history a small part of the modern prison’s outer wall was preserved, complete with a lone watchtower and all that barbed wire at the top of the walls. Note that the sunlight angle makes the shadow of the barbed wire on the right-hand side wall go upside down, while that on the wall parallel to the frame remains horizontal.
The next photo was taken indoors, namely at the Military History Museum in Dresden, Germany. It shows an installation in the Cold War section comprising various missiles and bombs hanging diagonally from the ceiling on wires, and with the lighting casting shadows of the various items on to the walls behind. I found it quite an eerie sight to behold:
Also quite eerie is the next photo, taken in Mussolini’s bunker at Villa Torlonia in Rome, Italy – the dummy wearing a gas mask and steel helmet casts even two shadows:
For the final photo to feature in this post I chose a repeat from the previous Blog post, namely that oryx skull with horns in the desert sand at the Pomona ghost town in Namibia – I just like the super-sharp shadow that retains the ringed shape of the horn (a bit like on that Titan missile engine photo above).
But that shall be it for this Blog post – 20 shadowy images is not a bad count, I think.
