Athens: Filing in and out of the Akropol Photo

Photographer’s Note

One enters the Akropolis by going through the remnants of the Boulé gate and climbing the stairs to the Propyleën which is the actual entrance to the hill.
The steep Akropolis hill was already inhabited in the Bronze age (from 3000 – 1100 BC). From 1400 – 1100 the kings of Mycene had their residence here. From 700 BC it had a purely religious function and was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC. Under the control of Pericles, Phidias designed two of the major edifices on the Akropolis: the Propyleën and the Parthenon in 447 BC. The construction of the latter was finished in 432 BC. Due to the outbreak of Peloponesean war in that same year, the Propyleën was never finished.

The Akropolis is surely one of the main tourist attraction of Athens. You can never escape your fellow visitors. Their behaviour is after the ancient architecture and the phenomenal panorama’s the third ‘attraction’ of the Akropolis. All the tourist-archetypes can be seen here: people only looking through the viewfinders of their (video-)cams, or over the upper part of their guide books, people mainly suffering from the heat, people herded by guides, people not really taking notice of their surroundings. Fascinating. This pic of people filing in and out is taken down at the Boulé gate. And it’s my first entry for the Scav hunt (2. Rush Hour)

Pic stats: Focal length 30 mm, F 5, shutter 1/400, 100 ASA.
PS-E2 tech: heavily cropped, levels & contrast adjusted, saturation boosted, corrected overly bright areas with backlighting, fill flashed selected areas, sharpened two times, frame added and saved for the web

Jeppe, elroyie, cmartos, Georges, digi-mom, avigur_11, carper, jhm, Xalkida, jrj, pamastro, GrahamB, orme, nbournas, touristdidi, nwoehnl has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

elroyie (2750) 2004-07-10 13:17

This is defenetly rush hour picture, you caught great movement and very colourful one, very good composition and very good exposure.

waskahegan (0) 2004-07-10 13:26

Good daily life p[icture, amazing mix of ages, cultures, the age of those stones is a bridge to our past.

cmartos (6086) 2004-07-10 13:34

Wow! What a rush hour you cought here Bert! I like your angle and POV, nobody seem to notice your presence. Very good framing and crop, the spot on the people activity is just excellent. Good to have less people in the very foreground, this small entrance seems to be able to "deliver" people endlessly! Excellent tech (as in all your shots), colours, contrast and sharpness at the top, as usual. Excellent job!

nwoehnl (118) 2004-07-10 16:12

Wow, this is amazing. It almost looks like a staged "mass" scene from a Hollywood epic (I have this knack about movies, particularly old ones. There's a lot to be learned about composing frames from watching David Lean's, Alfred Hitchcock's, Steven Spielberg's and many others works). A delightfully busy scene that together with the patterns provided by the stones on the ground and the wall almost gives the impression of a maze. Great colors and light, and certainly a supremely creative twist on the "rush hour" topic for the scav hunt. Great stuff, Bert.

spence (1679) 2004-07-10 17:51

Now there's a Greek queue if ever I saw one! :) (I know, they're 99% foreign tourists). I've done this many times at the Acropolis and this is exactly how it is. I love it. Great shot of the colourful chaos, Bert.

carper (64094) 2004-07-11 3:07

Deze foto leeft Bert.
Normaal hou ik niet van dergelijke foto's maar hier zit echt iets in. Beweging, gaan, vakantie, nu effe kijken en straks weer languit in de zon. Goede compositie, goede kleuren, also very good job

Georges (11183) 2004-07-11 3:45

Mouvement de foule bien cadré et particulierement bien figé.
Beaucoup de jolis détails sur cette poste et de part l'angle choisi on a l'impressiont de faire partie integrante de la foule.
L'image est de bonne qualité bravo Bert.

jhm (81719) 2004-07-11 4:18

Wat een drukke foto Bert, maar zeker mooi en scherp, de kleuren zijn zeker prachtig. Mooi werk Bert.
What a busy photograph, but certainly beautiful and sharpens Bert, the colours are certainly splendid. Beautiful work Bert.

jiherka (4463) 2004-07-11 11:03

Que de tourites... trop pour moi. Mais tout de même une belle scéne de vie quotidienne.
Bien vu Bert.

avigur_11 (21271) 2004-07-11 12:05

So much activity, Bert. I like it, and I like the way you caught these tourists instead of the Acropllis Hill. Very interesting and well captured shot.

jrj (34779) 2004-07-11 13:55

Well, I haven't been there, haven't seen it. But the capture is still very illustrating for many popular places around.

..and the weather Bert - must be the best.

Good shot of the busy life of tourists..

pamastro (7213) 2004-07-11 21:09

And you have the mixture of all those tourists in this shot, I think. Very nicely done. So much hustle and bustle and so crowded. The lighting here makes me feel the heat of the high day, too. The crispness is great, too, with such fine details to the stones. And the people really stand out from the stones. So modern and new and so ancient and worn. Good motion versus stillness. Great job.

Isabelle (9014) 2004-07-12 21:52

what i like a lot in your new series is that you´re showing monuments with so much intrusion... people in this one, the cranes in the other... places which are supposed to be 'untouchables' are being cleaned, rearranged, touched...
good work!

GrahamB (939) 2004-07-13 7:40

Great shot. As you say you have captured all types of tourist. Well seen and well framed.
Very good colours and sharpness too.

ephemere33 (9727) 2004-07-13 20:04

belle photo de mouvement, le partage est magnifique on se croirait rentree dedans...les couleurs sont bien rendues et l'animation tres bien ressentie...tres bon boulot...bravo...BI

orme (6746) 2004-07-14 0:46

A great rush hour shot, Bert, with wonderful clarity. I like the way the 'stone' background is almost completely obscured by the people. Well captured.

Jeppe (18623) 2004-07-18 3:32

Nice shot Bert - and an original contribution to the hunt - I like to watch that ruch :-)
I can also spot a photographer - one for the theme as well - thanks.

touristdidi (8561) 2004-12-19 11:24 [Comment]