Shibuya, Tokyo - Urban Photography

One of the most impressive locations of my recent Tokyo trip was the large crossing at Shibuya station.

The traffic lights at Shibuya crossing change every 2 minutes and thousands of people from five directions are crossing. There is approximately a number of 100'000 persons passing through this crossing per hour. This makes the Shibuya crossing the busiest crossing in the world.

 My search on 500px.com for "Shibuya crossing" yielded a number of very exceptional images of that place.

Mountain Fog - Landscape Photography

The Swiss Alps from Rigi Kaltbad, Nikon D4

On the left one of my own images shot at Rigi Kaltbad in Central Switzerland on an October evening moments after sunset.

The fog filling up the valley and covering the lake Lucerne like a fluid, the nice textured mountains with first snow in the background, and the red glowing sky.

Sunset behind Mt. Pilatus from Rigi Kulm,
Hasselblad 500c/m, Fujichrome Velvia 100

The beauty of the landscape just shot at the right moment.

More pictures from the same location at link.


On the right a picture shot on film showing the Mount Pilatus at the horizon the last second before sunset. In the foreground the western side of Mount Rigi and in between sculptures of fog like the sea in a heavy storm.

In these two images the fog gives an interesting structure towards the topological bottom of the captured landscape and guides the interest to whatever remains on top of the fogs' surface.

The experienced weather conditions with lower altitude landscape covered in fog and sunny bright weather at upper altitude levels is very typical for the autumn and winter months in Central Switzerland.

More images from the same trip using my analog film setup at link.
And some digital captures at link.

Another simple search for images tagged with "Mountain Fog" in the landscape photography category of 500px.com yields some very interesting photos of mountain landscape under foggy weather conditions.

Before Sunrise by Martin Vaculìk (500px)

Some of them are very similar than the ones presented above with glowing sky, the contrast of the mountains with the sea of fog.

Cloudy Day in Guilin, Gunxi, China
by Mihail Dinichenko (500px)

And other images show more mountain landscape where the foggy weather condition adds a mystical element to the image.

The Art of Light by Matteo Zanvettor (500px)

The fog gives rise to a visual effect that lets these pictures almost look like in watercolour paintings applying soft tonalities of pastel color and some black to add the necessary contrast of the mountain landscape as silhouettes.

Road to Monument Valley

Image sharing platforms such as 500px.com or flickr.com offer an almost endless resource to photographs of almost every spot on earth.

Landmarks such as the Monument Valley on the Colorado Plateau located on the state line between Utah and Arizona, USA are amongst the most visited and photographed landscapes. 

The spectacular rocks are sandstone formations sculptured by the forces of nature over time.

yes - one of the first hits is an image from Myanmar

Searching for images tagged with "road to monument valley" on 500ps.com yields a long list of images capturing this scenic landscape. 

Interesting is the fact that many of these images have been taken from almost exactly the same spot but no two images are the same. The influence of photographer, equipment, and mostly of nature with its unpredictable weather conditions gives rise to interesting variety.

See the series of 500px sample picks below. All of these photographers captured the same three iconic monuments with the dirt road entering the valley in the foreground, some of the textured structures of the desert soil, and some cloudy sky.

Monument Valley by
Florian Demmer (500px)

Monument Valley by
Maciej Bledowski (500px)

Valley by Roman Prais (500px)

But no two images are exactly the same.

Monument Valley by
Dmitry Vinogradov (500px)

While in this series of images the cloudy sky and therefore changes in light conditions make the biggest difference to the individual photographs, the image shown at the bottom of the page involves more artistic photographic techniques such as longtime exposure at night giving raise to these beautiful star trails.

The image involves a bit a lower perspective but has been taken from almost the same spot as the other four. Color of the rock formations is different given the fact that it is a longtime exposure at night.

Monument Valley landscape before
sunrise by Katrina Brown (500px)