Fairy Chimneys

Congratulations! This is the Image of the Week selection for the Travel and Culture Gallery, week ending 6th April, 2012! >Click here for large version<

This was one of the finalists in last year's European Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards. It was shot on our annual landscape photography workshop in Turkey. The graphic shapes you see in the foreground are called fairy chimneys, but I think a more appropriate name would be rock asparagus, and I'm sure you can come up with something worse.

These giant conical shapes are caused by centuries of erosion and have turned the landscape into one of the most surreal I have ever visited.

Each morning we would rise early with our group to photograph sunrise at one of the many bizarre locations. One of the great things about this area is that there hardly is any wind, which makes it the perfect place for hot air balloons - and there are many of those each morning.

For this shot I wanted to make the fairy chimneys look even bigger than they already are by contrasting their size to that of the balloons. I positioned myself facing towards the rising sun and made a composition with nice graphic lines.

With silhouettes it is always difficult to show depth, which is why I framed this with one of the fairy chimneys growing out of the frame on the right side - it adds depth because you feel that that one is closer to the camera than the others.

After that it was just a matter of waiting until the balloons drifted into my frame.

The fact that we know how big hot air balloons are and that they look so tiny in this shot, makes the fairy chimneys look massive.

Hi

I can’t say that I know the location – but I can say that I like the cleverness of this image. It’s both thoughtfully composed, composed and executed well – and just plain fun!!!

I like it a lot

All the best
Matthew

Congrats on the IOW Marsel! A really unique image. I like the choice of silhouetting but how you still retained fine detail in the balloons themselves. Quite a surreal landscape, I can only imagine what it was like in person.

Wow, that comp is so perfect--and surreal.