Lovelocked

Lovelocked. Travelling in Germany in particular, but also in Austria, I'd noticed a fashion for modern young people to proclaim their love by marking a padlock and fixing it to a railing somewhere, presumably throwing the key into the nearest river (or perhaps not, just in case); the engineering equivalent of carving initials on a tree. Some of the names are even machine-engraved.

But on the Hohenzollernbrücke bridge over the Rhine beside the cathedral in Cologne [Köln] I found a magnificent display, of which this image is only a tiny part. I'd just arrived, early in the morning, on the sleeper from Munich, and was stretching my legs with a walk over the river. A bit of fill-in from the on-camera flash, to add a bit of saturation in the flat misty lighting. A slight lack of focal point perhaps, although the heart on the lower-left third should be good enough. In competition – despite the title and on a 7-foot screen – the judge thought it was taken in a hardware store. [sigh]

Technical: NIKON D300, f=135.0 mm, ISO500, 1/160 sec @ f8.0

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