One of the main tourist attractions in Potsdam is Sans Souci,  the summer palace  building in the 1700s by Frederick the Great.

As I was walking around the grounds,  I could see why this was a place designated as the summer palace.  Weather-wise, it was a site firmly in the grip of winter in the middle of March, where the ground was still covered in snow, and it was cold and windy up there on the top of the hill where the palace is located.

However, it was also sunny that day – blindingly so, with  white snow all around.  Late in the day, when the sun was on its way down, there was some cool interplay to be seen with the snow, sun and shadows.  I had some fun today tweaking the contrast and darkening the shadows to create some interesting illusions  in my “digital darkroom”. The only changes were with the contrast … oh, and a couple are also flipped upside down. But of course.

Now, I do realize you can’t get any idea of what that palace looked like in these photos, since I was standing by the edge of the park next to the palace, and you can’t even really tell that in the images.

This is why I’m never going to get hired to take standard postcard shots, I guess – my first inclination is to look for the odd things around to take photos of. 😉

While I did take actually take a few photos of the palace itself, I haven’t sorted them yet. Today when sitting down to sort some images from our recent trips, I was first drawn to look at my experiments that day in Potsdam with the sun and shadows on the snow at Sans Souci.

Enjoy.