In our recent ‘Perspective’ competition, Sonja Eisenberg took first place in Grade C, for the third time in a row this year, with the image above. This is how she made the image:

I shot this in a town called Weimar in Germany at the end of last month. I originally had another idea in mind (right) However the lighting wasn’t right/i didn’t have my tripod. Again I used my trusty Nikon D3000, F-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6.

I was sitting down to have a much needed cup of coffee when I noticed that the flower pots in the town produced an excellent reflection of the cobbled streets. I said I would try out a shot to see if it would reflect my colourful runners well, giving a bit of a focal point and some nice leading lines with the sides of the pot. I was pleased how the pot was placed between two shop building, which were painted a different colour, as it creates some nice symmetry too. I decided to not crop out the flowers in the pot as it gives the viewer a better idea of exactly what is reflecting the shoes and cobblestones.

The settings that were used were: ISO 200, zoomed to 18mm, minor adjustments in post processing to ensure the shoes were centre focus, at ƒ/3.5, 1/50. In the post processing on the Macbook air I increased the colour a big to bring out the shoe colour more (i doubt it needs it!) and reduced the shadows, increasing the contrast so you see the cobblestone better.