Escalator towards…

Black and white photo of the escalator at The Hague Central Station

This picture was shot at the main station in The Hague in 2015. The station was just re-opened for the new roof which gave us an excuse for making some photo’s. However, not only the roof was interesting at that moment, also some other more normal day-to-day use items were great to capture.

When we arrived at the station by tram, we arrived at the upper platform. Great to see the roof, however to reach the main train station you need to use the stairs or escalators to get down. I am not a big fan of escalators just because it is the lazy route. If there are stairs, I always take the stairs. Nevertheless, escalators are a great subject for photography in an urban environment because of the repetition and the industrial feel.

When I stood at the top of the escalator, my eye catched the repetitive structure of the steps. If you look at these steps in detail, it looks actually pretty dangerous with the hard metal ends, almost like a nail bed. To have the focus on the nail like structure while not losing too much of the environment to be able to easily recognize the escalator, I used an F-number of 11. Somehow, the lighting was not great and I had to dial the ISO up to 1000 to assure some steadiness in the shot and not allowing the exposure time to get to small. The exposure was set to a 60th of a second, which is just over the recommended 1 over the focal length.

When I was at home and looked at the pictures, the color was not giving the shot any extra’s. So I removed all the colors and that matched the idea of the photo more, making it an impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location