The Teleferic de Montjiuc

I framed this high, tight, and in monochrome. The tower holds its geometry clean against a washed-out sky, bisected by the tension of support cables that anchor the structure both physically and compositionally. The decision to exclude ground and context wasn’t aesthetic—it was structural. I wanted the image to stand on line, angle, and steel alone.

Shot with a mid-telephoto to flatten depth slightly and reduce parallax across the girders. The light was diffuse but not flat. A break in the clouds gave enough gradient to define planes without creating shadow noise. The exposure leaned conservative: highlights retained in the clouds, midtones preserved in the riveted panels and pulleys. No clipped whites, no crushed blacks.

Black and white strips away distraction. Colour here would dilute the subject with irrelevant palette—likely rust, sky blue, maybe advertisement spill. Monochrome reduces the tower to machine and air, placing emphasis on the tensile systems at work: cables drawn taut, cantilevered decks, mechanical pulleys visible through the open tower face.

Technically, the frame resolves detail well. F/8 at ISO 100, sharp from edge to edge. Minimal post. I introduced mild contrast separation in the midtones and allowed the sky to fall off naturally to grey. No artificial sky darkening. Grain added none. Clarity pulled just enough to cut through atmospheric haze without veiling the upper sections.

This is not a nostalgic image. The Teleferic isn’t romanticised. It’s recorded as a machine still under tension, still performing.