Brussels: Grand-Place (La Lumière Fantastique)

(Continued from Brussels: Grand-Place (Départ et Retour))

Featured Photo: “Hôtel de Ville Spire, White Lights”  Brussels, Belgium—2008

In my introductory series of posts, I wrote at length about my progression through a series of cameras—from simple point-and-shoot to 35-mm film SLRs to digital SLRs to my trusty iPhone—each of which helped shape my lifelong journey with photography. I did not go into many technical details at the time, but this post calls for a brief technical digression. (Please bear with me.)

In old-school film photography, there is a term called ISO, which is a standard set by the International Standardization Organization (hence the inscrutable acronym) that represents the film’s sensitivity to light. The ISO is a direct result of how the film is manufactured; consequently, it cannot be changed. In film photography, the ISO decision is made at a camera store: you can buy a roll of 35-mm film with an ISO of 100 or 200, classified as low-speed films (lower sensitivity to light), or an ISO of 400 or 1600, which are high-speed (higher sensitivity and a greater ability to capture light).

I must admit, in the technical evolution from film to digital photography, the continuing purpose of ISO is not apparent to me. But it was this ISO feature I was completely oblivious to on my Canon 10D digital SLR camera. Initially established to denote the film’s sensitivity, the ISO setting was later adopted by digital camera makers with the purpose of maintaining similar brightness levels as film.

The ISO on a digital camera controls how responsive the digital sensor is to light. As I said, why one would need to change that setting is not clear to me, but Adobe Creative Cloud puts it this way: ISO is one of the three pillars of the photography exposure triangle—along with shutter speed and aperture—that can be adjusted when capturing a photo.

Perhaps if I had used the “Fully Automatic” setting on my digital camera, all would have been fine. But I chose to work in the camera’s “Creative Zone”, and it was critical for me to adjust the ISO setting depending on the available light for a particular photo. For example, ISO 100 is perfect for bright sunny days, but totally wrong for capturing an image in low light, like the Hôtel de Ville’s spire at night…which brings me back to my story.

In my previous post, I shared several blurry pictures taken on the last evening of my maiden voyage to Brussels; I’d been disappointed with the nighttime images. But I was later pleased when my job afforded another opportunity to travel to Brussels, providing a second chance to try my nighttime photography. I flew a few days after Thanksgiving 2007 and lodged again at the Hotel Amigo. After dropping my luggage in the room, I grabbed my camera and raced down the spiral staircase…

…venturing out into the Grand-Place. As it had been for my earlier trip in June, the weather on this November day was gray and drizzly, but my mood brightened when I saw the square was being decorated for the holidays, with a Christmas tree that must have been 50 or 60 feet high, all decked out with ornaments.

The view was even more vibrant when I returned later that night, with the tree’s lights all aglow, casting a colorful reflection on the wet cobblestones.

There were cheerful white lights strung up on the Hôtel de Ville, but it was when the festive light projections began on that centuries-old Town Hall that I got lost in a photographic reverie.

I zoomed in on the spire…

…and watched a rainbow palette illuminate the soaring structure.

As I looked at the images lighting up the LCD screen on the back of my camera, I was painfully aware that the photos were blurry—especially the last picture with an aqua-colored spire—and this even though I’d knelt down to stabilize the camera, with my hand resting on my knee.

Two days later, I finished my work assignment in Brussels and headed home. During the flight, I pulled the User Manual from my camera bag and began searching for the cause and a solution to my blurry photos. There it was on page 49—a page I apparently never read: the simple instructions about setting the ISO.

I checked the metadata for my Hôtel de Ville photos and groaned out loud, disturbing the sleep of the grey-haired woman in the seat next to me. All the photos I had taken—daytime and nighttime—showed the ISO had been set to 100, completely unsuited to the low-light pictures I’d taken. I was frustrated to learn this only after my photo-shoot of holiday lights on the Grand-Place.

Armed with knowledge that comes only from reading instructions all the way through, I awaited my next opportunity for a night shoot at the Grand-Place. As fate would have it, I returned to Brussels not just once, but twice the following year. In June 2008, I took a much clearer nighttime photo of the Hôtel de Ville spire, using the much more appropriate ISO setting of 1600. I didn’t even have to kneel to stabilize the camera for the shot! It’s possible to see detail in the glimmering golden statue of St. Michael and the dragon at the very top.

Then in November 2008, I was elated to fly back to Brussels yet again, but unlike the prior year, my trip was two weeks before Thanksgiving. It was with high hopes that I walked to the Grand-Place that first night in Brussels, only to be disappointed by a less remarkable holiday scene than I’d observed in 2007. There was no Christmas tree and there was only a hint of the colored lights I’d experienced the prior year. There were, however, strings of white-light bars stretching between the guild houses and other buildings, including the Maison du Roi and the Hôtel de Ville. The lighting offered an interesting image, and the proper ISO setting provided another photo that was not blurry.

The picture was even more satisfying when I pointed the camera higher to take in the spire—today’s Featured Photo—with dashes of bright light magically crisscrossing the foreground. A week later, I flew home from Brussels feeling more pleased about my nighttime photography, but sad that I’d not gotten the chance to recapture the light fantastic in the Grand-Place from the previous year, when joyful holiday colors had been splashed across the historic buildings.

As you can sense, Brussels holds a special place among my travel memories, being the point of entry for my first international business trip way back in 2007. All told, my work carried me to Brussels five times, the last in 2012. I returned once again in 2015, not for work but on vacation to share my love of the city with my two sisters. I brought a camera for each trip and was excited to take more photos of sights I’d seen before, along with a few new ones. The city came to feel familiar, comfortable, and welcoming; arriving in Brussels felt like coming home.

That’s why the bombings in Brussels hit me so hard.

(To be continued…)