Meiningen

Meiningen above the city center

The aerial photos of Meiningen show a dense network of red roofs, larger buildings and green interior surfaces. From the city center, the view can be seen all the way to the wooded slopes. The structure is particularly clear where a park faces the closed roof areas.

Parks and roofs in the Werra Valley

In Meiningen, green spaces interrupt the dense roof structure. For a coherent cityscape, a section is useful in which the transition between houses, paths and treetops is visible.

The gaps between the houses reveal how tightly built the place is. An inner courtyard opens up the roof structure, a treetop covers part of it, and a wide street separates two blocks. Anyone who looks at the photo can follow these gaps and get a clearer picture than if they tried to identify each building individually. A particularly suitable view for a city portrait is one in which the view from a clearly visible roof can move on to the neighboring streets.

The open spaces between the buildings

In a green area, the view from above shows, in addition to the trees, primarily the open spaces. A path can change direction in an open area, and dense vegetation can almost completely obscure a building. The system is easier to understand when they interact together than through individual trees or roofs. If you want to explain a park area in a picture, look for a place where the path, open space and vegetation come together. It offers an easy-to-read introduction to the larger floor plan.

Recognize the shape of the valley area

The location in a valley is made clear in the aerial photo by the lateral boundaries. A nearby slope pushes forward in front of a distant one, and the valley floor opens up in between. If the section is too narrow, it can easily give the impression of a flat surface. A shot with a bit of a slope at the edge of the image preserves the context. Orientation is particularly successful when there is also a familiar size comparison, such as a street or a house. The eye can then better assess the depth between the individual landscape levels.

Warm tones within the series

To switch between two of the 19 aerial photos, shot 4 and shot 19 can be called up directly in the gallery. In the second view, warm reds and browns have more weight than in the first. Red-brown and yellowish areas are particularly noticeable next to cooler surfaces. What is interesting when comparing is whether they are concentrated on a single object or appear spread out across the entire view.

Shot 19 and Shot 1 are among the views from April 9, 2021. According to the camera's time information, there are approximately 11 minutes between the two images. The exposure time was 1/320 second for the first of the images mentioned and 1/500 second for the second.

The Aerial Videos section supplements the photos with 3 clips. The aerial photographer’s photographs linked there include “Meiningen from the air”. The relevant video page on Adobe Stock can be opened using the respective preview.

Prepare a cityscape for readers

For a city history, it can be informative to place the aerial photograph next to a street view. In one picture the roof is the reliable reference point, in the other it is often the entrance or the facade. The transition is best achieved via a corner, a square or a visible junction. An aerial photographer can take this connection into account when taking photos. In the printed photo series, a brief note about which side of the street the next photo was taken from is often enough.

Related motifs in the aerial photo archive

Two additional views can be used in the archive for comparison. The first can be found under Suhl. In the Suhl series, the snow highlights individual roof surfaces and slope areas. The second belongs to the article Arnstadt. In Arnstadt the squares are bright interruptions in the dense structure of the roofs.