Czech Republic – Otrocice

Otročice between big field hits

In Otročice, the first thing you notice is the difference in size between the small houses and the surrounding fields. A path runs through the settlement and continues into the open country. The view from above makes this transition from the village street to the field path easy to understand.

A village between large plots

At Otročice, large fields border on much smaller properties. The aerial photograph shows this change in size particularly well where a road leads directly from the town into the corridor.

The center of a town can often be recognized from the air by the intersection of several streets. These lines diverge towards the open landscape, the properties become longer and the distances between the houses become larger. Anyone who chooses an image for a location portrait can pay attention to these transitions. A motif with a piece of the surrounding area tells where the place is. A narrower shot, on the other hand, gives people who live or have lived here more opportunities to find familiar buildings in the picture.

Field boundaries as a benchmark

From a greater height, the field appears to be an orderly floor plan. A closer look shows how the paths change direction at curves, embankments and property boundaries. When selecting images, it is helpful to preserve at least one of these transition points. It turns a colored area into a piece of actually used landscape. For an article about the surrounding area, even the inconspicuous edge of a field can explain more than a wide section that only shows numerous plots as small spots.

Order along a line

To find your way around an unfamiliar townscape, you can follow a continuous line until there is a noticeable change in direction. It is often only on this path that small junctions or free spaces become apparent. The image section determines how much of this order remains visible. If the beginning of the line remains in the foreground and its destination remains in the back part of the image, a photograph has a clear reading direction even without drawn arrows. It's particularly worth looking at in a portrait format.

Warm tones within the series

To switch between two of the 4 aerial photos, shot 4 and shot 2 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 1 and Shot 4 are among the views from July 6, 2020. According to the camera's time information, there are approximately 3 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.

A moving view is also available. Under Aerial videos you can find the clip “The village of Otrocice in the Czech Republic filmed from the air”. The linked preview leads to inclusion in the aerial photographer's portfolio on Adobe Stock.

A townscape for chronicle and community

Anyone who wants to show their family their place of origin often first looks for their own house in the aerial photo. When publishing for the community, the task is different. Even a non-local reader should be able to easily follow the path from the core to the landscape. An aerial photographer can start from the same terrain for both purposes and choose the section differently. What counts for the family portrait is the recognizability of a specific property. When it comes to the townscape, however, it is worth adding a little more surrounding area, even if it means that the individual roof appears smaller.

Related motifs in the aerial photo archive

Two additional views can be used in the archive for comparison. The first can be found under Czech Republic – Cechtice. Čechtice sits as a compact settlement between large fields. The second belongs to the article Czech Republic – Borovnice. At Borovnice, wide field units extend far to the horizon.