Pompei

Pompei and the geometry of excavation

Above ancient Pompeii, street axes and house floor plans emerge from an extensive archaeological area. Roofs and free walls alternate. The overview shows how large the area is, while a narrower section shows the division of individual blocks.

Streets and blocks from above

In Pompei, several excavated rooms can be compared along a street. Its floor plan tells of the layout, while today's view only shows a section of the historical site.

A ruin is visible from above in places where walls change direction or merge into open interior spaces. There you can follow the floor plan, even if only individual sections have been preserved. Growth and shadows are part of the visible situation. A careful description of the image names the recognizable parts without reconstructing missing buildings from their outline alone. In comparison with a closer picture, it also becomes clear where the large lines of the overview consist of several individual pieces of wall.

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.

The almost vertical view

When taken almost vertically, the side surfaces of the objects recede. What remains is the contour, color and the distance to neighboring shapes. This is helpful when explaining a floor plan or arrangement in a small space. An oblique view then complements what the steep view foreshortened, namely height, differences in level and the relationship to the horizon. For joint publication, at least one clearly recognizable detail in both images should serve as a reference point.

The distribution of blue tones

For a direct image comparison, use shot 8 and shot 18 from the gallery with 20 aerial photos. In the first excerpt, shades of blue play a smaller role. In the second shot, blue areas take up more space. Blue can extend over a large contiguous area or only appear in individual parts. What also counts for the effect is whether these areas extend to the edge of the picture or surround the main subject.

According to camera data, Shot 1 and Shot 20 were taken on November 2nd, 2019. There is a gap of around 34 minutes between the two images. The exposure time was 1/500 second for the first of the images mentioned and 1/800 second for the second.

In the Aerial Videos section there are 4 clips for this article. An example is “Pompei in Italy from the air”. Its preview leads directly to the video in the aerial photographer's Adobe Stock portfolio.

Communicate architecture and location together

For a post about a building, two captions can fulfill very different tasks. The first names the system and explains its location, the second leads to a visible component. Historical construction phases or previous uses can hardly be determined from the roof color and current wall edges alone. However, an aerial photographer can show precisely which parts will actually be visible in the later photo. For a guide or local chronicler, this separation makes it easier to work with people who know the local building history.

Related motifs in the aerial photo archive

The article Lucignano offers another perspective. In Lucignano, the roofs wind in strikingly closed rings around the town center. In the gallery Matera there is a different focus. At Matera, the deep gorge directly approaches the densely built-up city.