Commons Picture of the Day: Volcanic rock strata on Tenerife

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Volcanic rock strata on Tenerife

Wladyslaw Sojka (User:Taxiarchos228) captured this breathtaking picture of volcanic rock strata while vacationing on Tenerife, Spain, in December 2007. This particular shot required some precarious positioning of his Nikon D80 to capture the layers of rock strata as well as the road adjacent to it. The position in question happened to be in the middle of the road. While paying attention to any cars passing by for fear of being run over, Sojka took about 30 shots of the hairpin turn as well as the surrounding area.
While shooting the featured picture Sojka tried to capture a scene that would enable viewers to appreciate the aesthetic nature of the shot as well as the informative character of the fascinating rock layers. He chose this shot, at the juncture where the curve of the road was reducing, because it highlighted the volcanic strata in its best scale.
“The different coloured layers derive from the different eruptions. Centuries or even millenniums may have elapsed between the deposition of each layer. The white porous layer is made up of pumice fragments. The black layers are composed of basalt, emerging during eruption with low gas content. The reddish layers are also of basalt, however they were oxidized by ground water,” said Sojka.
Sojka describes his passion for photography as an “ambitious hobby,” having spent a lot of time teaching himself how to take pictures with his first compact camera in 2004. His work mainly focuses on architecture and landscape. Sojka expresses that he has a deep interest in architecture and civil engineering of all kinds of towers. As a result his pictures are mostly of churches, television towers and the historic, as well as modern architecture of bridges that are special to him. Besides contributing photos to Commons, Sojka also spends time arranging and rearranging categories to sort pictures on the gigantic media repository.
“Sometimes I also study some buildings that are commonly classified as ugly but have a unique attraction for me. The object itself and its reproduction close to its naturalness, for me, is often more important than an artistic picture,” said Sojka.
(View more of Sojka’s photos)
Jordon Hu, Communications intern

Archive notice: This is an archived post from blog.wikimedia.org, which operated under different editorial and content guidelines than Diff.

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