John Clark in Berlin

col, I shoot what I want, buyers have the choice. Notions of shadow detail defining good exposure are really irrelevant.

Wim & Ian - comments appreciated. Obviously I am going to have to improve my captioning. With buildings, and especially the use of gilding, I don't mind shadows, if it means there is detail in the highlights, especially for printing on paper, when a pale sky/white clouds, or very bright highlights means there is nothing for a printer to work with. Those gold figures around the Chinese Teahouse in Potsdam (which is a spectacular building) can look almost coppery brown in winter and the bright metallic sheen in many people's images is tempting but misleading. I prefer low contrast images where there is a certain level of colour saturation to provide the distinction between objects and say foliage. Ian - I don't really do people pics as the law in Germany severely limits their use, unless the people are 'personalities', or you have comprehensive permissions - footballers and their 'image rights' have a lot to answer for. Indeed I try to avoid including people. Even when the police issued a profile picture of a suspected terrorist following the Christmas Market massacre a couple of years ago, the local tv station blanked his features out on grounds that it would infringe his privacy. The bundle of crowd pictures from Paris were mainly taken inside a few opportunist minutes of mayhem as the French won the World Cup last year - editors can crop and select as they choose, rather than having me doing too much pre-editing. I think one or two of them work fairly well, but posted the rest as it was a unique occasion. I'd be interested to know how contributors tackle the 'image rights' issue - are there markets where conditions are friendlier, making it worthwhile say excluding sales in Germany but allowing them elsewhere.

domf - correct, very silly of me, I've been there more than once.

Thanks for your comments David - you're right about the aircraft captions - but I took a look at your own pictures and decided that we have a different feel for detail and exposure - you prefer your sky washed out, while I try to keep some detail, especially for masonry and stonework.

Interested to discover what other people think about this heap of pictures: https://www.alamy.com/portfolio/562595.html