Architecture Archives - Page 9 of 26

September 18, 2017

Reflections in St Marks Square

We had just passed this way a few hours earlier and it was dry, now it was filled with puddles. I like taking pictures in the rain but in this case there was no rain in the forecast. From a photographic perspective it was a nice surprise so I stopped to take pictures of the reflections in St Marks Square.

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Reflections in St Marks Square in Venice Italy

Before visiting here I never knew that Venice was actually sinking. But it’s true and the rate is about a tenth of an inch per year. Basically the soil that the city is built upon is slowly compacting. When we walked through the central square at night the tides had risen up through the square to form puddles.

At this time of year Venice is super busy with visitors. I thought about that when approaching the city and I decided to include the crowds, making them part of the scenes I was capturing. There is a fun kind of energy late at night when so many people are walking around within the ancient lamp lit architecture.

more images with reflections

I was only here for about a day and a half; if I had been here longer I might have walked around in the early morning hours to get images without people. But that’s okay; I can save that idea for another day. Hopefully that day will be sometime soon before Venice goes the way of Atlantis.

September 10, 2017September 10, 2017

The Gothic Quarter

One of my favorite things to do in Barcelona is to take pictures of people walking around the gothic quarter at night, especially next to the main cathedral. The architecture and lighting creating a setting that is good for night photography.

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As write this I am in Barcelona by accident; I was scheduled to return home but my flights were cancelled. That gives an extra day to explore one of my favorite cities at night. Images like this illustrate my preference for shooting scenes at night. In my mind it’s more interesting than daytime.

It’s not just the time of day but the location. In Barcelona there are people out walking around at all hours. Those people and their sense of style surrounded by the ancient architecture create the perfect settings for this type of image making.

more from Barcelona

One thing that helps is a fast lens. I used an f1.8, which lets in more light. That’s necessary for handheld night photography without a tripod. That in turn allows me to quickly capture scenes with little setup. In this case I am using an ISO of 1600, which is high but well within the means of today’s cameras. The technology will only get better and these types of shots will become easier to capture. Having that combination in a city like Barcelona is a very good thing.

September 9, 2017September 9, 2017

Walking Aimlessly Around Venice

I took this while walking aimlessly around Venice one afternoon. It’s easy to get lost among the narrow ways and canals, but at the same time it’s easy to find your way back. Every building has a sign on the corner pointing to St Marks Square. In this manner I headed out, got lost, and found my way back with little trouble. Along the way there were dozens of scenes like this.

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I walked far enough out from the central square that the streets were quite and life returned to the normal sights and sounds of an old world village. Shopkeepers leaned against doors, people lingered in cafés, and an old woman carried groceries. It was in contrast to the crowded tourist center where I started.

This is my first time in Venice. It’s one of those places that immediately struck the photographer in me with endless possibilities. I have seen many images from here, yet the experience of being here is beyond the clichés.

more from the European gallery

Like other iconic locations, the beauty of it inspires artists, and has done so for centuries. I was here only briefly but captured many images that I can go back and enjoy for a long time. I will share some of my favorite, but for now this is my first. And I have no idea exactly where I was when I took it.

August 31, 2017August 31, 2017

The W Hotel

This is one of the two big hotels on the beach in Barcelona, well surely there are many more but two that I know of. One is the Hotel Arts Barcelona and the other is this, the W Hotel. I stayed at the Arts but one of my first questions to the bellman was what building this was. Others must ask the same because he quickly mentioned it’s just become a sister hotel. They both fall under the Marriott parent company.

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The next day we walked down the beach to have a look at The W. The architecture vaguely reminded me of the sail motif of the Burj al Arab, only it’s not nearly as big. This one was designed the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill.

This is a vertorama, three images stacked in a vertical panorama. Because I was using a prime lens I couldn’t zoom out, so I took several images knowing I would recombine them in Lightroom.

The architecture is such that it defines the skyline along one end of the beach while the Hotel Arts defines the other. It’s interesting enough for me to want to capture it.

more architecture images

I’ve been a Marriott member for years and so it’s fortunate for me that they keep growing. It’s getting to the point that I can pick and choose which hotel to stay at in any city. So maybe I’ll stay here at some point, although the Arts hotel is pretty amazing too, so who knows, I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I come to it.

August 18, 2017

Panorama of Eastern Vancouver

This is a panorama of eastern Vancouver taken just after sunrise. It’s a perspective I had from the twenty-second floor of the Vancouver Delta Marriott. Actually I took this through windows next to the elevators. I was waiting for the elevator to go down to the lobby. When I saw this I decided not to get on, instead I went back to my room to grab a camera. Hopefully the people in the elevator didn’t mind too much.

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If I’m not mistaken the big building in the foreground is called The W. If you zoom in you’ll see a big sign of the letter W to the right of it. Several years ago I went to the top with a friend of mine, Andrew Gerrard. Using his magic he got us access to the top where much to my surprise there was a W-shaped hot tub full of beautiful women. But of course I was only there for the scenery.

Speaking of which, the view from the W is amazing. Here is a link to one of the images from that night.

On the left side of this image is Gastown and one the right is Chinatown. And off in the distance are the towering apartment buildings of Burnaby. It seems every time I come back there are one or two new towers on the skyline.

more panoramas from the gallery

This image is comprised of about six high-resolution photos so it contains an amazing amount of detail, especially a full resolution version that’s nearly seven feet wide. I love looking at the details in images like this; I can spend hours in a gallery exploring all of the interesting little facets. Wouldn’t it be ironic if we hung this on the wall of that elevator I walked away from? At least those people could have something pretty to look at when someone decides not to get on.

August 8, 2017August 8, 2017

West 54th Street

Here is an interesting shot down West 54th Street. It’s actually two photos of the same scene blended together. One was taken around midnight and the other around dawn. I setup my camera on a tripod and took a long exposure before falling asleep. I left the camera in place on the tripod and when I woke up several hours later I took another. Later I used the lighten blend mode in Photoshop to combine the two.

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I also used a lens skirt, which cuts out the reflections; it’s indispensable when taking photos through windows. In fact, while on the same trip, I took it to the observation deck of the One World Observatory; it worked wonders with the floor to ceiling windows.

We were lucky with the hotel; it has excellent views of this section of the city. When I’m traveling I never know what I’m going to see. So with respect to photography, and life in general, I try to be flexible and go with the flow. It’s a constant theme and sometimes struggle to let go and become aware of things around you. Sometimes I recognize cool images and other times I walk right past them.

It seems we covet high floors in the buildings of large cities, certainly I do. As a photographer I’m looking for the perspectives above the fray. More and more that can be achieved with a drone, but good old fashion brick and mortar buildings are the best if you can gain access. A drone can fly for only so long and is usually restricted in busy cities.

more NYC photos

Maybe the day will come when we have personal drones that can hover for hours like a car. When that happens I’ll be hanging out in cities like this and I won’t even need a highfalutin hotel room.

June 23, 2017

Alternate Reality of South Beach

Here is another shot of Miami that was taken as we were pulling into port after a three-day cruise. As far as cool cites in Florida go, Miami is number one. There are a lot of high rises and yachts at every turn and you easily get pulled into the alternate reality of South Beach. I can never get enough of this place and as I write this I’m talking myself into another trip down.

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Speaking of alternate realities, have you ever noticed how different places have their own feeling? Cities and regions are made up of the landscape and the people that inhabit them. Together that forms a unique energy that you can almost feel. Take New York City and Des Moines Iowa, completely different. There’s no good or bad, just different.

Anyway, Miami is an international mix if hyper excess and tropical dream, what’s not to like? I have a little tradition in that every time I visit I go to South Beach for dinner, sit at an outdoor table and order Paella. There is nothing like the sites, sounds and flavors of Ocean Drive. Just don’t be in a rush, anyone who’s anyone cruises the strip in their hot cars and bikes and no one is going anywhere fast.

Then, after a few days, it’s back to small town I go. I live in a city where the population could barely fill a block of Miami. But that’s kind of nice. I’m no high roller and a small town suits me just fine. I love the suspended reality of places like Miami, but I can only suspend it for so long.

more cityscape images

When I get home I will walk my dog on the quiet evening streets with hardly a sound. That’s puts me in a different reality all-together.

June 1, 2017

Palace of Fine Arts

On a recent trip to San Francisco I got up early one morning and came here to the Palace of Fine Arts. As it was a Sunday I had the whole place to myself. That by itself is an experience to say nothing of the photographic possibilities. I imagined myself in an ancient Rome as though a ghost out of time.

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In this image I placed the camera near the floor and aimed up with a Laowa 12mm f/2.8 Zero-D lens. It’s a special lens because it keeps the horizon flat without distortion, which is where the Zero-D comes from. Perhaps this is what the cat sees as he prowls the palace grounds each night.

As I look at this it reminds me that I’ll be heading back to Europe soon. I never know what I’ll see but I suppose that’s true wherever I go. When I go out to take pictures I have an expectation in my mind. That’s good for certain types of photography but on others it just gets in the way. When travelling the trick is to see what’s in front of me; I might miss something if I’m preoccupied with something in my head.

That’s not to say I don’t have a lot of ideas of images floating around. But it takes presence of mind to pick out details or compositions in a new place. Otherwise it’s better to work in a studio where we can shape an image to match our idea.

I normally take two or three lenses with me when touring. Like in this case I had the wide angle in the bag and so I pulled it out. I might experiment with taking just one lens on an excursion. Back in the day of film many cameras had a 35mm focal length. There’s a degree of liberation that comes with that because you stop thinking about the lens choice and just work with what you have.

more black and white

If I had to choose just one lens I’d start with the 35mm; that’s a good field of view to work with. But I also like the 50mm and the 85mm. Just thinking about the choice makes me anxious. Isn’t that the craziest thing you ever heard?

May 15, 2017May 15, 2017

Vancouver Terminal

This image is based on the Vancouver terminal, or YVR as its also known. Each time I travel here I am intrigued by the construction. The architects created an exoskeleton with which they hung the functional necessities of the terminal. The form and function are indistinguishable from one another. I’ve noticed this elsewhere and it represents an evolution in how we build.

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In the software industry we employ patterns to do basic tasks. Patterns are the analogs of load-bearing structures used in construction. Software has always drawn parallels from construction, and soon I believe it will occur the other direction.

We are evolving into beings that live as much in software as brick and mortar. The trend is accelerating and the boundaries between virtual and physical are becoming more tenuous each day.

The Matrix struck a chord because it explored merging of physical and software realities. I believe we are on some of the same trajectories proposed in the movie. In another generation virtual reality will be as commonplace as a cell phones are now.

More abstract images

When I see physical structures I think of their corollaries in software. Likewise when I build software I borrow construction techniques and terminology. Now opposite is beginning to occur with construction rendering which is an offshoot of 3D printing. We have begun to build physical structures with software as seen on this YouTube. We are now on the verge of yet another revolution in combining software and construction. The merging between software, virtual reality and construction and manufacturing are all but disappearing before our eyes.

April 26, 2017

Harbour Master Tower

Last week we stopped in the Bahamas on a weekend cruise from Miami. The harbor master tower is the first thing you see at dock. I think it was built before the ships got so big. I took this from a lower deck but you could look down on it from the upper decks and our ship was one of the smaller in port that day.

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This continues on a theme of minimalism. Actually I’ve been on this theme for a while but I don’t always publish the images. I do little studies, with lampposts, trees and buildings, shooting up to simplify the composition. Simplification is the gateway to minimalism; it also accentuates unique qualities of a thing or place.

This image creates an illusion of height, yet the building is no more than a few stories high and there are rooftops just below the frame. But because of how this is composed we imagine it much higher. Minimalism evokes imagination, which in-turn transcends realism.

Since I’m always on the lookout for these I’ll likely put together a book at some point. I get ideas from looking at works of other photographers. One whom I follow on Instagram is Sebastian Weiss. Check him out at the link here https://www.instagram.com/le_blanc/

architecture photography in the gallery

This kind of view is way of looking at the world that is focused on the isolation of something unique. I think we see beauty when we notice uniqueness. It’s all around and all we need to do is narrow our view until we recognize it; at least that my current theory.