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Hilton Molino Stucky

This is the Hilton Molino Stucky in Venice. I took this in the evening from a water taxi as we passed by. The moon was full and I managed to snap this just as it appeared over the spire. The clouds created a dramatic effect and I was actually surprised this turned out at all.

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Hilton Molino Stucky
Hilton Molino Stucky in Venice Italy

I used an aperture of f1.8 and an ISO of 10000 and a shutter speed of 125th of a second. All that translates into an ability to take hand-held photos at night from a moving boat. I’m still amazed that this is possible even though I’ve had my Sony camera for a couple of years now; compared to what was possible just a few years ago it’s phenomenal.

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The hotel is on the island of Giudecca and there is a lot to see here including art galleries, ancient churches and, of course, the city of Venice right across the water. I can imagine that the night view of Venice from the roof top bar is well worth whatever they charge for a gin and tonic. I think the hotel also has its own water taxi for guests.

As for me, it’s all on my list for the next time I return.

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Path Station at the World Trade Center

I never saw the old one, but this is the new Path Station at the World Trade Center. I used to ride the Path train every day from Jersey City to Penn Station. That was years ago when I worked in midtown. On a recent trip I walked by this station after visiting One World Observatory. The new station is amazing to look at under the massive ribs of Santiago Calatrava’s Oculus.

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Path Station at the World Trade Center
Path Station at the World Trade Center in New York City

Santiago is a Spanish architect and you should check out his work. I first became aware of him through a building in Lakeland Florida that I’ve driven by many times. I stopped by once to take a few images of that as well. Then, several years ago when I saw the construction of the Oculus I knew it must be the same architect. By the way, I added the red color in post-production just because I liked the effect, in reality it’s white.

This station is connected to a mall with high-end shops. There’s a nice bistro where I had a coffee before checking out the two-level Apple store. If there are two things New York has no shortages of, it’s coffee and Apple stores; and I mean that in a good way. My first Mac was purchased from the flagship store on 5th Avenue. There’s something fun about getting a Mac from one of these big stores. However these days I just order it online because it seems like less hassle.

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The mall is impressive whether you shop or just walk around and take pictures. I came here on one of the hottest days of the year so just having an air-conditioned place to hangout was a bonus. I’m due for a new Mac soon so maybe I’ll use that as an excuse to come back up here and go to the Apple store. Not that I really need an excuse but it sounds like a fun idea.

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Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute

This is the Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute in Venice, Italy. I took this from a cruise ship as we pulled out of Venice in the evening. One advantage of coming and leaving on a large ship is it provides an aerial perspective of the city. The ship I was on is about twelve to fifteen stories high so it easily rises above the buildings of the city. The only other way to get such a perspective would be to use a drone but they are illegal here.

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Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute
Basilica di Santa Maria della Salute in Venice Italy

There is a lot about this sixteenth century church that I should probably know but my short stay prevented me from exploring it. However I do know that it was built after the plague when nearly a third of the population died. When I hear things like that it makes me feel fortunate to live in an age of medicine, technology and science.

It boggles my mind that such buildings were even constructed. What would it cost to build something like this today? The closest example we have is the Sagrada Familia in Spain and construction for that has been ongoing for decades. We are now a quickly evolving society that is constantly in a race with obsolescence. The commitment to build a structure like this is counter to our planetary pace.

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So maybe that’s why we find these old architectures so fascinating. They are monuments of a time when progress was measured in decades and the order of things did not change much from one century to another. I am happy I live in the present time but the artifacts of our evolution as a society also fascinate me.

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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 W Hotel
The W Hotel in Barcelona

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.

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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.

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Cruise Ships Are Like Spaceships

On the last day of our three-day trip I got up before dawn to walk around the top deck of the ship. This walkway seemed like a portal on a space ship. I think cruise ships are like spaceships, at least like the big ones in the movies. In my mind a proper space ship has facilities to take tourist to different planets. Then at each location they probably dock on he dark side of the moon and take little excursions to the planet. You never know, truth can be stranger than fiction.

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Cruise Ships Are Like Spaceships
Cruise Ships Are Like Spaceships – Taken before dawn on Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Seas

Anyway, taking pictures of a cruise ship seems to work out better in the early morning. During the day and late into the night the decks are always crowded. But because everyone is up partying so late it’s a guarantee there are few if any people up early. That’s when you can get all those architectural details they build on to the ships; like these colorful arches for example.

Also, in the morning the crew is usually washing the decks and the sheen of wet surfaces enhances the light with reflections. Having said all that, I suppose the real trick is waking up early. Since this was the last day and we were scheduled to get off early I had to get up; I might not be so eager otherwise. About a half hour after this we pulled into the Port of Miami and I saw more cool things I wouldn’t normally see during the day.

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Maybe one day I’ll get up early and we’ll be pulling into the dark side of the moon, and then I’ll know I was up partying way too hard.

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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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Harbour Master Tower
Harbour Master Tower in Nassau Bahamas

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.

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Architectural Appreciation

I took this on Architectural Appreciation day. That’s a joke, there’s no such thing, at least that I’m aware of.

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Architectural Appreciation
Architectural Appreciation

This building is in central Amsterdam. It struck me as a statement of architecture. It was cold and I had competing thoughts that there wasn’t anything worth taking a picture of. That’s how my mind works, it’s always looking for an out when the weather is not good. I looked straight up and decided I better setup despite the protestations of my body and complaining mind.

I think that if I lived in Europe I’d shoot a lot of architecture. Even so there are opportunities closer to home. I know its cliche but it really is a matter of perspective. 

The idea with architecture photography is to reduce some design to a simple box. Sometimes when we look at things we see too much to appreciate the details. Architecture photography is about appreciating details. Focussing the lens on a single aspect of a building is, believe it or not, an act of appreciation. Think about it, the person who designed this building has surely considered this perspective in his or her mind many times. However most of use walk right by, never looking up to notice. Now imagine you are that architect and you see and read this post. You might smile and think someone actually noticed and appreciated it.

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It’s about being present and open to little things all around us. It could be a little animal, a tree or piece of architectural design by someone with a vision of symmetry and lines.

Anyway, after I took the shot I went back inside. It was damn cold.

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Cathedral Of Saint Mary Of The Assumption

When I was a child I saw this cathedral from the outside because my aunt had an apartment directly across the street. The architecture made an impression on me that has remained to this day and the area around the cathedral occasionally appears in my dreams. With this in mind I was driving by a few weeks ago and thought to stop and look inside. I’m glad I did.

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Cathedral Of Saint Mary Of The Assumption
Cathedral Of Saint Mary Of The Assumption in San Francisco

On a Monday afternoon it was empty save for an attendant. It’s a cavernous space infused with refracted light from the stained glass ribs of the spier. However what struck me most was the silence of the enormous space.

There is much to take in, but as for my camera I look for rectangles that convey one aspect. As I could not help but look up at the light coming through the windows I chose this perspective. It was late in the day and so the west facing windows conveyed the greatest light.

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Just happening in on this the way I did was a complete surprise. Whatever I expected was surpassed by the combination of ambience, light and architecture. This is without question a place of inspiration.

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Bridge Muse

Every now and then I’ll come to Sarasota to take pictures before dawn, more often at night, but once in a while in the morning. I’m fascinated by bridges and I can never get enough of them as it pertains to photography. The challenge is finding a new way to compose a photo of a bridge I’ve already shot dozens of times. This is the Ringling bridge, named after John Ringing of circus fame. Since this area is the original home of the circus a lot of things around here have Ringling in the name.

Bridge Muse
For me this bridge is a muse of sorts, I’m always looking for new perspectives on it.

For some reason I never shot this perspective from this side, I’ve done it from the other side but not this side. You can just make out the other side which is known as Bird Key, it has a bunch of beautiful homes along the water.

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I shot this on a Saturday about an hour before sunrise, even so the bridge was already full of runners. It’s a magnet for joggers since it has huge sidewalks and it’s the only thing around resembling a hill. In any case, I walked around here for about a half hour until I was satisfied and then headed to another location across the bay where among other things, I composed more photos with this bridge in the background.

I guess you could say this bridge is a muse of sorts.

 

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Organic Lines

Here is another simple image from inside Barcelona’s Casa Batlló. I love these irregular “organic” lines of the walls and molding that are found throughout the house, it’s as if the only rule they followed was there should be no right angles. Also, if you look closely you’ll notice the walls have a mosaic pattern reminiscent of scales.

Organic Lines
The organic lines of the design and architecture of Casa Batlló

This is more than a house, it’s a study in the blending of art and design to create a habitat. Imagine if all homes were built as works of art, it would be a much more interesting world don’t you think?

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