Light Over Water Photography » Architectural

Salt water

Hamish — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 23:27:31 +0000

On my return to the UK I stopped off, in the pouring rain, at Arc-et-Senans, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, no less! Designed by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux who realised that it made more sense to build the processing plant – required to obtain salt from the natural salt springs in the Besançon/Jura region – near the fuel (wood) to power everything after the already existing one had exhausted local supplies. What exists today is a semi-circular arrangement of buildings and it was hoped it would become the beginnings of the ideal city layout, unfortunately for the architect the French Revolution prevented further development and many of his works failed to see the light of day.
Ledoux was also responsible for the design and layout of modern theatre seating; with the expensive seats up-front and cheaper seats at the back, rather than the ‘royal boxes’ that often couldn’t even see the stage! Lots of his work was never realised but to see scale models made from his architectural drawings was impressive…worth the stop-over despite the downpour.

Clevedon Pier

Hamish — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:17:16 +0000

Been a bit busy recently what with various things on and training too, bizaarrely even though I’m doing more it still fits into the day (mostly!); a few hours training either end of work and still some time left for photography, I’m getting stronger and fitter towards the summer season and my pictures are maintaining their standard if not getting better – I hope! – not bad all round I reckon. Here are a few I took recently from Clevedon, looking out towards Wales, with the Victorian Pier center stage…(well coming in from the right anyway!)…its a fascinating story that surrounds the pier and its well worth following the link to read a bit more… This second shot is an HDR composite from two exposures, one for the highs, one for the lows. There are a great many HDR images ‘out there’ but they all seem to be heavily processed, I am not a fan of that sort of treatment and prefer to literally capture the range just beyond that of the camera to make up for its shortfalls rather than go far beyond any realistic image…but each to their own I suppose.
This final one is similar to the first but at a different position, I prefer the first (its now my desktop image on my new massive 24″ screen ) but the light in this is so great I just had to post it too!

Lastly, things are afoot on the website-front, I’m steadily redesigning it so there maybe a new look very soon (I hope!!)…

Three Lights

Hamish — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:36:18 +0000

Not much to add really. Lights, and there are three of them…

No straight lines…

Hamish — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 10:34:00 +0000

A simple concept; everything you design must have no straight lines…

Antonio GaudÃ was a Spanish, Catalan architect, who belonged to the Modernisme (Art Nouveau) movement and was famous for his unique style and highly individualistic designs. Throughout his life he was fascinated by nature, studying nature’s angles and curves and incorporating them into his designs. Instead of relying on geometric shapes, he mimicked the way trees and humans grow and stand upright.

I didn’t have time to go and find the Sagrada Familia unfortunately but that does give me a good excuse to return to Barcelona…

Old Friends

Hamish — Sat, 13 Oct 2007 11:20:07 +0000

In the center of Florence stand the trio of the Duomo (The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore), Campanile (bell tower) and Baptistry. Although there was scaffold over the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi this didn’t detract from its imposing stance over the city, completely dominating the sky-line for miles around. Seen from below I was just about able to fit the three buildings in the frame against a deep blue late summer sky…