Glass

We went on a touristy architectural boat tour of Chicago focused mostly on the big glass and steel towers of downtown. I think because glass reflects its surroundings, it’s an easy way for an architect to say their building fits in its environment. Click on any of the images below to see them all enlarged.

Ariel East

100th St and Broadway, New York

Another image from September 2007. The Ariel East and Ariel West were 2 brand new skyscraper apartment buildings that went up across Broadway from one another causing some controversy at the time, with posters decrying the “monsters in our midst.”

Brussels Central Administration

Massive map on a sheet of glass on either side of the building. For some context, see the picture below:

Brussels, Belgium

Broken Glass

Farnham, Surrey

Garry Winogrand is reported to have said that he photographed things to see what they would look like in a photograph. Sometimes you see something that just looks interesting or treats light in a special way and you just have to see if somehow you can capture some quality of the light that has struck you. Such was the effect this broken glass in a vacant store window had on me. Is it a punctum (pricking my individual interest only), or a studium (of more general photographic interest)?

Lightboxes

As mentioned in the last post, these are some glass sculptures outside the Lightbox in Woking. I took photographs through them of my classmate, Reeve (who kindly agreed), and myself on the evening of our private viewing of The Gathering (see the Exhibition page for more info.)

Glass

The Lightbox, Woking, UK

On 31st January we held a private viewing of our UCA Photography MFA student work, The Gathering (you can see information about it now on the Exhibitions page). On the way out, in the evening, I stopped to photograph these glass sculptures with variable colored lighting in the entrance park. I couldn’t find any information about them.

Green Glass

Leicester Street, London

I met my classmate, Naoto, at the Centre for British Photography and we went to a bustling, crowded Chinese restaurant he knew where, after a wait, we were directed to a table on the 2nd floor (3rd floor to Americans) and I saw this out the window.

Polaroid?

I booked time in the studio to practice with my new (old) Pentax 645N II film camera. I didn’t really have anything important in mind to shoot but I wanted to get time playing with the lights and learning to use the camera. In order to test the exposures I was metering for, before shooting with the expensive film I shot with my digital camera, set to the same ISO, shutter speed, aperture and equivalent focal length. In olden times, a studio photographer might have shot a polaroid in the same way.