Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, 2023.
Highly educated pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/52977939495
#photography
Captured with the Rodenstock 50mm Digaron lens and about 13mm of vertical shift to maintain the geometry (but several architectural features - setbacks and tapers in the building design - still make it appear to converge toward the top).
Pittsburgh's 42 story "Cathedral of Learning" houses offices and classrooms for the University of Pittsburgh. Completed in 1937, it took 11 years to construct. It remains the tallest academic building in the US.
The lobby is also gorgeous, and worth a visit.
Cathedral of Learning, University of Pittsburgh, 2023.
Highly educated pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/52977939495
#photography
My policy of declining when creepy billionaires offer me rides on their private jets to visit their secluded Caribbean underage sex islands is starting to pay off.
Union Square West between 16th and 17th Streets in Manhattan is home to five distinctive and variously historically significant narrow mid-rise buildings.
The quirky Decker Building (2nd from left, at 33 Union Square West) is now chiefly residential with a retail ground floor storefront. From 1967-1973 the building housed Andy Warhol's "Factory" studio, where, in 1968, he was famously and nearly fatally shot by an irate Valarie Solanas. The neighborhood was more colorful back then.
If you're doing architectural or cityscape photography, it's helpful to have a working understanding of zero, one, two, and three point perspective (normally taught to draftspeople, illustrators and painters).
This photo is an example of (mostly) one point perspective (depth), and I was mostly thinking of Vermeer's Little Street when I composed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Street
Captured with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 Digaron-W lens (@ f/6.3), Phase One XT IQ4-150 camera. 12mm vertical shift to maintain geometry.
This is a straightforward head-on single point perspective view of the facades of the varied buildings on this block just after sunrise. It took some time to line up the camera to be parallel to the faces of the buildings, once again making architectural photography be something of an exercise in surveying.
Union Square West between 16th and 17th Streets in Manhattan is home to five distinctive and variously historically significant narrow mid-rise buildings.
The quirky Decker Building (2nd from left, at 33 Union Square West) is now chiefly residential with a retail ground floor storefront. From 1967-1973 the building housed Andy Warhol's "Factory" studio, where, in 1968, he was famously and nearly fatally shot by an irate Valarie Solanas. The neighborhood was more colorful back then.
31-41 Union Square West, NYC, 2024.
All the pixels, with convenient access to several subway lines, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53731622110
#photography
Captured with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 Digaron-W lens (@ f/6.3), Phase One XT IQ4-150 camera. 12mm vertical shift to maintain geometry.
This is a straightforward head-on single point perspective view of the facades of the varied buildings on this block just after sunrise. It took some time to line up the camera to be parallel to the faces of the buildings, once again making architectural photography be something of an exercise in surveying.
31-41 Union Square West, NYC, 2024.
All the pixels, with convenient access to several subway lines, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53731622110
#photography
I hope Trump lives long enough to see his name unceremoniously removed from all the things he pasted it on.
Also I hope I live long enough to see that.
I hope Trump lives long enough to see his name unceremoniously removed from all the things he pasted it on.
Captured with the Rodenstock 138mm/6.5 HR Digaron-SW lens (@ f/8), Phase One IQ4-150 back (@ ISO 50, 1/30 sec), vertically shifted 15mm.
The Rodenstock 138mm/6.5 has a floating internal element that has to move as it's focused. It has to be focused with a helical ring (like an SLR lens) that moves the focus and the internal element together, rather than simply by moving it back and forth with a bellows. This makes the lens big, heavy, and cumbersome (not to mention spendy), but it's very sharp.
The glass curtain grid and distorted reflection of midtown reminded me of Saul Bass's iconic title sequence for North By Northwest (and imitated in Mad Men's credits), though this is across town. Hitchcock's opening also employed a somewhat different perspective, looking downward, and at a sharper angle. Here, our focus is on the impressionistically rendered Times Square skyline rather than on the street below.
Matt Blaze