fourpointedstar

As you fly over the midwest, you can see a patchwork of farmland, roads, and rivers creating right angles and natural curves across the earth. Perhaps that’s why I enjoy this photo so much, it reminds me of the mixture of manmade and natural shapes. The weathered run off from the rivets just adds a little pizazz too.

As the sun faded in and out of the cloud cover throughout our walk around the museum, the colors of the metal would change. The building would reflect the blues, yellows, and greys in the sky and then my Sony would attempt to record those colors as photographs. As I was editing the images, I found so many fun and fantastic color combinations; in this image, you can see the golds, coppers, and silvers as well as the grey, blue, and yellow in the clouds.

I struggled with editing this image. I love the composition, but getting the dark and light not too dark and not too light was a challenge; and I still don’t think I’ve got it right. The light parts just aren’t light enough, and I’ve always struggled with getting monochrome images to have nice lighter parts of the image without having just a texture-less white space. Each photograph teaches us a lesson and often that lesson is “you have a lot more to learn.”

I love the warble of reflected lines in glass, but it brought a smile to my face to discover the same thing happens with metals. The straight lines of the fantastic red-ish hues stand out against the reflected copper lines. I’ve photographed this exact phenomena in many windows but finding it present in steel was simply wonderful.

Unlike most of Frank Ghery’s most famous buildings, the Museum of Pop Culture is not simply shades of shimmering silver. The building has 5 or 6 unique segments in different colors, each segment with his signature curves and waves. Shadows and reflections wandered across each curve and surface, combining to form a lasting smile across my face.

This pigeon has decided that sitting on the top of this metal cloud is a great way to interrupt my photo. At first I was annoyed, but now I enjoy the tiny interruption – almost like it’s Monty Python’s French Taunter in the castle castle threatening “I blow my nose at you!”

Ghery’s architectural works stand out in any skyline. The multiple colors, textures, and waves on the Museum of Pop Culture exhibit a wonderful feast of the eyes. While many of his buildings and designs are similar to the Pritzker Pavilion here in Chicago – mostly uniform in color – the Seattle design has multiple treatments and colors for the sheet metal. As we walked around the exterior, I found dozens and perhaps hundreds of potential abstracts, and after editing, here are a few that stood out as spectacular.

As you walk away from the Seattle Space Needle, you’re treated to the chrome and copper variations in the anodized metal. The waves and variations reminded me of a patchwork quilt that has been tossed on the couch; almost as if the wind had blown the building into that particular spot in Seattle’s downtown.

When you go on vacation there are typically photos that you know about before hand, but this photo, I don’t think I could have anticipated even if someone had mentioned it before our trip.
If you stand on the loading platform for the Bainbridge Ferry you can see this one tree that is missing in the treelike along Wing Point. But the windows along the platform are highly reflective; all of them except for the one window that allows you to line up the Space Needle with the empty spot in the treeline.

…view older images with the thumbnails below…

If someone asked me what my favorite image is from any given trip, I might have difficulty pointing to a singular image. But for the Seattle trip in October, this is “The Image”; I’m not even sure why. I simply love this photo – the entire trip was a photographic adventure, but this image stands above all the others in my mind.

I suppose at this point, I’m kind of known for my “reflection distorted in glass” photos, but I really love this one. The monochrome makes the textures and details really stand out, and I absolutely love the architectural elements of the building as well.

Kerry Park was on several Youtube “must see” lists for Seattle, and you can see why. It offers a wonderful view of the skyline, and, on a clear day, a pretty great view of Mount Ranier.

However, don’t plan to spend an afternoon there! There’s only street parking, and I think there are maybe 10 benches to sit on. Sarah and I had an afternoon planned for this park; oh well, it gave us a chance to see other sights instead!