Lux Fine Photography: Colour

Showing posts with label Colour. Show all posts

Wednesday, 25 May 2011

Canary Wharf, London

I have a new favourite place in London - Canary Wharf. Lots and lots of glass, interesting architecture, skyscrapers, and reflections galore. The Canary Wharf Underground Station is a masterpiece in itself - has a very Metropolis feeling to it, and is a very deep hole in the ground! This building is the HSBC building on a Friday afternoon when all the suits were hard at work.

From Wikipedia:

"Canary Wharf is built on the site of the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs. From 1802, the area was one of the busiest docks in the world. By the 1950s, the port industry began to decline, leading to the docks closing by 1980. Canary Wharf itself takes its name from No. 32 berth of the West Wood Quay of the Import Dock. This was built in 1936 for Fruit Lines Ltd, a subsidiary of Fred Olsen Lines for the Mediterranean and Canary Island (Insula Canaria (from canis) "Island of Dogs") fruit trade. At their request, the quay and warehouse were given the name Canary Wharf.

Today Canary Wharf is a major business district located in London, United Kingdom. It is one of London's two main financial centres, alongside the traditional City of London, and contains many of the UK's tallest buildings, including the second tallest (and tallest completed), One Canada Square. Canary Wharf contains around 14,000,000 square feet (1,300,000 m²) of office and retail space, of which around 7,900,000 square feet (734,000 m²) is owned by Canary Wharf Group. Around 90,000 people work in Canary Wharf and it is home to the world or European headquarters of numerous major banks, professional services firms and media organisations including Barclays, Citigroup, Clifford Chance, HSBC, KPMG, Skadden and Thomson Reuters."

Monday, 9 May 2011

Mary Gauthier @ The Musician, Leicester

We went to see Mary Gautier last night at The Musician in Leicester. She really was awesome, wonderful musician. She was accompanied by Tania Elizabeth and Dave Glover. Tania Elizabeth was on fiddle, and was fantastic, really into the music, and a great accompaniment to Mary Gautier. Dave Glover was an Irish guy who is currently working in Nashville. He was good, I think he has potential, but MG outclassed him by miles. I would say go see them all if they are in the area.

From Wikipedia:

"Gauthier was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. Given up at birth by a mother she never knew, Gauthier was adopted by an Italian Catholic couple in Thibodaux, Louisiana. At age 15, she ran away from home, and spent the next several years in drug rehabilitation, halfway houses, and living with friends; she spent her 18th birthday in a jail cell. Struggling to deal with being adopted and her sexuality, she used drugs and alcohol. These experiences provided fodder for her songwriting later on. Spurred on by friends, she enrolled at Louisiana State University as a philosophy major, dropping out during her senior year.

After attending the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, she opened a Cajun restaurant in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood, Dixie Kitchen (also the eponymous title of her first album). Mary ran, and cooked at, the restaurant for eleven years. She was arrested for drunk driving opening night, July 12, 1990, and has been sober ever since. After achieving sobriety, she was driven to dedicate herself full-time to songwriting, and embarked upon a career in music. She wrote her first song at age 35.

She sold her share in the restaurant to finance her second album, Drag Queens in Limousines, in 2000. The summer of the release of this album, she was invited to play 11 major folk festivals, including the Newport Folk Festival. Drag Queens in Limousines won in The 1st Annual Independent Music Awards for Best Folk/Singer-Songwriter Song, and she was nominated for Best New Artist of the year by the Boston Music Awards. She was nominated for three GLAMA awards ( Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards) and won best country artist of the year. In 2002 her third album,"Filth and Fire" was named "Best Indy CD of the year" by Jon Pareles of The New York Times, in 2002.

She moved to Nashville, Tennessee in 2001 and secured a publishing deal with Harlan Howard Songs, then secured a record deal with Lost Highway , a division of Universal Music, in 2003. Her first major label release, in 2005, Mercy Now was on the top 10 list for the year in dozens of publications, including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Daily News, and Billboard Magazine. She was awarded "New Artist of the Year" by The Americana Music Association the same year. Mercy Now was voted the #6 Record of the Decade by No Depression Magazine. Her second Lost Highway release, "Between Daylight and Dark" appeared in September 2007. She has had her songs recorded by numerous artists, including Jimmy Buffett, Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, Bill Chambers and Candi Staton. Her latest release is called The Foundling and was released by Razor and Tie Records in 2010. It was named the #3 Record of the Year in the LA Times by music writer Randy Lewis."

Monday, 2 May 2011

Spring has sprung!

I took this as the sun was setting and we were on the final leg of our evening walk through a field full of lovely flowers. I liked the movement in this shot, I tweaked it a bit with a golden yellow filter, the flowers were yellow to start with so it just deepened it a little. I think it works.

Saturday, 30 April 2011

Kinsale, Co. Cork

He was so cute just sitting out on the step, and so well behaved as he never moved off the step, even though he would have been straight on to the road and away if he had. If this dog had been anything like my childhood Australian Terrier it would have been away and gone just as the door opened a crack.

Monday, 25 April 2011

Botanic Gardens, Wellington

Springtime in Wellington, New Zealand is pretty special. The Wellington Botanic Gardens plant many, many tulip bulbs (approximately 25,000), and wait for the spring growth to pop up and bloom. Garden beds full of tulips looking gorgeous with their many colours. Of course they have many other plants, flowering and non-flowering, they have many fine rose bushes as well. Well worth a visit!

Monday, 11 April 2011

Mount Saint Bernard Abbey, Leicestershire

A twelve km hike there and back from our place, it was a lovely day for it though. The church itself is very functional for me and very much what you see is what you get. Which I think is fine it is a functioning church and monastery - lovely place for a picnic, which we saw a number of families doing on the large green spaces.

From Wikipedia:

"Mount St Bernard's Abbey was founded in 1835 on 222 acres (0.90 km²) of land given by Ambrose de Lisle, who wanted to re-introduce monastic life to the country. He was helped by a loan from Bishop Thomas Walsh, the Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District. At first, the monks lived in a four-roomed cottage but later domestic buildings and a chapel were built. The first monks were Augustine, Luke, Xavier, Cyprian, Placid, Simeon and Fr. Odilo Woolfrey. The first monastery was opened in 1837, designed by William Railton. The permanent monastery, as it stands today, was completed in 1844 with donations from John Talbot, the 16th earl of Shrewsbury, and other benefactors. It was designed by Augustus Pugin, who offered his services free. In 1848, it was granted the status of an abbey by Pope Pius IX and its first abbot was appointed, Dom Bernard Palmer. It was united with the Cistercian congregation by a papal brief in 1849.

In 1856 a reformatory school for young Catholic delinquents was founded at Mount Saint Bernard. It closed in 1881 after several episodes of disorder, but re-opened temporarily in 1884-5 to house boys who had burnt and sunk their own reformatory ship moored in the Mersey. The abbey suffered from financial problems and a lack of monks joining the community through the nineteenth century. This improved in the twentieth century and the church was extended between 1935 and 1939, although it was not consecrated until 1945, by the Bishop of Nottingham. Blessed Cyprian Michael Iwene Tansi was a monk at the abbey from 1950 until his death in 1964.

The monks get up at 3.15am every day and go to bed at 8.00 pm. The three focuses of monastic life at Mount St Bernard's Abbey are prayer, work and reading with study. They take part in daily liturgical prayer, known as Opus Dei or Canonical Hours. They meditatively read the Bible, which is called Lectio Divina. Silence and solitude are very important to the order and the abbey. Their work includes running their 200-acre (0.81 km²) dairy farm, pottery, bookbinding, beekeeping and tending the vegetable garden and orchard. They also run a gift shop where they sell the items that they make in the abbey. The abbey has a guesthouse for friends and family of the monks, retreatants and those who are interested in the monastic life."

Wednesday, 6 April 2011

Pretty, Pretty Sainsbury's

Hottest day of the year so far! Sainsbury's is not really somewhere where you'd think of funky dunky squares of coolness - but what do I know? I liked how almost every window pane was showing something different, even when they were reflecting the same object.

Sunday, 3 April 2011

Berlin Wall, Berlin

Well a piece of the wall anyway, placed between an aging Soviet Union flag, a tourist shop and Checkpoint Charlie - art is where you find it. I liked the abstract expressionist feel it had to it. It's funny I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall, it is the first major world event that I can remember being consciously aware of - seeing people hacking pieces off it and sitting on top of it, concurring the fear of all it represented. A kinda cool moment in the scheme of things.

From Wikipedia:

"The Berlin Wall (German: Berliner Mauer) was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin. The barrier included guard towers placed along large concrete walls, which circumscribed a wide area (later known as the "death strip") that contained anti-vehicle trenches, "fakir beds" and other defenses. The Soviet-dominated Eastern Bloc officially claimed that the wall was erected to protect its population from fascist elements conspiring to prevent the "will of the people" in building a socialist state in East Germany. However, in practice, the Wall served to prevent the massive emigration and defection that marked Germany and the communist Eastern Bloc during the post–World War II period.

The Berlin Wall was officially referred to as the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart" (German: Antifaschistischer Schutzwall) by GDR authorities, implying that neighbouring West Germany had not been fully de-Nazified. The West Berlin city government sometimes referred to it as the "Wall of Shame" – a term coined by mayor Willy Brandt – while condemning the Wall's restriction on freedom of movement. Along with the separate and much longer Inner German border (IGB) that demarcated the border between East and West Germany, both borders came to symbolize the "Iron Curtain" between Western Europe and the Eastern Bloc.

Before the Wall's erection, 3.5 million East Germans circumvented Eastern Bloc emigration restrictions and defected from the GDR, many by crossing over the border from East Berlin into West Berlin, from where they could then travel to West Germany and other Western European countries. Between 1961 and 1989, the wall prevented almost all such emigration. During this period, around 5,000 people attempted to escape over the wall, with estimates of the resulting death toll varying between 100 and 200.

In 1989, a radical series of political changes occurred in the Eastern Bloc, associated with the liberalization of the Eastern Bloc's authoritarian systems and the erosion of political power in the pro-Soviet governments in nearby Poland and Hungary. After several weeks of civil unrest, the East German government announced on 9 November 1989 that all GDR citizens could visit West Germany and West Berlin. Crowds of East Germans crossed and climbed onto the wall, joined by West Germans on the other side in a celebratory atmosphere. Over the next few weeks, a euphoric public and souvenir hunters chipped away parts of the wall; the governments later used industrial equipment to remove most of the rest. The fall of the Berlin Wall paved the way for German reunification, which was formally concluded on 3 October 1990."

Friday, 25 March 2011

Flutterbies, Natural History Museum, London

They were just kinda cool. Because some things just are.

Tuesday, 22 March 2011

Yay! Spring is finally here!

I haven't seen a Spring since April of 2009 due to my globetrotting habits and just bad timing. So this year I am determined to have a lovely Spring and blistering hot Summer even if I have to go somewhere on the Algarve to do so!

Thursday, 17 March 2011

Happy St. Patricks Day!

I took this in 2009 at the St Patricks Day Parade and Market in Cork, Co. Cork. He had a lovely wig and didn't mind posing for me either. It was a nice day out with so many people on the Grand Parade and no showers, even a little bit of sunshine!

Saturday, 12 March 2011

Royal Festival Hall, London

The way this building and others on the South Bank were lit up was very cool. I just liked the pretty colours in the night sky. The South Bank is pretty touristy even on chilly nights. Still the lights passed the time while waiting for the bus to arrive.

From Wikipedia:

"The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected (in April 1988). The London Philharmonic Orchestra performs the majority of its London concerts in the hall.

The foundation stone was laid in 1949 by Clement Attlee, then Prime Minister, on the site of the former Lion Brewery, built in 1837. The original plan was that Arturo Toscanini would conduct the opening concerts, but he was unwell, and the inaugural concerts were conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent and Sir Adrian Boult. The hall was the venue for the 1960 Eurovision Song Contest, hosted by Katie Boyle. The first general manager was T E Bean who contributed greatly to the early success of the Festival Hall.

The hall's design is unashamedly Modernist, the Festival's commissioning architect (Hugh Casson) having taken the decision to appoint only young architects. It was designed by Leslie Martin, Peter Moro and Robert Matthew from the LCC's Architects' Department; Martin was just 39 when he was appointed to lead the design team in late 1948. Martin designed the structure as an 'egg in a box', a term he used to describe the separation of the curved auditorium space from the surrounding building and the noise and vibration of the adjacent railway viaduct. Sir Thomas Beecham used similar imagery, calling the building a 'giant chicken coop'.

The building was substantially altered in 1964 by adding the foyers and terraces to the river side of the building and more dressing rooms to the rear. Alterations to the facades facing the river removed the playful Scandinavian Modernism of the building's primary public face in favour of a plainer and hard-edged style. The building's original entrance sequence was much compromised by these changes and the later additions of raised concrete walkways around the building to serve the neighbouring Queen Elizabeth Hall, Purcell Room and The Hayward, built in 1967/8 and also part of Southbank Centre.

The building underwent a substantial renovation between 2005 and 2007 led by Allies and Morrison Architects aimed at improving the poor acoustics (which Simon Rattle said made performers 'lose the will to live'), production access and flexibility of the auditorium and the general quality of fabric, entrance spaces and cafe and the layouts of the foyers. The interior of the concert hall space was almost entirely intact until this re-modelling, which saw its stage canopy and walls rebuilt in plainer more rectangular forms. This was carried out in the face of opposition from conservationists, led by the Twentieth Century Society. While musicians report improvements in their own experience of the acoustic from the stage perspective, some audience members report disappointment that renovations have failed to improve the acoustics of the hall, largely due to conservation imperatives which are noted by the acoustic developers."