Lux Fine Photography: Urban Landscape

Showing posts with label Urban Landscape. Show all posts

Wednesday, 18 May 2011

The Arts Quarter, Leicester

More of Leicester's architecture, this time a lovely building across from the Athena building, in the Arts Quarter. It houses a cinema I think, and a number of cafes etc. I liked how the building even though it was very modern didn't look too out of place in amongst the Deco, and Victorian buildings. Leicester is beginning to grow on me.

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.

Friday, 29 April 2011

Queen Victoria Memorial, London

I confess I didn't catch a train down to London to be with the b'squillions of other people lining the Mall and other streets for a glimpse of the happy couple and their royal entourage. Much like rugby games sometimes the best view is to be found on the small screen, from the comfort of your own couch, with a refillable glass of Pimms No.1. So I have no photos of the big day, instead this is Angel of Justice (I think), which can be found on the Queen Victoria Memorial, outside Buckingham Palace.

From Wikipedia:

"The Victoria Memorial is a sculpture in London, placed at the centre of Queen's Gardens in front of Buckingham Palace. It was unveiled in 1911, the sculptor being Sir Thomas Brock and completed with the installation of the final bronze statues in 1914. The surround was constructed by the architect Sir Aston Webb, from 2,300 tons of white marble. It is a Grade I listed building.

It has a large statue of Queen Victoria facing north-eastwards towards The Mall. The other sides of the monument feature dark patinated bronze statues of the Angel of Justice (facing north-westwards toward Green Park), the Angel of Truth (facing south-eastwards) and Charity facing Buckingham Palace. On the pinnacle, is Victory with two seated figures. The subsidiary figures were gifted by the people of New Zealand. The whole sculpture has a nautical theme, much like the rest of the mall (Admiralty Arch etc.). This can be seen in the mermaids, mermen and a hippogriff, all of which are suggestive of the United Kingdom's naval power. There is a similar memorial to her husband, Albert, the Prince Consort outside the Royal Albert Hall."

Friday, 22 April 2011

Spring Carnival, Upper Hutt

This lovely Punch and Judy show was part of the Upper Hutt 2010 Spring Carnival, both young and old(er) stopped and watched the puppet show. It was a great day out, the weather mostly held out and there were a lot of people out to see the stalls and listen to the various performers.

Tuesday, 19 April 2011

Panels

These iron panels caught my eye in Krakow, Poland. They covered the side of a building just oxidising in the sun. I liked that each panel was changing colour in it's own way, quiet chaos in a uniform kind of way.

Tuesday, 12 April 2011

I heart the Tate Modern

I love visiting the Tate Modern - I admit it is my favourite British Museum. I had just finished looking at one of the exhibitions and was walking past the balcony and saw these two admiring the view of the Thames, St Paul's Cathedral and over the Millennium Bridge. I snapped the shot and left them admiring the view and none the wiser.

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."

Friday, 8 April 2011

Jewish Memorial, Berlin

Perspective is a wonderful thing.

From Berlin.de:

"Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, located in Mitte on a stretch of the former “death strip”, where the Wall once stood near the Brandenburg Gate, is Berlin’s stunning monument to the Holocaust, dedicated to the Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide of World War II. Impressive in its awesome grey soberness, rather than sombreness, it includes an underground Ort der Information (Information Centre) located on the south-eastern side of the memorial grounds, accessible via two flights of stairs or a lift.  

The 800sqm Information Centre complements the abstraction of the memorial with personal documentation about individuals and families. This includes biographical details, recordings and information about memorial sites throughout Germany and Europe. Documenting the universal issue of genocide, the centre represents a central focus on the diverse memorial sites across Germany which stress the living memory aspect of remembrance. In Berlin an examples of this is the Stolpersteine (tripping stones) initiative – plaques on street pavements, usually outside the house’s main entrance, commemorating deported Jewish residents.  

It took 17 years for the Memorial to be completed in Berlin. Its foundation stone was a Bundestag resolution passed on June 25, 1999 to erect a Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. This was followed by years of discussion and deliberation, until the Monument was completed on May 8, 2005. US architect Peter Eisenmann conceived the winning design consisting of 2711 rectangular blocks of concrete laid out in grid formation, recalling tombstones. The monument is open day and night and it is possible to walk through the concrete slabs at one’s own pace. Visitors are not allowed to climb on them though, something which is particularly hard for younger visitors and small children to resist. The effect is that of inner dislocation in a destabilising maze as the ground is uneven and the blocks vary in height and size. An ideal setting for quiet contemplation."

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, 1 April 2011

Rooftops

I just liked the angles in this picture and the different tones.

Sunday, 20 March 2011

Willis St, Wellington

Out walking home late one Friday night, down Willis St towards Lambton Key, I looked up and stopped took a photo and continued on my way. This is one of the photos that the original was lost with the HD failed.

Wednesday, 16 March 2011

The River Liffey (An Life), Dublin

I visited Dublin last March - freezing cold but lots of interesting things to photograph. I really liked the River Liffey reflections - of which I took a number of pictures. This one I played with a bit - I like it tho'.

From Wikipedia:

"The Liffey (An Life in Irish) flows through the centre of Dublin. The river was previously named An Ruirthech, meaning "fast (or strong) runner". The word Liphe (or Life) referred originally to the name of the plain through which the river ran, but eventually came to refer to the river itself. The Liffey rises in the Liffey Head Bog between Kippure and Tonduff in the Wicklow mountains, forming from many streamlets. It flows for around 125 km (78 mi) through counties Wicklow, Kildare and Dublin before entering the Irish Sea at its mouth at the mid-point of Dublin Bay, on a line extending from the Baily lighthouse to the Muglin Rocks.

The earliest stone bridge over the Liffey of which there is solid evidence was the Bridge of Dublin (on the site of the current Fr. Mathew Bridge), built by the Dominicans in 1428, which survived well into the 18th century. This bridge with four arches included various buildings such as a chapel, bakehouse and possibly an inn and replaced an earlier wooden bridge (Dubhghalls Bridge) on the same site. Island Bridge (a predecessor of the current bridge) was added in 1577. With the development of commercial Dublin in the 17th century, four new bridges were added between 1670 and 1684: Barrack, or Bloody Bridge, (the forerunner of the current Rory O'More Bridge), Essex Bridge (Grattan Bridge), Ormond Bridge (O'Donovan Rossa Bridge) and Arran Bridge. The oldest bridge still standing is the Mellows Bridge, (originally Queens Bridge) constructed in 1764 on the site of the Arran Bridge, which was destroyed by floods in 1763. The first iron bridge was the elegant Ha'penny Bridge built in 1816. The newest bridge is the Samuel Beckett Bridge opened in December 2009. A suspension bridge, it swivels to allow river traffic to pass."

Sunday, 13 March 2011

Blarney Castle Guard Tower, Co. Cork

Sometimes just looking up gets you a good picture. This is me standing in the middle of the guard tower of Blarney Castle, Co. Cork, and looking up. I had dodge the drizzle but that was all good - not so good for weather for wearing jandals though.

From Wikipedia:

"Blarney Castle (Irish: Caisleán na Blarnan) is a medieval stronghold in Blarney, near Cork, Ireland, and the River Martin. Though earlier fortifications were built on the same spot, the current keep was built by the MacCarthy dynasty, Kings of Desmond, and dates from 1446. The noted Blarney Stone is found among the machicolations of the castle.

The castle originally dates from before AD 1200, when a wooden structure was believed to have been built on the site, although no evidence remains of this. Around 1210 A.D. this was replaced by a stone fortification.[1] It was destroyed in 1446, but subsequently rebuilt by Cormac Laidir MacCarthy, Lord of Muscry.

The castle was besieged during the Irish Confederate Wars and was seized in 1646 by Parliamentarian forces under Lord Broghill. However after the Restoration the castle was restored to Donough MacCarty, who was made 1st Earl of Clancarty. During the Williamite War in Ireland in the 1690s, the then 4th Earl of Clancarty (also named Donough MacCarty) was captured and his lands (including Blarney Castle) were confiscated by the Williamites.

The castle was sold and changed hands a number of times before being purchased by Sir James St. John Jefferyes. Members of the Jefferyes family would later build a mansion near the keep. This house was destroyed by fire however, and in 1874 a replacement baronial mansion - known as Blarney House - was built overlooking the nearby lake."

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."