Modern Architecture

Week 21

I took this photograph on the way home this evening. With a few exceptions, when I photograph architecture it is historic or classical in nature. Among the exceptions are the Sydney Opera House .

Actually, I've photographed this location on Stephen Avenue in Calgary before and posted it here on my other blog. Modern architecture, like all architecture, is art in it's own right. Curves and free flowing shapes seem to be in vogue now. I think they tend to photograph well at night.

This shot was made with a Nikon D3 and AF-S Nikkor 14-24mm 1:2.8G ED lens. The camera was in aperture priority mode at f/3.5 and the ISO fixed at 800. The D3 has very little noise at ISO 800. I probably could have opened the lens all the way up to 2.8 but there was enough light to stop it down a little. It was right after the sun set but there was enough light in the sky to make it electric blue. I bracketed the exposure plus and minus one stop off of what the meter indicated. The one that I selected was right where the camera thought would be best at 1/20 second. Focal length is 15mm to capture everything and focus is on the giant Christmas decoration. I braced on a barricade to keep the camera steady as I didn't have a tripod with me.

In post I cropped to 8x10 and used the lab mode to increase contrast and saturation.

Idea based on Architecture with Attitude, pages 10-13, in the book 50 Photo Projects, by Lee Frost.