Paramount theater…shh…
…this is the way to get into the theater the cheap way. All you need is a crowbar…and a DVD…and a projector…and sound syst…
You know what? This is no longer the cheap way into the theater.
Oh well…I tried.
How do you like your greys?
The architecture at SFU is evocative. It inspires double-takes and depression. Yeah, you heard me. Depression. It’s probably because it’s mostly concrete, which is grey, and at the top of a mountain, so it’s often covered in clouds that only exacerbate the grey-ness.
But it also inspires those double-takes. The “tunnel” above is a walkway leading from the Academic Quadrangle, featured in a photo two days ago, to the W.A.C. Bennett Library, featured in yesterday’s photo. During a sunny day, it is lit in all kids of angled lines and the light keeps shifting as the sun moves through the day. The entire Convocation Mall, the area you can see ahead through the tunnel, is lit in strange angles. At the right time of day, the shadows and light look like they were designed by M.C. Escher. Awe-inspiring.
This old house
is old and not very symmetrical.
I used to teach a course called Theory of Knowledge. During this course, students have to look at the hardest thing to see – things they’ve taken for granted. The obvious things in front of their faces. One of my favorite parts of the course was esthetics. There was little more entertaining than questioning the ideas of beauty, but also the widely held, completely non-critical idioms of our culture. Let’s try, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
In the case of the photo above, the most beautiful aspects are the fact that the hedge is in line with the bottom line of the porch, right below the bannister. I also like the matching windows on either side of the middle of the house, both upper and lower levels.
What takes away from this house’s beauty is the fact that the front door and the upper porch door are offset from center. Symmetry makes something beautiful. The other thing that really bothers me is that the lines of the house are shifting, probably due to the age of the house. I struggled to straighten the photo – played with cropping the photo – but realized, after a couple of minutes, that the lines of the house are not straight. The upper porch roofline is sagging and kept throwing off my eye.
Don’t get me wrong – I like the tension that creates. I also love old things and the shifting and off-center doors are a sign of the age of the house. Age can be beautiful. I do, however, think that there are certain rules about beauty, certain criteria to what is beautiful. Symmetry is one.
What are your criteria? And don’t be all politically correct. Be truthful.
Mmm…glowy
Apparently my imagination is fairly…uh…stumped today. I’ll save you the pain of trying to read my discombobulated thoughts and just post a photo for you.
Circles!
“Style is the mind skating circles around itself as it moves forward” – Robert Frost.
I’ve always loved Frost’s poetry and the image of circles like this brings me back to his imagery.
Give me that old time religion…
…and I’ll show you some cool old buildings.
Actually, I’ve never found a cool way to shoot the insides of these kind of buildings, but the outsides are always so nice.
What I particularly liked about this one was the sign hanging over the Community Center door. You can only see the tail end of the banner, but here’s what it said: ”God invented Chocolate – and other potential myths.” I thought that was particularly funny.
To be truthful, I liked the juxtaposition between the old church building and the new condominium building to its right. That’s why I shot this.
The leg. (Pronounced “ledge”)
This is the British Columbia Parliament Building, home of the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. It is…affectionately (?) known as “The Leg”. This is not, however, pronounced “leg”, as in the appendages of your body attached to the hip, extending down to your feet. It is pronounced “ledge”, as in legislature, legislative, jump off the ledge.
How can government be so…dumb…when they meet in a place like this?
This is the Legislature building in Victoria, BC. It is beautiful and old. Click on the photo above and you can see more detail.
It was built from 1893 to 1896. It is remarkable in its details.
So, my question is, “How can a group of individuals meet regularly in this amazing building and get nothing done?” Someone, or ones, spent a great deal of time and effort making sure that this place looks the way it does. The least we could do is elect people who are effective in their jobs, care about more than getting re-elected or avoiding criticism and are selfless civil servants.
Wow, I am feeling the rants tonight. Sorry. Enjoy the pretty building.
Via is the way to go. Or video games. Whatevs.
If you’ve never been to Canada, you might not know Via Rail. It’s kind of like Amtrak, only Canadian. It travels from the east coast to the west, right through the Rockies. Apparently it’s beautiful. I’ve always been curious to cross Canada this way. Enjoying the sights without having the pain of driving myself sounds awesome. Now, if only I had a giant wad of cash to get rid of.
BTW, if you check out the building at the bottom, it’s Electronic Arts in Montreal. Now that’s a way to transport yourself to another world for about $49.
WordPress Photo (Friday) Challenge: Texture (that’s Near)
Thank you WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge and Photo Friday for picking topics this week that could fit into one photo for me. Wordpress chose “Texture” and Photo Friday chose “Near”. I think this works for both. This was shot almost two months ago at the Alexandria Bridge in the Fraser Canyon of BC. I hope you like it.
A short lesson in depth of field
This was shot at an aperture of f3.5. It was shot on a kit lens, the Pentax-DA 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 AL II to be exact. It’s what comes with a Pentax K200D, and the lens that I bought for my K20D. This lens is a good lens for the money (about $100), but the lowest aperture is not particularly low. I have a Pentax A 50mm lens that has it’s biggest aperture at f1.7. That’s a low aperture.
But Marc, that’s a lower number but you wrote that the aperture was bigger. What gives? Well, the lower the number, the larger the aperture (opening). So what? The photo’s background, above, is somewhat out of focus, leaving the viewer with the sense of depth that would not occur had the entire photo been in focus. The lower the aperture, the less of the photo that is in focus, the more a sense of depth is felt by the viewer. Make sense?
If you want to have a little fun, mess with your aperture on your camera. Your photos will turn out differently than if you leave all of the work to your camera, and you might end up with a result that you like better than the automatic settings.
The late night post: Photo Friday’s all vertical today.
I went to Europe a couple of years ago and got to fulfill one of my architectural fantasy wishes: Sagrada Familia. I am amazed by this place. From the outside, the Nativity Facade, depicting the birth of Christ, looks like a giant, monstrous thing that may eat you if you stand too close to it. From the inside, the pillars that Gaudi (the architect, who died in 1926 before seeing his work finished) designed resemble giant trees. It’s not done, the construction I mean. In fact, the builders figure it should be done by 2026 – it was started back in 1882. If you have a chance to go see it, do.
The shot above is from one of the northeast spires. It is a dizzying height, but well worth the self-guided tour through the byzantine hallways and walkways and spiral staircases.
All is mostly well – here’s a new photograph
This is the ceiling of the Maggie Benston Center at Simon Fraser University. It houses the university’s bookstore, the Student Services center and a myriad of other student services. It is also where I’ll be marking exams again tomorrow. I’ve already marked for a day, but there’s at least two, maybe three days of marking left. The room in which I mark exams overlooks a large grassy area on which students lie around a suntan while I read the papers of a couple thousand students. I missed marking today (although, if I am completely honest, I didn’t miss it that much) due to a medical concern yesterday.
After nine hours in emergency, x-rays and blood tests, the doctor diagnosed a complication in my abdomen. After ruling out appendicitis and most likely ruling out a kidney stone, Doc decided that I’ve got a little (well, Large) intestine issue. So I’ll be eating a ton of fruit and drinking enough liquids to drown myself over the next couple of days and I’ll get it all sorted out.
Well, that was more personal than I meant it to be.
Photo Friday, three days late.
I have had no time to get out and shoot anything lately, so today I took off from work at 3:00 and went to a place where I find a nice feeling of nothingness. I was particularly frustrated today, as I have some 12th grade students who don’t seem to care at all about their final exam. It’s the last week of classes and the 12 grade English exam is worth 40% of the year’s mark. Yes, that’s stupid, or at least short sighted. But it’s the reality that my students have to deal with, or ignore, in the case of these girls. So I needed to find some zen nothingness. Empty my mind and concentrate on the void.
As for the photo, Photo Friday’s challenge this week is Shade. I thought this matched up with the challenge pretty well. I have yet to master HDR so I don’t try. I don’t love the super-bright foreground with the properly exposed middle ground and the over-exposed background, but the photo still captures what I love about this place.
WordPress Photo Challenge: Water
After pulling up photos from Quebec for yesterday’s photo, I was inspired to look through the rest of the photos from that week. I found this one, of the Pierre Laporte Bridge, and then read that this week’s WordPress Photo Challenge was water. So, again, WordPress’ challenge and Photo Friday have worked together to bring up two photos from my library that coincide with on another.
It’s almost like they’ve planned this.
Architectural Beauty
This beauty once belonged to the Canadian Military. Now, it houses a presentation center for a housing development. I’m particularly enamored of the symmetry and the old trees. Whoever did this bit of landscaping did a great job.
When I see this type of old school architecture and landscaping, it makes me wish I had more money to put into my own landscaping.
There comes a time in a man’s life…
…when to get where he has to go – if there are no doors or windows he has to walk through a wall. (Malamud)
This is a Valentine’s Day post that has little to do with love. It does, however, have a lot to do with an old window and how I’m feeling right now. It seems that I’m walking through more walls than walking through doors or climbing through windows. Huh…
The AQ; or why SFU architecture is really cool
Okay. I know. Yesterday I wrote about how much I hate the depression caused by all the concrete on the SFU campus. But I am large enough to contain contradictions. But there are introductions to be made, so…here goes.
Everyone, this is the AQ. AQ, this is everyone. Well, not everyone, but a bunch of people who are nice enough to read my blog.
AQ stands for the Academic Quadrangle. On the left, you’ll notice there is some water. That water extends all along the west end of the AQ. In that water live a school (pun intended) of koi fish. Also, there are some chairs and a safety cone, but those are probably not supposed to be there. To the right is a bronze statue of Terry Fox, a Canadian hero. The two stories of the AQ you can see in this photo are classrooms. The all have a great view of the quadrangle itself, except for the corner classrooms, which have an outside view. What you can’t see are the two floors of classrooms, lecture halls, theaters and museums that are underground in roughly the same shape as the quadrangle you see here. It’s pretty cool.
One bit of personal trivia: you’re looking north toward the Education department, which is where I spent the summer of 1999 while attending class in my PDP year. Pretty cool, I know.
BTW, if you click on the photo above (a panorama made up of three individual frames) you’ll get a larger view that might add some details.
Notre Dame in Black and White
I was going through my photos from Montreal and found this one. It’s hard to believe that I haven’t posted this. I found Mary’s halo of stars quite interesting. I’ve not seen a great number of Catholic churches – I mean, I’ve been to Italy and seen more than my share – but I’ve not seen a church with a facade that looks like this. It’s simple and beautiful, and Mary has stars. I’m sorry. I can’t get over this. Does anyone know what it means?
