Wednesday, September 24, 2008

In Charlotte, NC

Caged

This past weekend we went to Charlotte, North Carolina to see the Pompeii exhibit at the Discovery Place museum. It was a nice trip and the exhibit was quite interesting. I didn't take my camera inside the museum. However, we got to the museum before they opened, and I was able to spend some time trying out different kinds of shots from the top of the museum's parking garage. The shot above is taken from the pedestrian bridge that connects the museum and the parking garage. I thought the dark foreground, fence and bright, inviting background made for an interesting juxtaposition especially as it directly over the road below.

There are a few other photographs taken of the skyline and nearby buildings over on the Zenfolio gallery.

3 comments:

John Brainard said...

Very interesting! You left enough detail in the background to tell you're in a city and a few stories above the road, but not so much detail that the photo's just too busy to look at. It almost looks like you're looking through a screen at models of city buildings.

I've thought of taking my camera to the top of one of the many parking garages in the city I work in. I figured it would be a nice opportunity to get some interesting cityscape shots. I haven't yet, but might sometime soon.

Craig Lee said...

Thanks, John. One of the things that Joe McNally mentions in his book, The Moment It Clicks, is to "get your camera in to an interesting place". Something like that pedestrian bridge is quite unusual in regards to your typical city street photograph. Then you have to decide how you want to present it. I actually had to manually focus the camera on the fencing as the autofocus system wanted to ignore it and focus on the street.

The top levels of parking garages are usually a fairly accessible place to get different vantage points. I've shot from them a couple of times like at this gallery: http://www.zenfolio.com/Taallyn/p679578477/home.aspx Give it a try, especially with Autumn coming in now, the late afternoon light will start falling earlier and provide interesting shadow shapes.

John Brainard said...

Sorry I missed this!

The photos in that gallery are nice. I should grab a coworker one afternoon and go downtown to take some photos. With the change in colors, I imagine the city parks should be interesting to shoot. Thanks for the reminder that I need to do that soon.