There’s a trend for many modern buildings to have a central atrium. Some examples are open spaces, others are internal atria. The Guardian Media group – publishers of the Guardian and Observer newspapers – is housed in Kings Place at King’s Cross, London. As well as its publishing business, this building is also home to a thriving Arts Centre including art galleries and a concert hall. Externally this building has a dramatic rippled façade. At it’s centre there is a tall internal atrium. Light floods into the atrium through cleverly designed glass-walled walkways that link sections of the building at every level.
Standing in the atrium, that houses a cafeteria, you can watch employees crossing over from one office block to another – silhouetted against the sky. It’s my type of picture.
It’s almost a surreal picture, where the employee and his reflection you have captured looks like cut-out boards. A great study of lines, lights and shapes. The person is really what makes this photo stand out, breaking the patterns of the building structure as a counterpoint.
Thanks very much Otto. You are so right. Without the figure, the picture is dead. I was lucky. Using a compact with the inevitable delay creates problems when shooting this sort of shot.
Wonderful capture Andy. I love the light and lines 🙂
Many thanks Norma
Great lines and silhouetting Andy. It is definitely in your sweet spot.
Thanks Len. It was a question of being patient and catching the shot. Shutter lag included
Yes, great catch with the timing. Very interesting.
Thanks for commenting, Rob.
It’s wonderful catching singular people in such settings…it does add so much to the photo. Very nice, Andy.
Thanks Scott. My daughter works quite close to this building and I drifted in after one of our lunch time meetings. I had seen the potential before but had never previously hung around waiting for the image to ‘happen’.
That person is framed so well it almost looks staged. Great shot, Andy. I’m also impressed with the cropping. We see a lot of 16:9 horizontal format but not usually in the vertical format. The subject matter is perfect for it, though.
Don’t tell anyone, but the man moved in processing. In the original (thanks to the shutter lag on the G10) he marginally overlapped the upright ‘pole’ immediately to his right. So I shifted in marginally to the left. There was also quite a bit of work to get the uprights in this image correct (using Transform in Photoshop). Lens correction was just not up to the job. Thanks for your comment by the way, Ken
Quintessential Lenscaper! Nice job.
That’s very kind of you, Linda. Thank you!
Very nice Andy! I like the vertical format too, and that you have not shrunk it to fit on the screen (mine anyway), but made it so we have to scroll by, rather like we are moving our heads to look up and down a tall wall.
I thought this might prove awkward for some folk. On a Mac you can shrink the screen view! But without the height you lose the concept of the people high up moving around the building.
Not awkward at all, but suitable. On a PC you use ctrl- and ctrl+ to shrink and enlarge the screen view, and I did that too just to see it in one piece, but scrolling through seems more effective to me.
Really wonderful, Andy! I love the natural light at play in this shot, and the person on the walkway adds great natural artistic tension here!
There’s no picture without the person – a point I am sure n which we are agreed, Toad. Many thanks for commenting.