Fotoeins Fotografie

location bifurcation, place vs. home

Posts from the ‘Night Photography’ category

Shantung Street, Portland Street, Mong Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong, fotoeins.com

Artificial light

Above/featured: Shantung St. at Portland St., in Mong Kok, Kowloon: Hong Kong – 12 Jun 2012 (450D).

Like many, my preference in photography is for as much natural light as possible. However, there are always exceptions, and a big one is the introduction and/or necessity of artificial light within a scene or picture. Over the course of my photographic journey, I’ve come across some wonderful examples of artificial lighting. I hope you enjoy the examples I’ve provided below, including (my love of) neon signage.

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Macy's, Bon Marche building, The Bon, Thanksgiving, holiday star, Seattle, Washington, USA, fotoeins.com

Seattle: Thanksgiving holiday star & fireworks

As a wae lad, I was fascinated by comparative branding and marketing, and that’s how I got to thinking about the differences and similarities between Canada’s Hudson’s Bay Company in greater Vancouver and the American Bon Marché in Bellingham and Seattle. But I don’t ever recall a tradition of lighting a star for October/Canadian Thanksgiving.

In downtown Seattle, a grand building opened in 1929 for the locally-owned Bon Marché department store, operating for over 7 decades until “The Bon” became Macy’s in 2005. A holiday star designed by Bob James in 1957 would become a fixture for the city and her residents. In September 2019, Macy’s declared the downtown Seattle location would be closing at the end of February 2020. At the time, the announcement included no plans for lighting the holiday star.

However, the star looks to be coming back for one more (final?) illumination, as a local lighting company agreed to refurbish and reassemble the star in time for the 2019 Thanksgiving season. Festivities occur Friday November 29, beginning with the annual Thanksgiving parade followed by the star’s lighting and fireworks.

•   MyNorthwest, 27 Nov 2019.

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Seattle: that tower again

Above/featured: from the base looking up – 10 Oct 2016.

“That Tower Again,” a three-word online phrase for the early 21st-century.

It’s a phrase I associate with Berlin and her TV Tower (Fernsehturm), and that comes with multiple stays and many months in the German capita, a city I feel very much at home (winters notwithstanding). With my return to the Canadian Southwest and near-proximity to Seattle, I reconsider my fondness for the city’s iconic landmark: the Space Needle observation tower. Sight of the tower hasn’t lost its allure since our first family visit in the late 1970s.

For the Seattle World Fair in 1962, construction of the Space Needle occurred over a mere 400 days in time for the “Century 21 Exposition”. The 605-foot (184 metre) tower stood for the spirit of innovation and the might of technology. The city of Seattle designated the tower as an official city landmark in 1999. Fast forward now into the 21st century, it’s unfathomable for resident and visitor alike to think about the Emerald City without its leading spire.

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Belvederegarten, Marmorsaal, Oberes Belvedere, Unteres Belvedere, Belevedere Museum, Belvedere Garten, Marble Hall, Upper Belvedere, Lower Belvedere, Vienna, Wien, Oesterreich, Austria, fotoeins.com

Vienna: urban frame (2018)

Above/featured: Belvedere Garden, north from Marble Hall in Upper Belvedere to Lower Belvedere and beyond to St. Stephen’s Cathedral at left-centre – 19 May.

It’s easy to reduce a city to stereotypes, distilling landmarks to short paragraph summaries designed for easy consumption.

Some might say: you’re making things too complicated; they’ve got to be simpler. That misguided sentiment needlessly and carelessly minimizes the diversity and complexity of a city, her people, and the infrastructure through which citizens reside, navigate, and thrive. Although I chased after traces of Otto Wagner throughout Vienna, I’m also interested in illuminating the city as reflections from past and present and as glimpses of resident and visitor.

Vienna is an exceptional city

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Chilehaus, Kontorhausviertel, UNESCO, Weltkulturerbe, World Heritage, Hamburg, Germany, fotoeins.com

Hamburg UNESCO WHS: Kontorhausviertel (Commercial District)

On 5 July 2015, UNESCO awarded World Heritage status to two sites in Hamburg: the Speicherstadt (Warehouse District) and the Kontorhausviertel (Office Building District). In the latter are two important brick buildings: Chilehaus and the Sprinkenhof, representative of the construction in the late 19th- and early 20th-century.

The Chilehaus was built by Fritz Höger for client Henry Sloman from 1922 to 1924 in the Kontorhausviertel as a prime example of German expressionist architecture using hard-fired brick. Höger undertook the project for Hamburg merchant and banker Sloman who made his fortune in importing nitrates from Chile. Built entirely to serve and complement the functions of the warehouses in neighbouring Speicherstadt, the Kontorhausviertel was the first dedicated office- and commercial-district on the European continent.

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