On a recent trip to New York City I had the opportunity to spend a little time outside the Guggenheim Museum. It was late in the day and I didn’t have the time to actually go inside so I decided to get some exterior shots. I’ve always been fond of the design of this museum and I wanted to capture some of its details. For me the two things that stand out about this museum is the unique inverted ziggurat he used as the main display area, and the typography used on the exterior lettering. The plain white concrete shapes with the simple black lettering really appeal to me. I was trying to capture something a bit more abstract than just a regular architectural shot so I played with different angles. I liked the angle on this shot, but the image was rather flat coming out of the camera. I used a few different tools in Lightroom 4 to help bring out the texture of the surface and to increase the contrast. Probably the change that had the most effect was bumping the clarity up to 100 while reducing the highlights and blacks.

I personally cannot get enough of the Chrysler Building in New York City. I’ve always loved this building and thought that it was far more attractive than the Empire State Building. I’m currently reading a book called “Height – A Race to the Sky and the Making of a City” by Neal Bascomb and it details the history of the building of the Chrysler Building along with 40 Wall Street and the Empire State Building. At the time there was enormous pressure to build the tallest building in the world and its fascinating to read about what went in to making this buildings. I’ve learned several things about the Chrysler Building, one of the more interesting tidbits is that Walter Chrysler funding the building personally, it wasn’t funded by Chrysler Corporation. Clearly the man had plenty of money. I think the things that I love about the Chrysler Building are all the wonderful Art Deco details. The metal work of the Eagles and the replicas of the 1929 Chrysler radiator caps are quite unique and I really like how they architect created the metal crown on top. It’s just a fabulous building.

One of the things I love about visiting New York City is all the wonderful architecture. Everywhere you look you can find buildings with interesting shapes and details. This image shows the clock face from the Woolworth Building. You can see from the picture the great detail work put in to creating this clock, details which most people would never see from the street. I especially like the detail work done with the tiles of the clock face.

This image shows some of the details of the Michigan Theater located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The theater was constructed and furnished by the Butterfield Company and opened to the public in 1928. Like many theaters built in the same time period, the architecture is ‘exotic’ with Moorish details. It was these details, especially the tiles, that I was trying to capture in this shot. I liked the way the blue tile and white domes looked in the bright light against the blue sky.

This shot shows some of the details of the Lenawee County Courthouse that was the subject of yesterday’s post. I shot this from directly in front of the building using my 70-300mm lens. Some of the key details are the patterns in the roofing shingles, the terra cotta reliefs and all the curves and arches.