TOM MACKIE ARTICLES
July 2009 Photo Insight
I've loved the work of Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry for many years. He designed the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, USA, pictured here. I love the sweeping staircase and the way the shapes fold into each other. The Concert Hall was completed in 2003 and I photographed it about a year after completion.
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August 1 2009 Photo Insight
When I first saw the City of Arts and Sciences building, I thought it was an incredible design. I knew straightaway I had to photograph it. The entertainment complex is a series of buildings situated at the end of the Turia riverbed in Valencia, Spain. Designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, construction on the site began in 1996 and the entire complex was completed in 2005. This is a section of the El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia opera house.
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August 29 2009 Photo Insight
The are many interesting angles to take photographs from the City of Arts and Sciences leisure complex in Valencia, Spain. The complex, which was designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela and completed in 2005, consists of several buildings. In AP 1 August, I talked about an image I had taken of the El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia opera house and this is the same building but photographed from underneath an adjacent bridge. From this angle I could create a dynamic sweeping shape in my image.
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September 26 2009 Photo Insight
Finding this scene was a pure fluke. I had been photographing the City Hall, a Spanish-style domed building in the middle of Tucson, Arizona and out of the corner of my eye I saw a flash of colour. With my interest piqued, I thought I'd go and investigate.
I stumbled across this business complex called La Placita that was built in the traditional Adobe style (made from sand and clay) and painted with these bright colours. It was incredible. I started wandering around looking for interesting details and paying particular attention to the way the light was hitting the building. I found this unassuming stairwell and started taking some pictures. What attracted me to the scene was the light streaming thought the stairs, bouncing of the wall and creating these striking diagonal lines.
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October 2009 Photo Insight
The Gherkin in London, like many landmark buildings, is difficult to photograph because it is so iconic. The familiar triangle shapes of the windows and the conical structure are so well known you can spot them a mile off. Because the Gherkin has been photographed many times and from numerous angles, it requires a bit of thought to come up with something original. I'd photographed the London skyline with the Gherkin in the distance before, but I thought it would be interesting to juxtapose a contrasting building in front of it. The building in front is much older looking, although I' not sure if it is genuinely old or has been made to look this way.
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November 21 2009 Photo insight
I found this scence by pure luck during a photography trip to the Amalfi Coast in Italy. It was pouring with rain one day, so I decided to have a look inside a nearby hotel in a town called Ravello. The weather was abysmal, so I wandered around the hotel to see if I could find anything interesting to photograph. I went up one of the back staircases and stumbled across this winding set of steps. It was an incredible design, and the shapes and patterns fitted together in such a fascinating way it jumped out at me.
Scenes with lots of shapes and patterns can be tricky to compose because therer are so many contrasting elements. When I look through the viewfinder I'm constantly editing within my eye and asking myself, 'Would this look good another way?' or 'Should I edit that out?'
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December 26 2009 Photo Insight
All too often, converging verticals get a bad reputation. In a bid to replicate reality, many photographers try to prevent this optical occurrence either by photographing from a high vantage point, or positioning themselves further away and using a longer focal length to reduce the amount the camera needs to be tilted.
Sometimes, though, embracing the very thing you are trying to avoid reaps huge rewards, as I discovered when photographing Madrid's famous KIO Towers, also known as the Puerta de Europa towers or Gate of Europe. The two identical bulldings commissioned by the Kuwait Investment Office (KIO) in the mid-1990's. You can see the reflection of the other building in the glass.
Designed by American architects Philip Johnson and John Burgee, the buildings, each more than 100 metres tall and tilting at a 15° angle, are positioned at the northern end of the Castellana Avenue, either side of the Plaza Castilla in Madrid.
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