Looking Up #5 – La Tour Eiffel

Going for Gold

Here is a glimpse into my blog post that I will be posting early September (put it in your diaries now) after I have been to my last Olympic event. How could a blogger from the UK, who loves sports not write about our Olympics!

Until then I will be running a series on the street art of Paris so please make sure you have subscribed so you don’t miss out on a single one!

Bonjour Mon Ami

Yes as correctly guessed by Print and Pattern I am in Paris, or to be precise I am on the Eurostar back to Blighty. As avid readers of this blog will know going to Paris is on my bucket list and this week I have finally been able to tick it off.

Quite simply the place is a photographers haven, with every street and every building oozing with such beauty. The sights that define the city are of course photographic but away from the hustle and bustle (and the tour groups) is where the city really shows her beauty.

There are of course negative points I have come away with. The tour groups that clog the city is sadly something that takes away from it’s charm. The best example was in the Louvre. A place full to bursting with the world’s finest art and yet tour groups (as well as others) focus purely on the one piece, the Mona Lisa. Don’t get me wrong she is beautiful but as the photograph shows people dont go there bask in her beauty or appreciate the artist. It is simply to show that they were there. I know as a photographer that may sound hypocritical but I don’t photograph paintings I put the camera away (for once) and view the art as it was intended, not through a lens.

Grumbling aside, I loved Paris. It is a city of love and I have fallen for her.

The way she makes coffee, her effortless style, the way she looks as the sun sets and rises, her culture, her intellect.

Everyday she became more and more impossibly stunning.

So over the next few weeks I will be posting a variety of Parisian photographs from all over the stunning city. Because you cannot capture such vast allure in one photograph so a collage will have to do.

Looking Up #2 – Taj Mahal

The Taj Mahal, one of the most photographed buildings in the world. It’s beauty and what it stands for make it not only awe inspiring but also spectacularly sad. It was commissioned by Mughal emperor Shah Jahan following the untimely death of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal, and is regularly known as the greatest thing done in the name of love. I have visited it four times now in the last five years and it never fails to move me.

“Not a piece of architecture, as other buildings are, but the proud passions of an emperor’s love wrought in living stones.”

- Sir Edwin Arnold

 

 

Looking Up #1 – BT Tower

For eons I’ve been trying to decide if I would do a monthly feature. More importantly what I would do for a monthly feature. I’ve been tumbling between so many themes (graffiti, people, countries, the list goes on and on) but everything seemed horribly cliche.

This continued until someone perusing my portfolio noted that a lot of my photographs are of me looking up at monuments and buildings, attempting to make something that is photographed by everyone with a phone into something a bit unique, and wham ‘Looking Up Monthly’ was born!

Numero uno is the most recent one I took, the BT Tower in London. For those of you who don’t live in the UK it may seem to be nothing but a glorified telephone mast but when it was built in the 1960s it was the tallest building in London and even now its still holds its own in the city landscape shooting up around it.

To many it is an eye sore, but to me it is quite simply an icon in its own right.

Brideshead Visited

Last weekend during England’s freak sunny spell I was lucky enough to pay a visit -camera in hand- to the oh so picturesque stately home of Castle Howard. Some of you might recognise it from the 1980s TV show Brideshead Revisited or the 2008 atrocious film adaptation by the same name. From it’s magnificent Atlas Fountain to the remarkably Roman Temple of the Four Winds Castle Howard oozes with charm and grace, and that’s just the grounds. Inside the stately home is just that, a home. Without all the pomposity, airs and graces that most estates have, it feels welcoming. Castle Howard, through its small rooms and family photos, does not try to be too self important but still leaves you awestruck especially by the Great Hall’s dome (photo below). So if you find yourself in North Yorkshire with a few spare hours on your hands, go, you wont be disappointed.

The Atlas Fountain

Castle Howard

Statue at the Temple of the Four Winds

The Great Hall dome depicting the four elements

Bound Newspapers in the Library

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