Architectural fever

Making a bet with myself, I set out for some architectural shots in Athens and Piraeus.  My aim was to photograph building details and convert some of them in Black and White to stress out the details and unique features of each building.  There are many impressive buildings and constructions in Athens and I had made notes of some of them when on the spot for a later photo shooting.  Well, the day when I had gathered a good number of building places had arrived and I started my walk, but using the bus when there was much distance to be covered from one place to another.

First I took the bus to get to the first location and as I passed by some interesting buildings I kept on making addition to my notes.  The first location was near Syngrou Avenue where some tall and interesting buildings are located.  I used a polarized filter to intensify the blue color of the sky and it created some great contrast in the scene, but it lowered the shutter speed to a critical degree, making the dark themes very difficult.

Windows, lines, glass, steel, reflections and repetive shapes were all arround me and I had to choose carefully what to include and what to omit in each frame to create the right impact.  Having the polarized filter in front of the lens made me uneasy and there were many times that I shot various “safety net” shots to improve the chances of steady frames, but I had a small number of failures. 

Having finished with the area I rode the bus and the tram to Flisvos where I found some of the most beautiful vessels anchored.  I had no interest in boats, ships and yachts until I saw a large dark blue yacht that made me stare in awe!  The size of this thing was something else!  As I noticed it had an Arabic name and I imagined it belonged to a seich or something.  I took a number of shots, just to remember it and I walked to the tram stop.

Not far away there was the World War II Cemetery and I could not help noticing the green grass and the marble headstones that created yet another great opportunity for repeated shapes and since I had never visited it (but only noted the place down for a future visit), it was time to go in this time.  The guard kindly allowed me to take some photos and walk around in the green grass.  The place is very beautiful for a graveyard and does not remind at all a final resting place for people.  It is considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in Greece and there is constant preservation and care of the flowers, grass and marble headstones.

The architectural fever was concluded some days later with a morning session of some interesting buildings near my work as I returned home.  This time, there were some different construction features, but in a similar manner.  I limited my frames to steep angles, lines and glass windows as the traffic begun to increase and the people started gathering at the bus stops.  It didn’t take long, but I always wanted to photograph the glass features of buildings in the morning.  

Now I have planned on photographing different glass features with some puffy clouds reflecting on them, but you just can’t guess when it is the best time to do this.