Tag Archives: architecture

Some more impressive hotel lobbies

12th March 2013Galleriesarchitecture, Birmingham, CitizenM, Conran, Hempel Hotel, hotels, interior design, interiors, London, South Place Hotel, Staying Cool, the Rotunda, Town Hall Hotelnickminers

Well, while I can’t quite match the impressive hotels seen on the Telegraph’s travel page, I CAN share with you some of the best ones I’ve visited in the past year or so. Here are some of my favourites, in no particular order.

The Town Hall hotel in Bethnal Green is full of Art Deco highlights, such as that cubic clock, the marble pillars and the star on the floor.

The Town Hall Hotel in Bethnal Green, London

CitizenM London Bankside is the Dutch hotel chain’s first London based property. Guests check themselves in on arrival, and can relax in this ultra modern, eccentrically-lit rest area on the ground floor.

The South Place Hotel was designed by the world famous Conran partnership with wonderful detailing throughout, like the photomosaic tiling on the pillars and the log-pile wallpaper surrounding the slate fireplace.

London's South Place Hotel, in Moorgate — London’s South Place Hotel, in Moorgate

The Hempel Hotel is a minimalist’s dream, and after dark the lighting in the lobby changes colour to match the floral arrangement on the reception desk.

In Birmingham’s Rotunda, the Staying Cool apartments have a sparse, narrow corridor as the lobby, illuminated by long aluminium poles with colour-changing LEDs set into each one.

Staying Cool at the Rotunda in Birmingham

Tilt-shifting at windmills (and other tall buildings)

8th March 2013Lessonsarchitecture, lens, technique, tilt-shiftnickminers

What does “tilt-shift” mean to you?

Get that thought out of your head right now. Yes, tilt-shift lenses CAN be used to do that, but there’s so much more to them. To start with, the above effect was created in Photoshop, but when you tilt a lens in the opposite direction you can actually achieve a WIDER depth of field by aligning the focal plane with, or close to, the ground, without having to stop the lens down to f/11 or smaller. But that’s not why I use these lenses.

Take a look at this photograph of the railway arches near where I live:

It was taken with a 17mm lens from ground level, meaning that to include the top of the viaduct in the photo I had to tilt the camera back. With a rectilinear (i.e. not fisheye) wide angle lens, this has the result that all vertical lines start to converge, distorting the shapes in an unpleasant, almost vertiginous manner.

Luckily, the 17mm lens in question has a shift feature (the tilt wasn’t used for the next shot). So I shifted the lens upwards and aligned the back of the camera to be parallel with the walls of the viaduct:

Now the vertical lines on the structure are vertical in the photograph, and yet I still have the top of the viaduct in shot. This is because the 17mm TS-E lens has a much larger image circle than a standard 17mm lens. When you shift the front element upwards, the image circle also moves so that the portion that hits the sensor is towards the top of the scene. Using the same lens but without shifting would have resulted in a photo with only the bottom portion of the arches in shot, and far more pavement than would be reasonable.

This shot of Watford Fire Station was taken with the lens shifted up partially, meaning the building is centred vertically in the frame, rather than towards the top:

An extreme example (when you stand a bit closer to a building than is strictly necessary) shows how the perspective towards the edges of the larger image circle can be a bit overblown:

However with a slightly less wide lens (24mm in this case) and a building that’s further away, shifting the lens can result in very pleasing ground-level shots of tall buildings:

Apologies for the lack of windmills in this post. I just couldn’t resist the pun.

New photos

1st March 2013Newsarchitecture, galleries, interiors, portfolio, urbannickminers

Had a bit of a reshuffle of my interiors portfolio today to reflect some of the hotels I’ve visited more recently.

I’ve also renamed the ‘urban’ gallery to ‘architecture‘ for (hopefully) obvious reasons, and there are a few new pics in there taken with the tilt/shift lenses.

In Bruges

9th May 2010Galleriesarchitecture, Belgium, Bruges, Brugge, Europe, Flanders, medievalnickminers

As I write, I’m about to check out of the Hotel Notre Dame in Mariastraat in the historic Belgian city of Bruges. The city (Brugge in Flemish) used to be an important hub of trans-European trade until its port silted up in the middle of the 16th Century, but it has retained many of its medieval buildings and all of its charm. Probably unfairly, Belgium isn’t top of the list for many visitors to mainland Europe, but Bruges is certainly one of the most beautiful and friendly cities I’ve visited. Here is a selection of some of my photos of the many faces of this wonderful little place.

My friend and fellow photographer Mark Casey will have his photos online soon. I will link to them here when they’re online.

UPDATE: They’re up. Please go here.

Un jour Ã Paris

19th February 2010Galleriesabstract, architecture, cathedrals, Eiffel tower, France, Montmartre, Notre Dame, Paris, Pompidou, Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, Sacre Coeurnickminers

Earlier in the month, pretty much on a whim, I booked a return train to Paris for my family and me so we spent most of yesterday in this famous European capital. We started (as we almost always do) in Montmartre, which while very touristy, has some very colourful shops to photograph and an unbeatable view of the city from in front of the Basilique du SacrÃ© Coeur. Despite this, I enjoy visiting the area less and less each time, as there are an increasing number of hawkers, blaggers and outright con artists, all trying to take advantage of the gullible tourist, and it’s a real effort just to avoid making eye contact or engaging in a conversation with one of them.

After getting our fill of the panorama, we headed south to the Centre Georges Pompidou, a gallery and modern art museum. Designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano in a style reminiscent of London’s Lloyd’s Building, the building has most of the infrastructure and structural support on the outside, leaving the interior free of clutter and with ample room for the interesting stuff. A set of escalators take you up inside a glass pipe which runs outside the front of the building, all the way to the viewing gallery at the top, where the Eiffel Tower can be seen to the west, and while one of the two galleries is currently closed, there is a very good exhibition of the work of Pierre Soulages.

Before leaving we visited another famous Parisian cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, which stands on a island in the middle of the river Seine, and I created some abstracts using the various coloured lights of shops, cars and traffic signals. Then with sore feet and tired eyes, we headed back to Gare du Nord to catch our train back to St Pancras International and head home.

Nick Miners Photography

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