Brno Architecture

Central nave of St. James’s Church, a late Gothic (13th century) structure. One advantage of a mirrorless camera is that it’s small and can be operated soundlessly. Because there were no other tourists around, I wouldn’t have felt comfortable photographing this interior with a big DSLR.

Exterior of St. James’s Church.

Detail of House of the Lords of Lipá, an extremely ornate 16th-century Renaissance building (the sgraffito facade is actually 19th century), now a shopping center.

Cool building decorations in central Brno.

Manchester Town Hall

The Manchester Town Hall, completed in 1877, is a Victorian neo-Gothic building for the local city council and government offices.  Unfortunately, most of it was closed when I was there, so I took photos of staircases that I wasn’t allowed to explore. However, I was allowed to take photos. Photography is permitted.

This guy looks like he’s checking his mobile phone.

Manchester in the Rain

It was cold and rainy most of the weekend–a normal Manchester summer. I took these photos in the Northern Quarter neighbourhood of Manchester, close to the Craft and Design Center.

“Tib Street Horn,” sculpture by David Kemp.

I spotted this building while drinking coffee in Waterstones, Manchester city center.

Manchester is filled with Victorian buildings.

Utrecht Buildings

You didn’t seriously think I’d finished posting my Utrecht photos, did you? 🙂

Silhouette of church roof:

Rather baroque university building near the Domplatz:

Orange university building with nice brickwork:

Office section of a church:

Row of old white houses on Springweg:

Corner building wih iron ties on the side:

Corner building dated 1897:

Another building with fine ironwork ties:

Old brick tower with very colourful shutters:

Utrecht Windows

Two bicycles, facing each other, in front of a red building with a vine

Commercial building in the city center:

I was struck by the beautiful lace curtains and sometimes rather elaborate still-life arrangements in ordinary windows. Unfortunately, I couldn’t photograph one window with porcelain jars because a man was sitting at the table, drinking coffee, behind the window both times I checked (morning and evening). I guess he really liked the view.

Detail of a library window.

Love the red shutters…

Triangular window in my hotel room, with a view of the Dom tower.

Residential buildings in the historic city center

Message in the door of a house. I’m not sure how the letters were fastened to the glass. The passageway was quite dark.

Utrecht

I was in Utrecht for business last week, from Monday evening until Thursday. Although I put in plenty of 12-hour work days, I did manage to take a few photos. The hotel that I chose was in the center of town, near the old section of Utrecht, with canals. The canal in the first photo was only a few blocks from the hotel.

Below is a a church roof, underexposed to show the silhouette.

Tile peacock decoration on a building on Neugerachte.

The Dom tower is visible from almost every place in the center of Utrecht, so I have a lot of photos of it. There was good light on the second evening.

Love the colours of the boots and bicycle. If I hadn’t been so rushed I would have taken this shot at a lower angle. When you’re wearing business clothes it’s a lot harder to get down on the ground to take some shots.

The first morning it rained. I photographed this tulip near the large canal in front of the hotel.

The Decayed Beauty of Venice

You probably know, without my telling you, that Venice has more problems with dampness in buildings than most parts of the world. The perpetual moisture causes paint to blister, plaster to crack and flake, and wood to rot. Many of the buildings are crumbling before our eyes, but the slow decay creates amazing textures and colours around the windows and doors. I photographed a few windows, grills, and walls while walking along the canals.

Mall Improvement

Yesterday I walked over to the tiny mall near my workplace to buy a new hairbrush. (My son managed to break my relatively new hairbrush by brushing against it so that it fell to the floor and broke in half, which suggest that it wasn’t such a great hairbrush to begin with.) The Park Center is a run-down fleapit. A friend described it as “slummy,” which is accurate. When I walked inside, I snapped three quick shots for a possible HDR picture.

Here’s an ordinary exposure of the mall. Note the cheap, corrugated plastic roof. You can’t see all the pigeon droppings at this distance. This atrium must be one of the most depressing buildings in the entire industrial park during a rain storm because this yellow roof is its only source of light.

Here’s the HDR version. It looks like it would be a pleasure to shop there. Or receive transmissions from outer space.

I don’t think I ever noticed before that the staircase goes higher than the main landing. Next time I will check it out for an overhead shot.

Maybe I can get a job with the Ministry of Tourism or local real estate agents. 🙂