Architecture

I love photographing buildings and interiors.See my page on  Dwelling, Sheltering, Building.

The task here was to undertake photographs of buildings using both artificial and natural light, working at dawn or at dusk when natural light is stopped down dramatically. Details of interiors were also called for.

I decided to photograph in and around the Carrington Hotel in Katoomba at around 6.30 – 7.00 on an October night. The sky was clear, there was a reddish tinge from sunset clouds in the west, and all the lights had been turned on in the building. I took around 30 photographs but only a few were satisfactory. The Carrington exterior is a wonder of symmetry. Whether looking at close details, such as windows and curtains on the inside, or ornamentation on either side of the staircase, the extreme formality of the design is apparent. The fading daylight emphasises the tones of the restrained palette used in the exterior.

Inside the building, the tones are much darker and the whole environment is dimmed by the colours of carpets, timber and drapes. However the stained glass windows let in a lot of very bright light and overwhelm the ability of the camera to keep the picture coherent. I liked best two shots of the interior corridor, one featuring the figures of Laurel and Hardy which are easily mistaken for real people, the other the scintillating glass reflections on the main dining room entry.

Other buildings and structures surrounding the Carrington offer many unusual angles and subjects for photographs. I especially like this brick wall –  which makes up a part of an old warehouse building behind the hotel.