Mies van der Rhoe in Chicago

       For three weeks of August in 2018, I had the distinct privilege to live Chicago with no obligations but to experience and photograph the city’s rich history of architecture. There were a few names which stuck out to me before arriving whose work I was interested in seeing throughout the city: Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rhoe. Of these three, the work of Sullivan and Mies impressed me the most in person (I was staying downtown, right across from the AMA Plaza, where the availability of their works are plenty); Sullivan for his metaphysical ideas lending to fantastic displays of artistry incorporated into his high rises, and Mies for his elegant manipulation of readily available materials to create new, extreme, modern forms which ascend into the Chicago skylines as sculptural epics. There is a spirit in Mie’s work that seems permanently affixed to his colossal steel and glass…well, boxes! They neatly separate themselves from the surrounding rhetoric of older and newer designs within the metropolis and though they may not be as popularly iconic as the Sears or Hancock towers, to me they typify the spirit of modern Chicago. Any lover of modern architecture can attest to this.

        I was easily and wholly enchanted with this Miesian vocabulary, and so was drawn to spend a focused amount of my time in Chicago on capturing these forms.

        The following images were captured with a Fujifilm GFX with a combination of Canon 24mm TSE, Hasselblad 50mm FLE, and Mamiya 110mm. 

   All of the architectural from my trip Chicago soon to come in my next post. Including works of Wright, Sullivan, Piano, Holabird & Root, and more!


Austin Central Library

        A couple shots from my visit to the new Austin Public Library designed by Lake Flato Architects and Shepley Bulfinch. It’s a beautiful structure both inside and out, I have never been in a space that uses natural light to illuminate it so successfully! They wouldn’t let me use my tripod so I I had some troubles with shooting but here are a couple of the successful shots. 



The Water Campus, Baton Rouge

I recently had the opportunity to spend an evening shooting exteriors for The Water Campus in Baton Rouge, La for an engineering client that worked on the project. It is located right on the Mississippi and it’s truly a world-class design. The design is a joint effort by Perkins+Will and Coleman Partners Architects and they really knocked it out of the park. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to return to Baton Rouge to shoot this building, I’ve been looking for the chance to get back there since I saw it at night last year driving on I-10.  It was shot with a Fuji GFX50s, this camera continues to impress. Lenses: Hasselblad 50 CFLE and Canon 24 TSE. 


Below are a couple of the images I thought turned out great. It was overcast and my time was limited but limitations often create images that surprise and delight. 

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