Madrid Obligatorio

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In December, our transatlantic flight to New York turning back near Greenland, spending hours in the air with an unknown mechanical error for returning us to the Madrid-Barajas Airport. After an all-too-brief but restless night in a mediocre Spanish hotel, we were back at the airport early the next morning for a second (and ultimately successful) attempt at an Atlantic crossing. Several hundred people waited to board. I looked out at the horizon; the landscape was strange, alien, surreal, but ultimately a lot more welcoming than the cold dark of the North Atlantic. The image will stay with me.

Madrid Obligatorio

Gentle Light on Travelers Tower

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Can you spot the Moon hiding in the clouds behind Travelers Tower? Blue hour images like this one used to be a long effort on my part to find my way into and climb to the top of some building… Now, they’re the result of nearly trivial efforts on the part of my drone. Architecture photography really has changed.

Gentle Light on Travelers Tower

Rijksmuseum

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Bright sky opens to reveal the sun between the spires of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Rijksmuseum Sky

Beneath the museum, a long tunnel reminds me of China Miéville’s “The City and the City” and its passages between overlapping worlds.

Under the Rijksmuseum

Peaking through the glass reveals an otherworldly modern interior that perhaps continues that Miéville theme in its own way.

Rijksmuseum Through Glass

Long Walk After Snow

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Despite any efforts to the contrary, nostalgia sneaks into my life at moments I least expect. Trinity’s Long Walk was my undergraduate home for several years and this particular moment—a winter evening, as the sun goes down and the smell of dinner cooking in the dining hall climbs aboard the surprisingly warm breeze—was so evocative of the experiences that made me fall in love with campus 20 years ago.

Long Walk After Snow

Radiates Through the Chapel

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Trinity College’s chapel is a beautiful piece of twentieth-century neo-Gothic architecture, but the interaction with the sunset sky brought a whole new appreciation for the structure. The gold light of the sky comes through the open belfry, but electrical lighting elements that shine up the structure from beneath the belfry happened to also match the sunset color and the position along the horizon, producing the odd trompe l’oeil of the structure appearing to allow the viewer to see through the mountains in the distance to even more sky beyond.

Radiates Through the Chapel

Bushnell Tower Isn’t Quite in the Skyline

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Bushnell tower sits at one edge of the cluster of tall buildings that is Hartford’s downtown. It was originally meant to be accompanied by a partner adjacent to it that was never constructed—so instead, we get a view of the State Capitol.

Bushnell Tower Isn't Quite in the Skyline