Sunday, December 18, 2011

Mesa del Sol


Albuquerque architect Antoine Predock incorporated an energy-conserving glass facade  in the Mesa del Sol Town Center building which can also serve as a public theater backdrop for video projection.  The building was meant to be the center-piece of a large community with an integrated business park and housing development on Albuquerque's south mesa.  Given the state of the economy, however, it seems unlikely that the city will support the construction of hundreds of newly-built homes any time soon.








These pictures were made with one of my two Kodak Retina IIa cameras.  I recently adjusted the rangefinder and it seems to be working well.  That is an easy repair on the camera, but reassembling the advance and counter mechanisms is a little tricky.  I'm also going to take a close look at the other and, if I can get both cameras working equally well, I'll put one up for sale here.

4 comments:

robert said...

Nice architecture and your photos are well conceived and executed. Do you use a tripod? What technique do you use to have such well framed and composed photos, consistently?

Mike said...

Thanks for the kind words. I generally attempt to achieve sense of balance in my compositions. The relationships of light and dark areas and a good range of tonality are important. I often try to place important picture elements at the one-third intersections. I'll try to give this some thought and come up with some more useful ideas in the future.

Mike said...

I see I omitted an answer to the tripod question. I often carry one along on dark days, but I seldom use it. The tripod is mostly used with my old folders which have limited shutter speeds and long lenses which work best at minimum apertures.

My tripod is a SLIK Sprint Mini GM. It is compact and has quick release leg extensions. The center post is reversible so that I can do close-ups near the surface.

robert said...

I should use a tripod , but alas I'm the impatient kind. Thanks for sharing your techniques.