Turbine

This is another perspective that I found interesting inside the Bell Tower in Antwerp, Belgium. A few floors up from where I took the horizontal Helix image I shared a few weeks ago, this is a vertical view straight down. It took several attempts to get the alignment correct in the camera, as I had to lean over the railing and extend my arms to get the camera centered over the staircase. It was not dangerous and there was no risk of me falling…just the camera. :)

However, composing a vertical composition while looking horizontally at my camera’s 45 degree LDC tilt-screen was challenging. It involved a lot of hand/arm/feet repositioning and trial & error before I had what I felt was a suitable image.

Standing at the bottom of spiral staircases and shooting upward is much easier. I did that here also, but the view from the bottom is not near as cool as this view from the top.

Helix

This image was taken in the main administrative building of the city of Antwerp, known as “The Bell Tower.” There is not an actual bell to be found inside the tower (at least, I could not find one), but there is an amazing spiral staircase that stretches 14 stories. Being a public building, it is open to visitors and easy to reach the staircase behind the main lobby. The staff in the reception area told me it was no problem to take some photos of the staircase, so I walked up to the top and took images at several different angles…looking up, down and this one, straight on.

As you know by now, I am drawn to how various shapes and lines interplay in photography. From this perspective, you find squares, diamonds, triangles, circles, repeating patterns, symmetry…and, of course the helix. All this variety, and yet I found it to be rather simple and pleasing.

I later learned that the building derived its name from its previous owner, Bell Laboratories…so perhaps there is not an actual bell to be found here after all.

Skeleton Key

I thought I would share another image from the Liège-Guillemins train station. Descending from the train platform into the main lobby are several staircases such as this. It reminded me of a skeleton key as I reached this point, halfway down. Similar to the exterior facade, the architect uses rib-like features on both sides and if you look at the floor, you can see the reflection of the ribbed ceiling below.

Baleen

I recently spent several days driving through Belgium and the Netherlands in an effort to photograph some places that I had not seen before. My first stop was the Liège-Guillemins train station in Liège…not because I was catching a train, but because it is a magnificent structure. The station was renovated in 2009 with a modern steel, glass and concrete facade designed by the architect Santiago Calatrava.

I wandered the station for a couple of hours and ended up taking many more photos than I expected. The arches, ribs, lines and curves allow for an almost endless number of compositions. In addition, the shadows were lengthening as the sun was going down and the station seemed to change every few minutes. As the blue hour arrived, the lights transformed the station yet again. Many elements that were cast in shadow a few minutes ago were now illuminated and vice versa…such a clever design.

This image was taken on one side of the upper platform, looking towards the center. It is a bit hard to describe how the structure changes with the light…photos do a better job. As a result, I hope to share several more images taken here in the coming weeks.

Lastly, I shared an image several weeks ago of the Transportation Hub at the World Trade Center. As it turns out, Calatrava was also the architect for this station. You can view The Hub image here and see some of the similarities in Calatrava’s designs.