31-41 Union Square West, NYC, 2024.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

31-41 Union Square West, NYC, 2024.

All the pixels, with convenient access to several subway lines, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53731622110

#photography

[mattblaze@federate.social]

Captured with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 Digaron-W lens (@ f/6.3), Phase One XT IQ4-150 camera. 12mm vertical shift to maintain geometry.

This is a straightforward head-on single point perspective view of the facades of the varied buildings on this block just after sunrise. It took some time to line up the camera to be parallel to the faces of the buildings, once again making architectural photography be something of an exercise in surveying.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

Union Square West between 16th and 17th Streets in Manhattan is home to five distinctive and variously historically significant narrow mid-rise buildings.

The quirky Decker Building (2nd from left, at 33 Union Square West) is now chiefly residential with a retail ground floor storefront. From 1967-1973 the building housed Andy Warhol's "Factory" studio, where, in 1968, he was famously and nearly fatally shot by an irate Valarie Solanas. The neighborhood was more colorful back then.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

If you're doing architectural or cityscape photography, it's helpful to have a working understanding of zero, one, two, and three point perspective (normally taught to draftspeople, illustrators and painters).

This photo is an example of (mostly) one point perspective (depth), and I was mostly thinking of Vermeer's Little Street when I composed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Street

[mhoye@mastodon.social]

@mattblaze Do you have strong feelings about doing this kind of shift-alignment in post? I love this kind of composition, but I love four thousand dollar lenses less.