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Captured with Phase One XT IQ4-150 and the Rodenstock 23mm/5.6 HR-Digraron, a sharp ultrawide angle that accommodated just enough shift movement to compose this frame. Captured from the now-shuttered Gramercy Park hotel, on a fittingly grey and joyless winter day.
The wide angle and high, single point perspective emphasize the dominance of the private, locked park's local footprint. Rather than creating public space, it seems to elbow us aside.
Gramercy Park, NYC, 2020.
All the pixels, but not for the likes of you, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/49594943761
This composition plays with the contrast between the ambitiously-sized sign and the humble, rustic old store. The photo is about shapes and scale.
This is also a bit of a nod to Grant Wood's famous 1930 painting, American Gothic. (See https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6565/american-gothic). Wood's painting was inspired by a grandiose, ornate attic window in an otherwise humble rural farmhouse that Wood happened upon during a road trip. The absurdly oversized, incongruously Googie-style arrow sign here reminded me of that.
Captured with a small mirrorless camera and 21mm lens, on a compact travel tripod.
This was a case where I hadn't really planned to make formal architectural photos and so had only a small camera with me, with no shifting lens. I made do by shooting wide with the camera level and cropping, which works but costs resolution and constrains how you can organize the frame. It worked well enough here, but I always feel like I'm leaving something on the table when I don't have the right gear with me.
Vacant Store, BZ Corner, WA, 2011
All the pixels, each marked by a very large sign, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/6110374799
@dickon I'm sure it's just how individual properties have their card access systems programmed.
@dickon well, that’s a more secure design, as I noted.
Just got email from a hotel with the subject line "Your privacy is important to us". I immediately assumed they just had a massive data breach. It turned out they were just letting me know the do not disturb sign was on the door and to call if I need towels or anything. (Much better than calling the room, which some hotels do!)
@ai6yr @skinnylatte Second that recomendation. Also good restaurant. One of the original "Harvey House" hotels built along the Santa Fe railroad.
@skinnylatte Amish phone phreaks!
I mostly photograph the built world, but occasionally I wander off into nature until they find me and bring me back to the city.
Captured with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR Digaron-W lens (@ f/6.3). Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50, 1/30 sec), Cambo WRS-5005 camera (shifted vertically -10mm).
Red Rock Canyon is just 45 minutes from the Las Vegas strip, but completely lacks slot machines, neon signs, B-list entertainment, chain restaurants, and other modern necessities. Zero stars, would not gamble there again.
Sandstone, Red Rock Canyon, Nevada, 2025.
All the pixels, no park entry fee required, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/54702804473
@skinnylatte Enjoy the trip! (Also - they don't always remember to tell people - if you're feeling anti-social, you can have the attendant bring your meal to your compartment).
(The point here is not about securing any specific hotel or keycard system. The point is that thinking about security in abstract terms can reveal properties and weaknesses that aren't otherwise obvious.)
In other words, restricting the elevator in this way is a bad tradeoff. It makes it harder for guests to visit their friends on other floors, but it reduces the complexity for an outsider burglar from O(|rooms|) to O(|floors|) + O(|rooms-per-floor), a much more feasible search space.
Physical security and cryptography can learn from each other, part 11367:
Hotels wisely don't put the room number on guest keycards so if someone finds your card, they'd have to exhaustively search the hotel to find the room it opens.
Some hotels now have elevators programmed to only let you call the floor for which your keycard is coded, preventing guests from wandering to other floors.
But it also means the elevator can be used as an efficient oracle to determine the floor of a found key.
London's "Thin House" looks as if it belongs in a Potemkin village or as a background facade on a Hollywood studio lot, but it's something of a Tardis, larger on the inside than it appears on the outside. Created to make way for the tracks of the Metropolitan Railway (now the District and Circle lines) behind it, its triangular footprint gives it the illusion of being little more than a shallow rectangle when viewed from the street.
Captured with the Rodenstock 40mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens (@ f/6.3), Phase One IQ4-150 digital back (@ ISO 50), Cambo 1200 camera (shifted vertically -10mm).