Tag Archives: architecture
Museum
The Natural History Museum is a stunning building, with some great architecture which is very Harry Potter-esque. Unfortunately it’s a busy as Hogwarts is, making it hard to take a photo without people in it.
That’s why it’s best to get in there and take photos after hours, when the museum is closed to tourists, the staff have all but left, and the big dinosaur from the main entrance sneaks off for a game of poker.
If anyone has out of hours access to the museum and can verify that the above happens or, better still, get me into the building, then please do get in touch.
For now I will make do with having to use my ingenuity and brain smarts to get around the people. Or Photoshop…whichever.
This image is from two exposures and was handheld. I had to do a little bit of cloning here and there [insert your own cloning/dinosaur/Jurassic Park joke here] to get rid of a couple of people who were standing around, but not too much at the end of the day. I love images that are symmetrical because you can take an extract from the opposite side of the image and horizontally flip it over to use on the other side. That’s when you really find out that your image isn’t as symmetrical as you might like to think.
It works in this situation though.
Academy of Sciences
This is the Latvian Academy of Sciences in Riga. It’s a lovely building, was the first place I headed to after I had checked into my hotel, and was the place I visited the most during my trip there.
That’s not because I’m a scientist. Far from it.
The sign that you can see at the foot of the right door states that you can access this building for Panoramic views of Riga from 8am through to 10pm; what’s more it costs 2.50 Lats to get in there – that’s about £3. Sure, St Peter’s Church is in the heart of the old town, and is a little higher, but it’s twice the price, hasn’t got such great opening hours, is much busier, and has more barriers in place. On the 17th floor of this building you could jump off if you so desired. Please don’t though, as that would result in barriers being put up, which nobody wants.
I visited three times as my initial visit was during a cloudless sky in the middle of the day, my second (where this shot was taken) was in passing simply because there was an hour or so on the Sunday where some great clouds came blustering by the city, and the third was later that day where I went to the top again just to see if there was going to be a nice sunset (there wasn’t).
Here’s the view from the top should you wish to see it from the comfort of your chair: Panoramic view of Riga
Gleaming
Happy Monday, I hope that everyone had a lovely weekend. I’m currently in the sunny seaside town of Skegness on the East coast of England.
This building could be anywhere, but for those who sweat the small stuff and would like to know more details, I can remember that it’s in Brussels…somewhere.
The sky was bright blue on this hot Saturday, so I thought I would do a bit of processing to get rid of what was a very boring sky. I used B&W Effects 2 by Topaz Labs to introduce the green/yellow tone into the image, and then added a bit of a lens flare at the top of the building.
Not sure I’ll have very many images of Skegness when I return, so don’t expect any images whatsoever of donkeys and ice cream.
Waltham Forest Town Hall
As the intelligent viewers who are reading this post will probably have guessed, this building is a town hall and it is in Waltham Forest.
I drove past it on the way in to London a couple of weeks ago and decided I would head back there to try and grab a few shots while the clouds were there doing their best to look dramatic.
I can’t say I’ll ever feel the need to head back to that part of London though.
It’s a late post from me today, and to be honest I’m still laying in bed. Part laziness, part illness. 100% rock and roll.
Or something.
Have a good weekend all.
Space Needle
After my meetings were done, and before meeting up with Scott Wood for a few drinks, the Space Needle was the first location in Seattle that was on my to visit list, and luckily it was nice and close to the hotel.
I managed to get up to three different vantage points during my short trip, and though this one wasn’t my favourite in the end it was certainly the only one which I knew I wanted to do…the other two, Colombia Tower and Smith’s Tower, just kinda happened.
I couldn’t see Mount Rainier from any of them.
Ridged
Well, that’s Christmas over for another year.
Today’s image was taken on a photocrawl I did at the start of December. I should really do more photocrawls over the next year…but then that’s what I said last year also.
It’s a beautiful day today, and probably a very good one for getting out there and taking a few shots. Think I may just stay in bed though. We’ll see.
Stonework
This was the final shot that I captured while in Edinburgh. I was walking around for a few hours in between seeing friends off at the train station and catching my own train, and so I used that time to do a spot of geocaching. This was a time when the Sony NEX-7 really did come in handy due to the size and weight of it; it’s the perfect camera to walk around with and just shoot anything that catches your eye.
Friday at last and there’s not too much going on this weekend; I’m helping a friend with a house move in some form or other tomorrow, and on Sunday I really should be doing a little Christmas shopping, though I believe a photocrawl is on the cards for the sunset and evening.
Busy day to get through today first though…hope you all have a good weekend.
Isosceles
I was having a good processing night the other evening, which was a good job as I had a few images to get through in order to maintain my one post per week day. As such, this image was processed in quick succession from yesterdays, which is why they are both from the same location.
Two very different images though.
I don’t remember exactly where within City Hall this image was taken, but I feel it was one of the locations at the top of the building. I did very simple processing on this one, a little sharpening and then I ran it through a filter using Perfect B&W by OnOneSoftware.
Speaking of processing, do check out the new Google+ community called ‘The Photo Post Processing & Stylization Center‘ which has been set up by Brian Matiash and Christopher Germano. It’s going to be interesting to see how communities develop within Google+ and I’m hoping they are a to be a location to share and learn, and not a breeding ground for pure self promotion.
Escher in Absinthe
Here’s another angle on the set of central stairs that can be found in City Hall, London. I’ve been processing a lot of my architectural shots in a blue tone of late and so I decided I would try something a little different with this image. As a results I used a few different filters on it, but the main one was Urban Sickness which is part of the Perfect Effects plugin from OnOneSoftware.
I stood pretty near to the corner of the upper corridor to grab this image and liked both the reflective surfaces on the wall and the tubular support which acts as a leading line from the top left. It was taken during Open House weekend so it was pretty difficult to get the stairs without anyone using them. I certainly failed to do so which is why you can catch a glimpse of a few people working their way through the scene.
In other news, today I have a workflow video up on HDROne showing my process of processing the Golden Falls image I took in Iceland earlier this year. Please do check it out if you have time to spare and an interested in how I get things done.
St. Andrew’s House
This building was pretty close to my hotel up in Edinburgh (I stayed at the Apex Waterloo Place, thanks for asking. It was lovely, and had an amazing shower that attacked your body from 5 different angles. Plus there were some nice complimentary jelly beans).
It’s called St. Andrew’s House and is one of the three Scottish Government buildings in Edinburgh.
It was a Sunday when I took this, hence why the doors are closed I guess.
Another busy day ahead with a meeting shortly followed by a day offsite like yesterday. Hope everyone has a happy Thursday.
Wings
Today I’m heading out of London where I’ll spend a lovely long weekend in Edinburgh in celebration of Steve’s birthday. I’ll be leaving from Kings Cross, which is where this photograph was taken.
It was super busy the day I took this, on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago. I had just returned from Toronto on an overnight flight and decided to stop off here on my route home to get a burrito. I had the 8-15mm on and that allowed me to get so much of this scene in. Ideally I would have been stood 3 paces to the right, but several tables and people were in the way and, to be honest, I was too lazy and tired to deal with those kind of obstacles.
It’s a beautiful concourse and if you’re ever in London be sure to swing by and check it out…and pick up a burrito.
Have a great weekend everyone.
Balfour Building
When in Toronto I met up with the lovely Edith Levy for an hour of photos in Graffiti Alley just off Spadina Avenue. Thank you, Edith, for taking the time out of your busy day to show me this location. You can see Edith’s shots from Graffiti Alley in her post ‘iPhone Friday – A Little Street Art‘ (you get a glimpse of me in that post also).
The last shot I took on that little excursion was not from the alley, but of a building we were passing. I often walk around looking skywards (it’s amazing I don’t trip up more than I do) and this building was just calling out at me to take the shot so I quickly snapped a few brackets, while I’m sure Edith took another glance at her watch as I made her become late(r) back to work. I’m glad I did though as I liked the end results.
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again – when in any location it’s worth looking up, but this is especially true when in a city.
Have a good weekend everyone.
Backbone
This is the glass roof of the Toronto Eaton Centre which runs between Bay St and Yonge St.
One night I had taken the PATH to get to the Hockey Hall of Fame for a work event, and that’s when I noticed this lovely piece of architecture. I added it to the ‘places I must visit with a camera’ list that I had been mentally storing during the work aspect of my trip, returning a few days later so that I could take a shot with the 8-15mm Fisheye lens. I really like the distortion that this lens adds to the scene.
It was a daytime visit and was very crowded, so though I’ve taken a few other shots of this area I feel this one was the easiest to exclude people, and therefore one of my favourites. A little B&W with colourization processing, followed by a slight split-toning produced this end result.
Holding back the flood
After Open House and a much needed pint on Saturday, Conor, Jay, John and I were at a loss of what to do. We casually walked around a couple of the scaffolded buildings around Liverpool St, wondering which ones would be easy to climb later in the night, before making the decision to simply head out to the Thames Barrier for sunset.
It was a simply stunning sunset…somewhere in the world. Alas, London was not that place and what had started out with potential suddenly faded away into nothing.
I always think of these barriers as being a recent build in London, but having been completed in 1984 that’s not quite true. Since time of completion I understand it has been used less than 150 times, so getting a shot from this spot while the gates are closed would be pretty unlikely – especially as the water being stopped would be completely covering the place I am standing to take this shot.
I don’t think I’ll be heading back out to this location in a hurry, but it was nice to see it from this side of the river when I hadn’t done so before.
Lloyd’s of London
On the first morning of Open House weekend I stood in the line to see Lloyd’s along with a few of my fellow photographer friends. 45 minutes or so later they were opening their doors early and we were heading inside to the great Underwriting Room where this image was taken. In front of me were the escalators which transport people from floor to floor, all covered by a large glass ceiling where the light shines through.
Immediately behind me, but out of view, was the lovely Lutine Bell which used to ring when any ships were late to arrive at port and it was unclear what had happened to them. Once their status was known they would ring the bell once if the ship had sunk, and twice if it was safe. The purpose of this was something to do with the stopping selling of reinsurance on that vessel. Now, we were told, it only rings when there it’s Remembrance Day or a major world event (one ring), or when there is a distinguished guest visiting the premises (two rings).
I was unable to convince them that I was distinguished enough to warrant a ring.
For this image, aiming for such a high angle meant I could cut the masses of people out of most of the shot, but you can still see a few people in the lower corners. I used a fisheye lens, and as it was my 8mm Samyang on a full frame body I had to crop 40% of the image out to get rid of the black noise border that came with it.
I quite liked this building and would certainly suggest popping in there during the next Open House if you have the time.
Gherkin Dome
As part of the Open House weekend I finally managed to make it into 30 St Mary Axe, informally known as the Gherkin.
This is by far the most popular building of the event, but only because it is one of the non-balloted buildings with a view. The only reason I can see why people queue for entry (and believe me, they queue) is to see the 360 degree views of London that you get from the top. I gather that the people who run this feel that visitors only care about the view also, as there was nothing by way of information on the actual architecture, not even a simple fact sheet with details on the building. The volunteers helping knew nothing of the number of people who work in the building, or why we had to change lifts 34 floors up as we were heading to the 39th floor (the fact the bar is on the top floor and allows 360 views is because the lift mechanics are not stored there as they would be in most buildings. Instead, there is a regular lift to the 34th floor, and then from there upwards there is a ‘push’ lift where all of the mechanics are at the bottom of the lift rather than above).
I arrived at this location at 8am, knowing that there may be a slight queue to get in. Two and a half hours later I was finally in, just as the rain came down. Was it worth the wait? No.
Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by views of London in the past, but this one was somewhat lacking. Having stood on the roof of neighbouring Heron Tower, and the likes of King’s Reach, I very much expect a view to be as unobstructed as possible. I get there is to be glass, but I want to be able to push up against that to shoot through it – not possible with this building. The design of the building meant that attempting to shoot away from the glass always had the window frames in view, plus the angle of the glass along with rain meant the light wasn’t quite hitting it as I wanted. In short, yes there are great views to be had from the top – but it’s purely an experience and if you want to go there for photography I feel there are simply better places to go. Added to this is that they certainly rushed you in and out, understandable with so many people waiting to get it, but only 5 minutes at the top is not worth the wait to get in there…for me anyway.
I don’t think I would consider going here again in future years unless they turned it to a ballot entry and actually gave you both time and information about the place, there are much better buildings to spend your time on otherwise.
So the image above is from the very top – 40 floors up, and is looking up towards the dome. Not as interesting as looking up at, say, the British Museum roof, but nice enough anyway.
Spiralling
So, this weekend saw the return of Open House London, an event I very much look forward to on an annual basis as many of the companies around London open their doors to the public and we get the opportunity to see some great sights and architecture. The above image was taken from City Hall.
I am a great fan of this initiative and try to make sure I’m in London for it each year.
I’m also a fan of organisation, and of complaining – so much of this email may be me complaining about the organisation.
First off, the event organisers themselves.
I can’t imagine just how much work goes into organising something like this. Hundreds of businesses agree to open their doors and give tours, and the work that goes into that is immense. However, as the event becomes more and more popular you have to make sure your processes can handle it. Here’s my experience.
Step 1. I pre-order the book from them so I can see what is there and plan for the events I wish to try and secure when their online system goes live. Though there are particular events which are popular and everyone knows about them, there are still other bookable events that I wish to be the first in for to get a spot – and this book means anyone who hasn’t paid will need to find these out online nearer the release time.
So, the book was delivered on the day it was meant to arrive – everything is going swimmingly. Then later the same day I get an email from Open House with a PDF link to the book – they state this is sent in case the Olympics affects deliveries. The Olympics has made logistics in London amazingly good, so they didn’t need to worry. So, I now have access to an online copy of the book, but seeing as how it was just a PDF link and not behind a login screen, anybody can access it (and do, thanks to the power of social media). So essentially my pre-ordering the book was a waste of money as anyone who did not pre-order it got it for free anyway.
Step 2. The online booking system. I knew exactly when it was going live and made sure my holiday to Austria did not clash with it. I also made sure I had freed up the timeslot at work so that I could get in there and make my pre-bookings. The time arrived, I went online, and their system immediately crashed. I’m used to this, as resource allocation for these kind of events seems to be something no company ever plans for (remember the Shard booking earlier this year?). You would expect, however, that knowledge of how many people showed an interest last year, and having 10k followers on Facebook would allow you to pre-empt the fact that this was not just going to be a few thousand people trying to access you at one time. The online system tried and failed to work over a long period of time, and was still not working when I returned from my trip to Austria.
Open House did use the ‘but we’re a charity’ card that so many organisations use (mostly I see it when somebody wants one of my images and doesn’t want to pay for it) but that is no excuse for bad planning.
Eventually they turned it into a ballot system which I very much agree with, it was the best move they made. However, after saying that they would not honour existing bookings made during the difficult period of technical issues, they changed this around later in the proceedings and decided to honour one of the nights that the system was online for a brief period of time for a brief number of people. I thought the whole point of the system was to benefit everyone and make sure nobody was disadvantaged?
They also kindly stated that anybody who had pre-ordered the book would have each entry into the ballot count for 2 instead of just 1 entry. Another good move which does show some benefit to pre-ordering the book.
I didn’t get any tickets in the end, but I had stopped caring by that point.
Step 3. The weekend itself.
Saturday was very enjoyable. I queued up for Lloyds in the morning, and followed this with trips to Trinity House (meh) and Customs House (yawnfest), followed by City Hall. The staff and volunteers in all of these places were excellent; all very friendly and helpful and well done to all of them.
Sunday I queued for the Gherkin. I arrived at 8am to find an already impressive but very quickly growing queue in place. Around two and a half hours later I was in and on my way to the top floor. Now, anyone who follows my blog knows my love of a London view. I have climbed many rooftops and cranes trying to find the best views available, public or not. The view from the Gherkin is one of the better ones I have seen for what you get to see, but one of the worst for being able to see it, if you know what I mean. There are many things that go into a decent view. Location, height, surrounding buildings, weather, interference. The Gherkin has an excellent location, an excellent height and not too many buildings interfering with the view. Alas, the weather had closed in so rain was on the windows decreasing visibility, and the fact you can’t get near the glass, which is both curved and has the triangular windows, means an unobstructed view was hard to get. We were given a few minutes up there before making our way back down, and though it was great to finally get to the top I was very much underwhelmed by the experience. It certainly was not worth a 2.5 hour wait. Again, the staff here were excellent – especially the security guards who had a long day ahead of them and were calm and professional, certainly what I saw of them.
I was knackered after this so just had lunch and went home before having a very long power nap.
Next year I would like to see an actual point to pre-ordering the book. Perhaps give those who pre-order first go at an online booking system if you choose to continue with such a thing. This will encourage more to pre-order and the funds can be used to actually make a system that works.
Otherwise, thanks very much to the staff and volunteers who made it happen, it really is a great initiative and I hope it lasts for another 20 years.
Natural History Museum
The last stop that Jim and I made on Sunday was to the Natural History Museum. I had seen many photos of this place, but never taken the time to actually get there and photograph it. My plan was to arrive quite late, and stay until they kicked us out – hopefully getting this area as free of people as possible. However, we got there an hour earlier than expected, and it was just full of visitors – as you would expect.
This image took quite a lot of work to get rid of all of the people that were in it, so I’ll go through the brief process below – starting with showing you the 5 images that this one is composed of.
It was daylight, and I was hoping to blur people out as much as possible so I took 5 exposures using my B&W 10 stop filter at 30 seconds apiece. Here are the 5 resulting images:
After 5 shots I figured there would be enough movement below for me to work with and mask where needed. Not quite the case, some people are happy to stand around for 3 minutes and others were sat on seats beside the stairs, not going anywhere.
I loaded the layers up in Photoshop CS6 and did a lot of masking and a little bit of cloning and a little bit of healing. I removed pretty much all of the people, as well as the camel and dinosaur tail from the bottom of the image. I also removed the sign at the foot of the stairs. Repairing the benches at the side of the stairs would have been too difficult for a man of my skill so I removed these as well.
Here’s the resulting image with most things removed:
I tonemapped this final image in Photomatix and returned it to CS6 for more processing. First up, I wanted to straighten it all out so used the perspective crop tool to straighten up the columns near the viewer followed by sharpening the image as a whole. Next was the Color Efex plugin by Nik Software where I applied some tonal contrast, pro contrast and a bleach bypass – the latter I set to a luminosity blending of about 40%.
After this I put the image into Perfect Effects by OnOneSoftware and used the Autumn filter to bring a more golden glow around the windows, brushing this in where I wanted it (I further enhanced this back in Color Efex using a summer filter), and this was followed by the Dreamland filter to darken up the doorways beside the stairs. I did this a little further using a black brush as well; I liked the fact it turned to darkness, plus it cleaning up the fact people were in there in the original images.
I’m pretty pleased with the end result in all.
Tate Modern
Well, I hope everyone had as nice a weekend as I did, though perhaps a more relaxed one as I’m pretty tired after mine.
Friday night started with an impromptu drink with Jim Nix who landed in London and decided to see the British Museum as the first port of call. Coincidentally I work right beside the museum so though I wasn’t able to go out taking photos (my gear was at home) I did enjoy a swift pint – or two – before heading out to play poker. So that was a late night.
The next morning was household stuff before heading out to meet up with Jim for a few hours, walking down the Thames and heading towards Westminster where we grabbed another few swift pints and then went on a photowalk that Jim had organised. Also with us, in alphabetic order, were Andrew, Annabelle, Chris, Conor, Dale, Debbie, James (M), James (P), Jimmy, Jo, John, Laura, Mike, Ollie, Simon and Tam. Hopefully I’ll be able to fill these links in as I get to know the correct URLs from people.
I admit I didn’t take many photos on this walk, but it was nice just to chat to everyone really. As with most of our photowalks this one ended up in the pub for a few more pints before getting home at which point I answered a few emails and crawled into bed at around 1.30 or 2am.
Sunday morning I was up nice and early and left the house at 8.30 to grab some breakfast before meeting up with Jim again. We went to the new cable car running over the Thames first, followed by a quick walk around Greenwich and through the Greenwich foot tunnel, a whirlwind tour around Canary Wharf, and then we headed over to the Natural History Museum to look at the stunning architecture on offer there.
We were pretty tired by the time that was all done, and so we retired back to another pub near Embankment where we met up with John and his wife to quietly finish off the day.
It was a great weekend, and I enjoyed getting out there and seeing several things that were new to me, even as a Londoner. Thanks to all of those who turned up for the photowalk, and of course to Jim for organising it.
Today’s image is from the Saturday afternoon; we dropped into the Tate Modern and headed to the 3rd floor balcony for a slightly elevated view and I liked the lines that were in this image as I looked upwards.
A Pyramid Scene
Today’s image from the Olympic Park is a glimpse of the Basketball Arena. The arena itself was fenced off, I assume to make access to it for ticket holders easier to manage without people sneaking in. As such we were only able to take shots over, or peeking through, the fence itself.
It’s another interesting piece of architecture with some nice curves and shadows. I did have another view which shows more of it but still in the pyramid type form, but the clouds at this time of day were superb, whereas they had moved a little out of the way by the time we returned here at dusk.
For processing I ran three brackets through Photomatix and then took the image into CS6 where I needed to do a little warping and cropping to get everything aligned as needed. I used ColorEfex to add quite a bit of contrast before using a couple of the Perfect Effects filters (though I forget which ones). I had way too much colour in there, but the image didn’t look quite right in black and white, so I used a light blue colorized filter but about 50% opacity to finish it off.
Orbit
This is Orbit.
It is wonderful.
It may not look wonderful, but then first impressions can be misleading and it’s what’s inside that counts. Or something. Not that he has much inside.
Anyway, this is a crazy rollercoaster-esque structure built within the Olympic park and offering a view over the surrounding area, including a little bit into the stadium itself. It’s meant to be a legacy build, which means now that the Olympics are over this should remain as a viewing platform/work of art for the foreseeable future. It’ll still cost £15 to get up it, I’m sure.
I’m sure most of my readers will be familiar with this artist’s works – even if you don’t know the name. In London he has created many public pieces over the years, including Sky Mirror (remember the shiny mirror near the Gherkin) and Marsyas which took over the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern a decade ago; outside of London you’ll probably recognise the Cloud Gate in Chicago, nicknamed ‘The Bean’ due to the shape.
For a more indepth look at this particular piece of work, check out the Orbit thought experiment.
Senate House
Had Hitler won the war, it was suggested that this building would be his London HQ. Instead, it is a library and part of the University of London; if you look at the detail you’ll see it has very Egyptian features.
This building is around a 5 minute walk from my office, and I used to walk past it on a daily basis to and from work; it sometimes participates in Open House weekend as well so do try to get in here if you can; it’s an interesting building on the inside – plus at 19 floors it’s got a pretty cool view from the rooftop as well. It overlooks the British Museum and is probably the best view you will get of the museums green tinted roof.
Bendy Building
I can’t tell you what this building is, or exactly where it is located other than I was in New York when I took it. I do remember having to navigate around some scaffold to get a decent central viewing angle for the shot, shooting over the top of a row of cars that were between myself an the structure. I think it was shortly after coming out of Central Park on the Southside, perhaps somewhere around the 5th or 6th Avenue kind of mark.
The building was, as you can likely already guess, not bending at all like this – perhaps I need to buy a tilt-shift lens…
Shard Facade
I took a quick walk around the Shard with John on Sunday as I hadn’t been up close to it for some time and wanted to see if there were any decent photographic angles coming up. I think this was the best one that I managed to find, and was pleased that a few trees allowed me to block out the buildings that were between myself and the subject.
I also found I wasn’t really in the mood to do any night photography on this trip, which is odd. I think I have spent so long not taking photos, or just using the cameras hand held during the day that I’m now used to that.
In other news, tickets have now been booked for a short trip to Iceland next month, hurrah. In preparation, and because it’s about time, I wish to upgrade a few of my items so am on the look out for the following, with the tripod the only t:
Camera bag – should be able to carry a lot of camera gear and, ideally, items of clothing – plus fit on a plane. Budget up to £200.
Tripod – ideally a 4 section which is light, budget of around £250.
Tripod head – to suit whatever tripod I get – budget up to £250.
Scott Wood has suggested checking out the Induro range of tripods (thanks), but I was also considering Manfrotto 055CXPRO4 and Giottos GTMTL8350B. Any other recommendations, or just details on what you use and if you would recommend, appreciated.
The bag is a tricky purchase and I have been holding off for a while making do with my Lowepro 300 Flipside and a Crumpler backpack. Time to step it up a little.
New York, New York
On my first night in New York I headed to the place which was my #1 go to location for this trip, the Top of the Rock. I headed up about an hour before sunset and took in my first look of the city from up high, an awesome view for sure.
I was lucky with the weather, as I managed to stay up there for hours without a jacket, watching as the sun set over the city and the the transition for day to night arrived with the blinking on of office lights and neon signs.
The Empire State building is one of the most iconic in this city, and the fact you can see it so well from the Rock, along with the fact the space up top is better planned for people and photographers, makes this location better than the Empire State for views to be honest. Sure, the Empire allows access up to the 102nd floor, but sometimes that’s just a little too high. You only really need 30 or 40 floors to get a great and detailed view of what’s below you.
I don’t yet know New York well enough to figure out what all of the buildings in the shot may be, but you can see the Empire State Building, obviously, the under construction World Trade Center Towers, the Statue of Liberty and Ellis island in the distance and…well…you can go ahead and name any others. I would be interested to know what the prominent building on the right is.
