Tag Archives: architecture

Goodnight Belfast and Reviewing the Week 54

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My city walk was taken through the day but this photo looks across the River Lagan in Belfast later that same evening. The horizontal line of lights in the dark are christmas lights running along the crane featured near the start of the walk.

This was a Winter city walk taken on Boxing day a few years ago. There is only frost on the riverside footpath at the walk and the bare branches of trees by the crane to prove the season. However, a couple of days later the river was frozen over and covered in snow, but we had left to return to mainland Britain by that time!

Belfast Glow

Click the sound clip play button below and then the first thumbnail image to view the walk images in sequence.

City Ambience

If viewing this in an email, to see the sound player you will need to visit the blog – please click the post title to view the full post.

Frozen Footpath by the River Lagan

City Patterns

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Walking around Belfast revealed many fascinating structures in the architecture. The camera can be a very useful tool when it comes to focusing on aspects of buildings that create fascinating patterns when isolated from their surroundings. The patterns are there anyway but it is not always easy to pick them out amongst the complexity of their surroundings. Sometimes, of course, it is a combination of structures seen from a particular angle that does the trick.

Belfast City patterns

City Sounds 2

If viewing this in an email, to see the sound player you will need to visit the blog – please click the post title to view the full post.

Wheeling and Dealing

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Approaching Belfast city centre on this Boxing Day walk in 2011 the architecture becomes abstract when superimposed against the big ferris wheel situated beside City Hall. Seen behind one of the columned towers of the building, the scene takes on a Christmassy or religious appearance – ironic considering the role that religion still plays in Northern Ireland politics. So are the punters wheeling while the politicians are dealing?

This shot can also be seen in black and white on Monochrome Madness MM 2-41 at Leanne Cole Photography.

Ferris Wheel

 

City Colours

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My walk around Belfast started with the River Lagan but then headed towards the city centre. It was Boxing Day and the streets were relatively quiet. The range of architectural design, colours and patterns may be what you might expect in any city, but this is Belfast, the place where I grew up and still love.

This walk was taken a few years ago and I have not been there since. These photos  are therefore important to me and serve my memory very favourably.

Belfast

Heading Towards Evening

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Daylight comes to an end and the lights come on around Swansea’s Maritime Quarter. One take sees the lights of the apartments and the Meridian Tower and their reflections in the water. Another presents the silhouetted patterns of masts and architecture against the late evening sunset.

Swansea Maritime Quarter

sunset

silhouettes

Rust and Restoration

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About ten years ago we had a studio in Swansea’s Maritime Quarter. We first moved into it just before the area started being developed. The old dock next to the studio building was empty and a number of the buildings were derelict – it wasn’t the best area in town. How things change!

Walking round what is now the marina was . . . interesting – now it is very pleasant. The dock has boats in it again and housing, other buildings and art around it. The National Waterfront Museum holds a significant space there as do other architectural developments.

On this walk there was still a taste of the past, not so much in the brightly painted and well maintained Helwick Lightship but in the old rust bucket resting next to it. It looks a fascinating vessel and I am sure there must be good reason for it being there –  perhaps it is awaiting restoration. Why ever it’s there, they make for quite a contrast sitting next to each other.

Swansea maritime quarter

lightship

old rusty boat

NBGW and Reviewing The Week 44

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This is the smallest of the three lakes at the National Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW). It is the one that welcomes you along with the ducks when you arrive and makes for a beautiful and relaxing memory to depart with along with all the amazing scenery, flowers and plants, architecture, art, science and history of the place and of course, walks. It is well worth repeated visits and having watched it develop over these past fifteen years or so, I look forward to a lot more growth in the future.

Click the first in the block of images below to view the week’s photos in sequence.

Garden of Wales entrance lake

Colour in the Gardens

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Autumn colours are wonderful but back in September at the tail end of Summer, the colour in the Botanic Garden of Wales (NBGW) was not confined to the plants and flowers. A tortoiseshell butterfly also displays its colourful beauty while in the background of the first image you can see the curve of the Great Glasshouse, the largest single span glass house in the world, designed by Norman Foster.

NBGW

butterfly