Sydney Opera house

Yesterday the Danish architect Jorn Utzon (1918-2008) died. He was responsible for the design of perhaps the most beautiful building I have ever seen with my own eyes, the expressionist Sydney Opera house - and I have yet to find a picture of it that does it justice. The beautiful shapes of the building have been associated with sails or shells, although rumour has it that Utzon was inspired by orange parts. Tragically, Utzon fell victim of a far too low budget during the construction, and had to resign before it was completed in 1973. He never returned to Australia and therefore never actually saw his most famous creation. More on this building can be found in the wikipedia link below.

Chariot of victory

A breathtaking shot by my Flickr friend Greymouser. The famous chariot of victory on the top of the Vittoriano monument at Rome's Piazza Venezia makes for a great image, but set off in black and white silhouette against this marmor-like skyline is simply magnificent.

All rights retained by the photographer.

The shoulders of giants

The idea of this little game is to create an album cover for an imaginary artist/group, following these instructions:

[1] The artist/group: go to the wiki random page generator. The first random Wikipedia article obtained this way is the name of the band or performer. In this case, I ended up with Ancyclopoda. And I made a typo. Sue me.
[2] The title: go to the random quotations site. The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of the album. The random quote that came up was by Sir Isaac Newton: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.
[3] The illustration: pick a suitable one from my Flickr collection. My picture, Oh Magyar, can be found here on Flickr.
The on-line editing was done with the programme On-line image editor, the font settings selected were Arial bold 35/55 Yellow.

Note: this is a variation on the "Debut album game" that has been making its rounds around bulletin boards and blogs for some time now - the original version called for a random Flickr Explore photograph to be used as the cover. I have been trying to find out who had the original idea, but so far no success.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Located on the shores of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is dedicated to recording the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, and other people who have in some major way influenced the music industry, particularly in the area of rock and roll. Controversial as their choices may be, the architectural aspect of the museum is definitely worthwhile. The Chinese architect I.M. Pei, perhaps best known for the Louvre pyramid, is responsible for the design which harmoniously mixes pyramidal and blocked structures. The museum was completed in 1998. More on this building can be found in the wikipedia link below.

Idols

And after the previous post, this one is a must. I took this picture on New Year's day 2008 in a shop for modern interior design in Naarden (the Netherlands). The almost oversized version of Bull's Garbo poster on the wall, juxtaposed with my wife's look at her makes for a strong shot that has received a lot of reactions on Flickr, including second prize in a Worldwide Photo Club competition. The original shot was cropped considerably and converted to black and white for greater effect.

Camera: Canon Powershot Pro1 8 Megapixels, handheld
Exposure: 0.05 sec (1/20)
Aperture: f/2.4
Focal Length: 7.8 mm
Post-processing: Picasa 2.0

Clarence Sinclair Bull

Some great photographers' claim to fame rests on one subject only. A case in point is the American Clarence Sinclair Bull (1896-1979). Although he took photographs of many Hollywood movie stars in the twenties, thirties and forties, he will always be known as "the man who shot Greta Garbo" for his beautiful series of portraits and movie stills of this elusive diva. The shot above is my favourite. It dates back to 1931, and was made as part of the publicity around Garbo's movie Mata Hari. Surprisingly this photographer has not made it to Wikipedia, but a highly informative web page from the Garbo website is linked to below.

Burning brightly

More fractal art by nomm de photo - I love the exquisite curves and shades of red to yellow in this one. It never ceases to amaze me that such natural images are generated by mathematical computer algorithms.

All rights retained by the creator.

Nur zu Besuch

Die Toten Hosen - literally Dead Trousers, a German euphemism for impotents or failures - is probably the most talented and certainly the most enduring band to come out of the eighties' Neue Deutsche Welle (German New Wave). Their style is a bit of a mix of Slade and Punk, often with a lot of humour injected in their texts. I bought a CD of them during a holiday in Germany, just for fun, absolutely not expecting that they would be able to make a song like Nur zu Besuch (Just visiting). This is a beautiful rock ballad, and being able to understand the lyrics is quite essential. Singer Campino describes the visit to the grave of a loved one (although it was inspired by the death of his mother, any other loved one can be substituted) in a perfect understated way. It is a song that can literally make me cry.
Art Rock score: 10/10 (brilliant masterpiece, one of 200 best songs of all time)

Beneath the arches

Time to highlight one of my recent Flickr favourites. I first encountered this shot by mrbuk1 in the group Life thru a Lenz - and it was love (and fave) at first sight. A textbook curved vanishing point, and beautiful colours, textures and lighting to boot.

All rights retained by the photographer.

Mourning woman

Earlier this year, the wife and I spent a few weeks on holiday in central and eastern Europe. In Czesky Krumlov and Vienna we had the opportunity to see a substantial part of the works of the Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele (1890-1918), a protege of Gustav Klimt. I had always thought he died in the Great war (like Macke and Mark), but in a cynical twist of fate he actually survived the war only to succumb to the Spanish flu a few months later. Most of his work is extreme and not always to my taste, but I was struck by the painting depicted above in the Leopold Museum in Vienna. More on Schiele in the wikipedia article linked to below.

The division bell

A weird thing happened to me earlier this year - I took out the final studio album of Pink Floyd to give it another spin, and when I looked at the cover, it suddenly went "click" in my head. All these years, I had always seen the design as two faces looking at one another. Now for the first time, the two faces combined in my mind to make one face looking at me. A beautiful visual trick by designer Storm Thorgerson.

Time for a nap

And to round off the blogging for today, a fun shot I took myself. This bulldog apparently is a bit of an institution in the Dutch town of Utrecht - you can almost always find him sleeping in a chair outside the shop of his owner. It's a pretty zoomed in crop of the original.

Camera: Canon Powershot Pro1 8 Megapixels, handheld
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/100)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 25 mm
Post-processing: Picasa 2.0

Fail!

OK, so this may look rather off-topic for the blog, but it is in keeping with the fun spirit of the previous post. The Fail blog collects photographs, videos and screen shots of funny or even hilarious mistakes. This site has given me so much fun the last few days, that I want to draw your attention to it. The shot above is a great example - and a good photograph as well, so in the end it does fit this blog.

Vrooooooom!

Sometimes we take pictures and only realize later the full impact of the shot (I have another one in mind for this later). This shot by fellow Flickrite algo is a perfect example. Having caught a butterfly on a flower, in his own words: So focused was I on trying to show the luminosity, that I didn't see the other possibilities which have now given me a good chuckle. Fun shot.

All rights retained by the photographer.

Nielsen, Danish dynamite

Most classical music lovers know the name of the most important Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931), but it is surprising how many of them have actually hardly heard little or nothing of his compositions - in contrast to say his contemporary Sibelius. To my taste his six symphonies and three concertos are amongst the finest examples of those genres in the first half of the 20th century. This Naxos CD of his concertos, for violin, for clarinet and for flute, makes an excellent introduction. The beautiful violin concerto dates from 1911, and is a typical late romantic dramatic concerto - showing off that the composer played the instrument himself. The flute concerto from 1926 is perhaps more original, if only by the choice of the solo instrument. But for me the main concerto here is the clarinet concerto from 1928, a stunningly modern work, with an important role for the snare drum as antagonist of the clarinet. Early critics remarked that it sounded like a concerto from another planet. For me this is the second best clarinet concerto of all time, surpassed only by Mozart's masterpiece. The performances on this Naxos CD, with its running time close to 80 minutes, are excellent. Highly recommended as a real bargain introduction to this somewhat overlooked giant.

Sunrise

Time to go back to one of my own photographs. This one dates back about a year. It was shot during my daily commute, taking the ferry from Amsterdam central station to my employer across the river IJ. The rising sun caused a beautiful lighting and the old sailing ship docking next to the modern buildings was a great additional asset. The shot as presented is a rather drastic crop from the original.

Camera: Konica Minolta KD-400Z 4 Megapixels, handheld
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/8.3
Focal Length: 24 mm
Post-processing: Picasa 2.0

So long, Frank Lloyd Wright

A rather obvious follow up post.... The first album I bought in my life was Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over troubled water in 1970 when I was 13. I bought it mainly for the hit El condor pasa, which I now think is actually one of their most mediocre efforts. One of the best songs of this album is the ballad So long Frank Lloyd Wright, inspired by the aforementioned American architect. The video shows many of Wright's creations to complement the music.
Art Rock score: 9/10 (very strong song, one of 650 best songs of all time)

Fallingwater

Perhaps the most famous creation of perhaps the most famous architect of the 20th century: Fallingwater by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright (1867=1959) . An incredible fusion of rock, water and concrete, erected in the Pennsylvania country side, completed in 1939. Anybody who wants to define Wrights term "organic architecture" should simply show this picture rather than try to find the right words. More on this building can be found in the wikipedia link below.

James White

Another up and coming fashion and glamour photographer, who has not made wikipedia yet. I got alerted to his work thanks to this portrait of one of America's most attractive women, Alyssa Milano. Looking for further information, I came across his web site, which shows off his considerable talent - amongst others in album cover photography for the likes of Ashlee Simpson and Paris Hilton. Highly recommended - his website is linked to below.

Sky Technotronics

And to round off the blue theme for today, a painting by Australian surrealist James Gleeson (1915-2008) who passed away last month. To be honest, he was an unknown to me, but I stumbled upon him accidentally via google when I ended up in what appears to be a very interesting art blog, Art Blog by Bob. The blog writer rightly pointed out that these images would be very suited for Pink Floyd's music. More on Gleeson in the wikipedia article linked to below.

Blue Monday

More "blue"s. The French project Nouvelle Vague is original to say the least. They take New Wave hits from the eighties and have them performed in bossa nova rhythms by models who actually never heard the originals. A fiendishly clever play on words, as Nouvelle Vague and bossanova are the French and Portuguese words for New Wave. The end results, collected in two CD's and a few isolated tracks, are always intriguing and sometimes downright spectacular. Some songs you would expect to be very suited for this, such as Visage's Fade to grey. Some work surprisingly well, such as the Cure's A forest and the Clash' The guns of Brixton. And one is simply hilarious - their take on the Dead Kennedy's Too drunk to fuck. To keep up with the theme, I have selected their cover of New Order's Blue Monday, albeit it a live edition.
Art Rock score: 8/10 (great song, I'd put it on my MP3 player)

Blue star energy

Fractal art is on that uncommon interface between science and art. Although these computer generated images follow well-established mathematical principles, the end result often resembles life - or fantasy. There are numerous beautiful fractal art images on the internet, but more often than not the original creator is not mentioned. I therefore decided to pick my choices from those offered at Flickr, as that gives the opportunity to give credit where credit is due. This flower like image was created by chriscreek - another name that will come up more often in this subject in months to come.

All rights retained by the creator.

The short straw

Very fitting for today's blue theme. This shot, an intriguing variation on the theme of liquids in a glass, is by my Flickr friend darren_crabb. It dates back almost a year, but I still love the effect he achieved here.

All rights retained by the photographer.

Bleu

Part of the famous Kieslowsky movie trilogy Rouge, Blanc, Bleu (Red, White, Blue), it is the blue album that I have selected for the theme of beautiful album covers. Of course, having the gorgeous and elegant Juliette Binoche on the cover automatically qualifies it for this series, but I do like the whole design, with all relevant information in a non-intrusive way. And it is blue bleu. By the way, there are two different versions, both featuring la Binoche, but I have a slight preference for this one (also known as the French version).

My blue Valentine

Once in a while I like to have a continuing theme through a number of subsequent posts. Today, the theme is 'blue'. We kick off with a painting that my wife made earlier this year. Trademark featureless face, but the colours (or lack thereof) much less typical.

In the eternal cold

The idea of this little game is to create an album cover for an imaginary artist/group, following these instructions:

[1] The artist/group: go to the wiki random page generator. The first random Wikipedia article obtained this way is the name of the band or performer. In this case, I ended up with Faramans. And I made a typo. Sue me.
[2] The title: go to the random quotations site. The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of the album. The random quote that came up was by Archibald MacLeish: To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold.
[3] The illustration: pick a suitable one from my Flickr collection. My picture, Winter Wonderland 3, can be found here on Flickr.
The on-line editing was done with the programme On-line image editor, the font settings selected were Mistral 70/80 Black.

Note: this is a variation on the "Debut album game" that has been making its rounds around bulletin boards and blogs for some time now - the original version called for a random Flickr Explore photograph to be used as the cover. I have been trying to find out who had the original idea, but so far no success.