ART MUSEUM: CALATRAVA AND FOUNTAINS

Last weekend, I found myself back at the Milwaukee Art Museum and took some more shots of the Calatrava addition as well as a few of the fountain area in front of the addition.  These are really pretty mundane shots that have been done a million times.   The difference for me was that the brise soleil was open.  Every other time I have been taking photos, the brise soleil was down for one reason or another.

For this first shot, I positioned one wing of the brise soleil against the partly cloudy blue sky, which I darkened a bit in post processing.  Unfortunately, the wing is a bit lost in the larger cloud in the lower left.

I took a few shots from the side of the addition, this time showing the brise soleil in the elevated position.  I thought these worked better as B&Ws.

I didn't give myself enough of a border to the right and the top in this first shot.

This second shot shows the Hoan Bridge in the lower right background, though ideally I would have preferred isolating just the Calatrava addition.

This best shots were those taken from directly west of the Calatrava. as in the following.

From experience, I realized I had to take great care to ensure that the camera was positioned exactly in line with the center of the structure.  Maybe I should have taken some intentionally off-center shots as well.  Because the lines of the structure are so important, I decided to make these B&Ws also.

I did not have my tripod, so all of these shots were taken hand-held.  Even so, the brise soleil came out in very good focus.  Of course, it helped that it was a bright day and the exposure was a quick 1/400 second at an aperture of f/10.

Even though I did not go through the exhibits in the museum this time, I did pay a visit to the atrium to get some shots of the terrific architectural detail that if provides.  Here are a couple of shots of the upper portion of the atrium.  Again, I tried hard to get the camera positioned in the very center of the space.

Finally, I took a few shots of the fountain area below the pedestrian bridge leading to the Calatrava addition.  I liked the pattern between the fountain and areas of shrubs and grass.

I did a better job in the first shot of positioning the camera.  However, I liked the photographer in the lower shot, whose presence provides great perspective on the dimensions of this space.

There is a bit of an optical illusion in this last shot.  I was careful in cropping this shot to position the line of fountains to run exactly down the center of the image.  However, because the dark shrubbery runs at an angle, the line of fountains appears to be running diagonally from lower right to upper left.

Taken with my Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 24-120 mm f/4 lens.