Higgins Armory Museum

[manaheim]

This place had some pretty interesting architecture. I made an attempt to capture it. Thoughts?

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[tevo]

"HEY. None for you Higgins. ...You HAD yours."

 

[manaheim]

Different Higgins.

 

[tevo]

Different Higgins.

Where is it located?

 

[manaheim]

It's in Worcester, Ma. (pronounced "wuster"- don't ask- it's a MA thing- we're odd) Very neat place to visit if you're in the area.

 

[Studio7Four]

Thoughts, per request:

In most of them I think the tilt is gratuitous and probably even detracts from the shot. It may be just my opinion, colored by the fact that I'm an engineer, but in architecture where you have nice straight lines, particularly where they're perpendicular or, even better, in a nice grid like these windows, the viewer wants them aligned with the frame. A tilt just feels wrong, like the building were listing to the side.

All that being said, I actually like the tilt in #2...if anything, I would have gone to more of an extreme. Because of the composition of this shot (mostly windows, with just one row of medallions and three increasingly small riveted columns) it has a bit of an abstract feel to it. This almost has the feel - and I bet you could get there with a little tweaking of the camera angle in addition to the tilt of the frame - that the medallions are on a vertical column. That is, that you are looking down the side of a skyscraper, rather than this being a horizontal view rotated 90 degrees. There are subtle tells in the reflections and shadows that, combined with the slight feel of vertigo, make the viewer go "Huh" and keep looking to figure out why it feels just a bit off (compared with just saying "Nope, that just feels wrong.").

A few other thoughts:
On #1, I think this would work better as a more close up study of the metal work. Architecture is (again, at least to me) a combination of the big picture - the overall lines to the building - and the details, such as this shield and the medallions. This shot has a little too much "big picture" (too much window area) to really work as a study on the details, but clearly isn't about the big picture (like #2 is). At the very least I would crop it vertically (remove most of the windows above the shield and crop from the bottom to remove the corner of the door jamb) and/or do some cloning on the windows right around the shield so that those panes are more uniform in appearance like the rest of the windows (to make for a more uniform backdrop for the shield, helping it pop more).

On #3, I really like the splash of color - I think the red is great against the blue/grey of the windows and metal. However, due to the glancing angle along the building and the tilt to the frame, it comes across as a haphazard shot that happens to have a nice color combination rather than an intriguing image of the klaxon.

I haven't been to the Higgins since I was a kid - did you get anything good from inside?

 

[manaheim]

Hey, thanks for these very thoughtful comments. I'm going to have to think about them a while. I took some more straight pictures of the building, but they really didn't seem to work for me at all. Not sure why. I also like the tilt in 2 because it made me feel distinctly uncomfortable... like I wasn't sure which way was up. As I say, i'll have to think on your other comments a bit... in the architecture space, I am still playing and learning.

I didn't get much from inside. It's a very cool place, but more from a perspective of what it had. Since I'm not generally a huge abstract guy, it would be hard to have ripped many shots that weren't just snapshots of this or that suit of armor. 'course, I also had my kids with me, which was a little distracting.

I did get one shot of a light fixture I quite enjoyed... http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/general-gallery/257816-fixture-fixated.html

 

[LizardKing]

I believe you did a great job with the perspectives and lines. :thumbup: