I was in Los Angeles a couple of weekends ago – downtown L.A. Downtown is full of wonderful historical buildings – the Biltmore Hotel, the Central Library, Central Market, and the Bradbury Building are just a few. But downtown L.A. is also full of beautiful modern buildings. Last year when we were in China, of course there were fabulous ancient sites, old buildings, crowded older sections of cities, but there were also some amazing modern buildings.
New buildings also are indicative of the character of a city. I’ll share just a few photos that I hope will explain what I mean.
I’m not sure what building this is in downtown Los Angeles. The angle is also somewhat overused. In fact, I think immediately of trees in a forest – you know that photo you’ve seen a million times and probably taken when you lie on the ground and shoot looking straight up. But – it still has its uses. It conveys a feeling of immense size and power. The building to the left and the very small sliver of another building say “city,” “skyscraper,” and “importance.” It’s also just plain fun.
One of the wonderful things about modern buildings is the reflective surfaces. In the first photo the clouds are mirrored. In this next photo, an entire building is mirrored.
I love this photo! It’s enigmatic and interesting, at least to me. The distortions in the reflection of the building make me think of a fun house. Both of these photos are from downtown Los Angeles, but here’s one from Shanghai that really tickles my fancy. It’s a polka-dotted building! And it reflects the buildings around it.
I LOVE the idea of a polka-dotted building. If the focus of my travel photography was just the “old stuff,” I’d have missed an essential element of modern-day China. The creativity in the architecture, especially in Shanghai, was phenomenal.
This image is the Pearl Television Tower in Shanghai. What a great job this building does in conveying daring, modern design with a symbol of something China is known for – fresh-water pearls. In fact, the series of “small” pearls is like a string of beads. Here’s a detail:
This Shanghai building is also amazing.
You can see from the margins how narrow, or flat, the building is, at least at the top. And something else interesting – some of the windows look like they are darker but what they are is open. Imagine being able to open the windows in a skyscraper here in the U.S.! I took this photo from a bus window. It’s not the greatest photo, but the building was interesting enough to me that I kept the photo. A flat building! Not quite, but almost as good as a polka-dotted building.
I’m going to stick with Shanghai for now and return to downtown L.A. at the end of the post. This photo also was taken from the bus. I love it. What a totally cool building design. Maybe I could describe it architecturally if I knew those terms, but for me, chronicling my travels, it’s enough that I just like the waves.
Aren’t the shapes amazing? From round to flat to cylindrical and tilted. Gold is a nice variation in color but still showcases those cool reflections of other buildings.
From that we move to something that looks like the Chrysler Building, but next to a narrow building under construction. You could miniaturize that and just pick it up by the handle! These buildings are actually what I remember most about Shanghai. I loved the historical sites, but Shanghai, in my mind at least, is a city of the future.
What a beautiful skyline. If you want to see more buildings from Shanghai and China, you can look here. Picture G4-14 is the side of a building in Beijing, but by just taking a small part of the building, it becomes a photograph of color and pattern.
Back to Los Angeles:
This is a mixture of older and the new but it has some interesting elements and tells me something about downtown. Even though I grew up in the Los Angeles area and now live in Bakersfield, this is still a “travel” photo. We were down for the weekend, actually staying downtown, and this was what I saw. This is part of the character of the city.
This is where we stayed – the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. It’s like four cylinders around a central hub. Even though it’s been there for a long time, it’s exciting, modern, and makes you feel like you are in an important city.
The last photo is the Bonaventure but from a different angle.
Downtown L.A. has public art everywhere. That tells us about the character of the city. It’s a hard-won battle usually to place art in public places, but it tells me that culture and art is a vibrant part of this city.
So – buildings, modern buildings, can be every bit as important as the older, historic places. Don’t forget when you travel, at home or abroad, to pay attention to what makes the city what it is now, and what shows where it’s going in the future.
