Building elevations and shadows
Back when I was in architecture school (Yes! I was in architecture school!) my favorite thing to draw was shadow lines on building elevations. I loved to calculate the angle of shadows and the different shapes they’d be. The fact that this was my favorite part of architecture school explains why I went to graduate school and studied something else.
But it will also probably explain why even now – a LOT of years after architecture school – I photograph all these building elevations. And you can thank (or not, depending) Professor Ric Vrooman at Texas A&M University for making us draw shadows accurately, based on actual sun angles at actual building locations, instead of taking the easy way out and using a 30° triangle to strike shadows across our drawings. It was from him that I learned to love a nice building elevation with good shadows.
(He also made us cut our presentation boards down so they maintained the Golden Mean ratio, which was actually sort of a pain in the ass. Good with the bad, I suppose.)
Clovis, New Mexico
photographed 5.25.2013
Posted on June 16, 2013, in Photography and tagged 365 photo project, architecture, black and white photography, clovis, clovis new mexico, downtown, melinda green harvey, one day one image, photo a day, photography, texas, texas a&m architecture school. Bookmark the permalink. 7 Comments.
One Day | One Image 
Your architecture training followed you into your photographic vocation. This is another great example. This looks like a movie theater. It’s a very nice looking building and it’s convenient to the loan shop.
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It’s good to know that I got SOMETHING out of all that time in architecture school.
A loan shop beside a movie theater is a genius idea – how else can anyone afford to have snacks at the movie?
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What can I say? you are so good. IMO this is close to the perfect picture. It so pleases the eye !
You show what can be done with seemingly insignificant subjects..
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Wow – thanks for your very kind comments!
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I am really taken by your pictures. Somehow they hypnotize me. I am still studying the evaporative cooler one. I lived in Arizona in the 60s and every house was cooled like that.
I will send you soon what I wrote about the cemetery chair.
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I really like those decorative motifs along the roof line of the theatre. Not to mention the shadows across the façade. I too think your training must be following you around, or perhaps your eye has been dogging you relentlessly. Maybe you should have gone from architecture into photography, which would have been a natural transition – I can say with hindsight.
The Golden Ratio is something I have never struggled to understand (it is math, after all). I am glad to take away from your link that is an irrational number, though I must admit that I did not know numbers could think, even if they act like it.
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Maybe I should have gone from architecture DIRECTLY into photography, rather than waiting for several decades!
I can’t speak to the irrationality of the Golden Mean, but I did find the professor’s request irrational. Those presentation boards are hard to cut, and you could always tell which two sides had been hacked…er, CUT…down to the right size.
This same professor had a very strong belief in Pyramid Power. It was the 1970s. These things happened.
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