Experience Photography Project (Architecture???)

[regnaD kciN]

DISCLAIMER (i.e. the F.Gordon Rule): This poll is advisory only. I may choose a photo from this poll other than the one that receives the highest vote total. Moreover, I reserve the right to select a photo, particularly a newly-taken one, that was not part of this poll. (Although I would note that the likelihood of that is low this month, as we are scheduled for rain from now until the contest submission date.)

I'm sure you all (or at least F.Gordon ;-) ) knew what was going to happen once I added that last parenthetical comment to my poll thread. Yep...a change in the forecast. Instead of continuous rain all week, we were to get one sunny day (Monday) before the storms rolled in.

And you didn't expect me to go out picture-hunting?

Since the day was supposed to be bright and sunny (or at least partially so -- the clouds arrived in mid-afternoon, earlier than expected), I decided to see what I could capture of the controversial Experience Music Project in Seattle Center, that vast, undulating blob of colored glass and mirrored surfaces that is as close as most of us old-timers can get to a psychedelic experience here in the 21st century. (And which, it should be noted, already made an appearance in my poll thread as the background for Wild River Experience.)

It didn't take too long to realize that, whatever else I might call these photos, I would be loathe to call them "architectural photography." For, to my mind, architectural photography implies an overview of at least a significant part of the building being photographed -- and there's really no way to get a good overview of EMP except from a vantage point that features busy city streets, power poles, overhead traffic signals, hordes of tourists, the monorail track, and at least one prominent McDonald's sign. In other words, decidedly un-groovy. To capture the essence of the Experience Music Project, you have to get in close, gathering it in near-abstract bits and pieces; in the process, making the photographer the equivalent of one of the proverbial blind men describing the elephant.

Thus, I really don't think I'm going to enter any of these in this month's competition. However, I thought I'd post a sampling here, as a way to recall a fascinating building (and one of the most enjoyable afternoons I've spent with a camera).
























(Incidentally, for those of you who haven't noticed, the sixth picture features a distorted reflection of the Space Needle -- an archetype of the Sixties reflected in an homage to that same decade.)