Moments of Glory..

‘Black and White Photographer of the Year’ 2012 edition is now closed. Last Friday all winners got a wonderful news. Well done guys!!!
We will be able to see selected photographs by the end of November in Black+White Photography magazine.

This time I am not one of them.
It would be probably too much - two years in a row ;D 
(you can come back to my post about competition in 2011. Just click HERE please)

...However I am extremely happy that 5 of my photographs were nominated in 3 categories. 3 of them got a nomination for the main prize - Photographer of the Year 2012 /Overall Winner/.
Great honor!

Lets Start from the top then ;) I am sure most of you remember my blog post ‘Forbidden Place...’
These photographs received the highest grade...in two categories!
“Forbidden Place’ series was nominated for  the Overall Winner prize and two images from this series were also nominated for ‘The Living World’ single image category (first and second below).

For ‘The Living World’ was nominated never published before ‘Silent witness’ as well.

The Last photograph it’s a portrait from one of my assignments I was working on in January.
“Reservoir Dogs’ theme nominated for  ‘The Human Spirit’ single image category :) 

Looking forward to see the jury choice and also to ‘Black and White Photographer of the Year’ 2013 edition!


...and this is not the end. There are some more nominations ;) 
'The Irish Times Open House Dublin Photography Competition' with Irish Architecture Foundation.
'Architecture Alive'...
Three photographs has been selected by Jury :)

Busaras

Berkeley Library, TCD

UCD campus

Now it's the time to work harder, get ready for next year editions... and moments of glory ;)

Behind the trees

Third post within one week... It's very unusual for me ;)
Well, I just couldn’t wait to show you all these wonderful buildings. Would love to do it  almost at once ;)
This is the last one I visited during Open House 2012  after The Old Terminal and Central Bank anyway.

Sunny afternoon, distance just about 10km so I took my bike as usually. It was still early  when I arrived. I had some time to enjoy the area before our tour started. Very quiet road with lots of mature trees around and in-between them, covered in green...Meander.
Classic modernist, flat-roofed house designed by Alan and Mairin Hope and built in 1939 as a home for their family.

View from the garden

Interior is very impressive with its original furnishing and also external and internal finishes.
Meander, constructed of cedar-cladded block-work is not very big but at the same time spacious, cosy and bright interior due to often double or ever triple aspect rooms.
It is one of the most important example of Irish Modernism. 

tech:
again - hasselblad 500C/M with Planar 80mm 2.8 and Tmax 400 pushed to 3200

‘On the Ocean...’

Time to get back on board. Strong wind, rough sea but still lots of sun...

... it is easy enough to keep going with such a story looking at this photograph. We have to come back however on land... the land of concrete ;)
Mentioned in previous post Open House 2012 tour brought me back to the ‘Ocean Liner’.
Now I could climb up the steps and see pilothouse...

The Old Terminal at Dublin Airport revisited...

Roof terrace. We’ve got there through narrow stairs beside control tower where the Met Office is located since 1940.
I set my camera to take a photograph of it but...suddenly this wonderful couple appears.
I shifted my camera instantly. Such a scene is not happening too often. There was no sense anymore to photograph the tower itself without them ;)
It is exactly quintessence of comparison of The Old Terminal to the ‘Ocean Liner’ ...

                                                                                                                                                


Our tour which took almost 1.5 hour, ended up with fantastic lecture and slideshow about history of this building. It is not big at all but very well designed and functional.
Good old times when genuine architecture and character of the place was priority...which we sometimes lack nowadays.

view from internal staircase (with original wall heater mounted on the left)

corridor

That was my first Open House 2012 trip that day. Now... Central Bank was waiting for me ;) /described in previous post/


tech:
Hasselblad 500C/M with Planar 80mm 2.8 and Tmax 400@3200

The Big Bank

Architecture Festival ‘Open House 2012’ organized by Irish Architecture Foundation made the first weekend of October one of the busiest and most engaging for me since quite a long time.  
That was Saturday morning. 
I was really excited as places I had a plan to visit that day were almost impossible to see the other time. I took my camera, bag of films and I left my place very early. I had a day off from my usual family duties ;) 
Having in mind ‘Unfulfilled Dreams’ series I booked all tours very carefully. Three buildings were on my list. First - once again The Old Terminal at Dublin Airport. This time with full access at last ;) 
I will start however from the other one, very unique I would normally never get an access to -  Central Bank of Ireland...

Central Bank of Ireland. View from Trinity Street

A few weeks earlier I received an email from DoCoMoMo Ireland about tour for its members in this building. That was something special. 
Close to the date tour was canceled by the Bank authority.
Luckily it has been just postponed  and we made it exactly during Open House festival. DoCoMoMo visit was the last one after all Open House tours so we had a little bit more time to see this truly amazing structure inside. Our little group was guided by Miriam Fitzpatrick, architect and lecturer (in Architecture and Urban Design). 

Entrance from the roof over canteen

Central Bank it's an extremely interesting building and very controversial at the same time. Mostly because of its location and size... Obviously wandering though town you won’t be able to miss it ;)

This fantastic monumental block of concrete (I just love concrete!!!) shows something completely different once you get inside. Each floor turns into amazingly light, bright and almost floating space. Floor to ceiling windows around each level gives truly breathtaking view of the city. These windows are set back about 1.5m from the edge of each floor. It’s like a huge projection screens with constant screening of Dublin’s panorama. 

Office room at 7th floor

The history of this building starts in 1967 when Sam Stephenson and Arthur Gibney were appointed to design the new headquarter for the Central Bank.
The original design was for 15 storey (!!!)... at the end we’ve got ‘just’ an 8 storey building. Seven floors of offices with 8th as a plant room.
Structure of the Central Bank and the way how it was build it’s another interesting story. It’s suspended structure with service cores. Each floor (made of precast concrete panels) was lifted up to the top which obviously means  - it was build from the top to the bottom.

‘The Typical Floors, measuring 45mx30m are supported at twelve hanger pints around the perimeter and on twin reinforced concrete cores. From these hanger points the loads are transmitted directly to the roof level through pairs of high tensile bars (...)‘  /info from the leaflet by Institution of Engineers of Ireland/

I highly recommend to watch documentary film on John Sisk & Son Ltd. (main contractor) website about the construction of the Central Bank Building in 1978 when it was completed. Click HERE please. It is absolutely great!!!

At the end of the day I was already thinking about Sunday and another great location ;) 
First however I will come back to mentioned at the beginning The Old Terminal... it's in next blog post.


Some usual tech details:
This time just a medium format camera, Hasselblad 500C/M with 80mm 2.8 Planar lens and Tmax 400 pushed to 3200, loaded into it.
Also last weekend I packed my large format equipment to photograph it in context.
Sinar F2, Schneider-Kreuznach Symmar 150mm 5.6 with Fomapan 100 in Tmax Dev.