Category: 2022 NKU

  • Buildings in the sun

    Buildings in the sun

    So, here I am at the Flying Cloud Academy Vintage Dance week hosted at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) and playing truant from most of the day’s exhausting dance workshops. I suspect that the campus was first developed with new buildings in the early 70’s. At least, the brutalist architecture leads me to suspect this. Reminiscent of the many concrete excrescences that litter the former Союз Советских Социалистических Республик (ie USSR), for example this theatre in Novgorod, Russia :

    , many of the buildings on the NKU campus look as though they have been washed up by some apocalyptic tidal wave and deposited there. Attempts are made to soften the ambience with trees and other leafy foliage with variable amounts of success. The “Health Innovation Center” [sic] where we had some of the dancing workshops abuts the gigantic Science building possessing the form of a prehistoric stranded cetacean. However, the architects have done some clever things with this space and , in turn, I have taken some different views on what can be appreciated.

    First, in colour :

    The first two are looking upwards at the skylight & then from the third floor I’m looking down on Erica. This latter photo I like a lot and may well enter a print into an exhibition (eg R.A.M or Minnetrista).

    But the fun is with the monochrome :

    #4 & #5 have had some judicious rotating and cropping; personally I like the shapes and lines that you can get with black&white. Number 5 for example doesn’t give one many clues about what is actually there and how far away it is. However, it’s #6 that a winner for me. As before the monochrome treatment removes colour which in this case I judged to be too revealing & superfluous. From the right side, the background feature seems to meld into the ‘cage’ and then disappear, and what is this strange structure anyway? Thus the abstraction is effected successfully.

    The shade shelters have a mesh which allows light to pass though but dissipates it enough to provide relief. Focussing through such a mesh at the brutalist building behind we obtain an image such as #7, which can perhaps be described as a combination of Mondrian expressionism + pointillist execution + Bauhaus sensibility.
    Image #8 was taken in an early morning mist, right? Not quite. Actually, the camera lens misted up badly in the humid heat when I took it outside; I snapped this image before the condensation evaporated.

    The final set of images are all about shadows and lines; see if you can figure out what is making the shadows in each of these shots.

    Not too difficult now, was it? These images were taken over four days of strolling around the N.K.U campus in the mid-June heat and I was thankful for both the opportunity to do this and the open nature of the university campus with its photogenic vistas.

  • Shades and Yellow

    Shades and Yellow

    In mid-June 2022 I accompanied my wife, Erica, to the Flying Cloud Academy of Vintage Dance week in Cincinnati, OH. We stayed at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) and I had opportunity to shoot photos there on several days.

    The weather for the week was generally hot & rather humid with a couple of days that were sunny but cooler. I was able to wander around the campus, which is high above the city on the southern side of the Ohio river, looking for interesting vistas. Like “mad dogs and Englishmen” I ended up doing most of my peregrinations during the hottest part of midday. While the brutalist architecture offered little respite from the scorching sun the well placed trees, shades and sun splitters located mid campus provided some measure of shade. Since the universities colours were yellow and something else there were a lot of ‘yellow’ objects, flowers & trees that broke up the monotonous blankness of the brutalist concrete. I took advantage of these to shoot a series of scenes I have entitled :

    Shades and Yellow

    More effective at providing shade in this patio area outside the library are these tables, seats and Da Vinci style shades all in the same shade of bright yellow.

    The building behind pictures 2, 3 & 4 is the Library with its huge picture window with built-in retractable shading. Picture #4 shows the measure of shade given to the yellow flower bed.

    Different kinds of shade were provided by shade structures (#1), trees with yellow blossoms (#2), and benches under shady trees with yellow flower beds (#3) .

    All over campus there were yellow tables & chairs in shady spots, next to buildings (eg Arts #1), or conveniently next to a hedge or tree (#2, #3).

    Although there did not seem to be a central focal point for the campus the confluence of gigantic Science and Health Innovation buildings provided a circular forum with central plant bed and peripheral compass points which greatly helped navigating through this compact yet sprawling campus.

    Bed of plants on a plate.