Hello and welcome back! This week I would like to take you on a trip to sunny Barcelona, Spain, capital city of the Catalonia region. I shot this image during a weekend trip to Barcelona in late October 2008. “La Pedrera” was taken with an aperture of f/8 and shutter speed of 1/1000, at ISO 100.
People frequently ask me to identify my favorite city in the world, which is an extremely difficult thing to do since every city offers its own sense of unique flair. However, I would definitely rank Barcelona as one of my top destinations. Barcelona just feels like a happy city. With its friendly and welcoming residents, the smiling sun that always warms the streets, and the romantic atmosphere of music, dancing, and sangria, it was nearly impossible to not fall in love with Barcelona.
One of my favorite elements of Barcelona was all of the beautiful and interesting architecture of Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, including La Sagrada Família, Parc Güell, Casa Batlló, and of course Casa Milà, more popularly known as La Pedrera. La Pedrera, meaning “the stone quarry,” was constructed in the early part of the 20th century as an apartment building and office block. The building’s facade was designed to resemble an open quarry, with waves of stone rippling over the entire exterior of the building. The interior is very cavelike, completely devoid of any right angles or straight walls, which creates a space of optical illusions. The building is definitely one of the most unique pieces of architecture I’ve ever seen.
The highlight of La Pedrera is by far the rooftop terrace, which takes visitors to another world completely. The chimneys, which to me looked like Darth Vader’s Spanish cousins, serve as the terrace welcoming party, staring guests down as they move up and down each of the small staircases. In order to reflect the space’s eerie and mysterious aura, I chose to convert the image to black and white using Photoshop and then digitally toned the image by increasing the blue tones with the Curves tool. Through the digital editing process, I wanted to translate the supernatural feeling of the rooftop terrace in a way that hopefully will prompt the same wonder and intrigue that the space did for me when I witnessed it first hand.
Thank you for reading! Until next week…
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