Washington (“Hinckley”) Hilton, Washington, DC, 2023.
All the pixels, but no room service available, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/53007102796
#photography
@mattblaze@federate.social I don’t know why, but the straightened vertical combined with the curve and blackened sky hits a real aesthetic sweet spot for me. Lovely image.
@tomdewar@mas.to thank you!
@mattblaze@federate.social I’d just like to take the opportunity and say how much I appreciate your photos, and the notes you post along with them.
It’s like a mini art exhibition, right here in my phone. Thank you!
@tomdewar@mas.to
@slothrop@chaos.social @tomdewar@mas.to Thanks!
This is a fairly conventional architectural composition, emphasizing the curved facade. To get a high resolution capture of the wide structure, this was made as a stitched composite of two captures with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens. The Phase One back was shifted left and right by about 12mm.
By using shift movements at a fixed perspective, the two captures can be stitched directly together into a panorama without needing to transform the frame geometry (as you would with panning).
The result here is about 170MP in 16x9 format, which is sufficient for very large prints that retain a great deal of detail (I’ve printed this at 6 feet wide).
Mid-Century Modernist architecture, and Brutalism in particular, is easy to dismiss as being superficially lifeless and uninteresting, but at its best (and with the right eye) these buildings can be seen as sculptures in the landscape. I don’t always appreciate them, but they’re often more interesting than they first seem.
The Washington Hilton, completed 1965, was designed by architect William Tabler. It’s notable not only for its distinctive exterior, but also for the prominent events hosted there. The hotel is or has been home to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, the National Prayer Breakfast, the Shmoocon conference, and the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, among many other things.
It has extensive back-of-house facilities and security features to accommodate high profile VIPs.
Based on the style and period, you might guess this was a minor work of Eero Saarinen’s (it shares many design elements with his arirport terminals of the same era). But, in fact, the architect was the less well known William Tabler, who had many commissions from Hilton. This was one of his most distinctive, I think.
@mattblaze@federate.social - It occurs to me that a person with the correct hacking skills might be able to write messages using the illuminated windows as pixels. (Great shot, BTW.)
@mattblaze@federate.social
RE
Washington (“Hinckley”) #Hilton, Washington, DC, 2023Back in 1965, what a great wall to text the #antivietnamwar info, in the era of pre smartphones
Except, the staff would have to run room to room to do it
