Walt Disney Concert Hall

Author's Comments

The building is almost too easy to photograph badly. That is the trap. You walk up to it, you see the curves catching light, you lift the camera, and you come home with something that looks like everyone else's. I have done it. What Gehry made rewards a slower approach and a specific hour. Late afternoon, an hour before the sun drops behind the western towers. That is when the steel starts to actually behave. The panels are not flat, and they are not uniformly curved, and as the light rakes across them at a shallow angle the surface breaks into distinct planes - some of them nearly white, some going warm and almost gold, some falling into a cool shadow that reads as blue against the sky. In the flat overhead light of noon none of this happens. The building goes silver and generic. I work the details more than the wide shots now. A single curve against a single shadow. The seam where two panels meet and the light does something unexpected. The rooftop garden is where I spend the most time, because the sails rise around you and the compositions become almost abstract, more sculpture than architecture. You lose the sense of scale up there, which is exactly what you want. Underexpose. The highlights will lie to your meter and blow out before you notice. Shoot raw and pull the shadows back later. Then cross Grand Avenue and give the Broad twenty minutes of your attention too - the honeycomb reads best in the same raking light, and the two buildings in conversation is a photograph worth making. Winter afternoons are the cleanest. The air is sharper and the sun sits lower for longer.

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