25 February 2013
Lens:
I. Stairwell Edited Two Ways
1. Stairwell, UD Library, iPhone 4s, January 2013; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2013
2. Stairwell, UD Library, iPhone 4s, January 2013; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2013
II. Various Views of Vaulted Ceiling
3. Vaulted Ceiling, UD Library, iPhone 4s, February 2013; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2013
4. Vaulted Ceiling, UD Library, iPhone 4s, February 2013; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2013
5. Vaulted Ceiling, UD Library, iPhone 4s, February 2013; © Sally W. Donatello and Lens and Pens by Sally, 2013
Let me know which is your favorite and why.
Pens:
This month Gracie (http://graciebinoya.com), Polly (http://watchingthephotoreels.com) and I began an iPhoneography Monday Challenge. If you’d like to join the fun, please click here for details. Today is challenger’s choice, and I selected architecture as the category for my entries.
The human imagination has always transformed exterior landscapes into new vistas that please some and stun others. In the twentieth and twenty-first century many, many layers of our personal lives and culture have been altered by the escalation of technology, being everywhere and anywhere. Architects have responded to this new landscape by redefining and reinventing how exterior and interior spaces are designed.
Library Architecture + Design, November 2010, Google Images
For me the re-imagining of public libraries is a keen example of architects being responsive to how our learning and lifestyle has been recreated in such a relatively short time. These repositories of our archives and printed materials always have been centers for lending, research and storage–a gathering place for knowledge.
Antiquated buildings have been renovated or new ones emerge. Each strives to address the inching of technology into how a library provides for its patrons, researchers, scholars, and staff.
Libraries have become something else; they’re no longer only containers for books. They’ve moved into the realm of popular culture and social media; they’ve become a happening place: they generate far beyond their original intent.
These evergreen vaults of knowledge house multi-media centers, video collections, computer stations, digitization services, electronic resources, online access, and re-configured spaces for readers and study groups.
The expansion of “what-a-library-is” is partially in the hands and minds of architects. Spatial decisions are newly conceived to meet dynamics in our global culture–dynamics that are re-shaping education and learning.
Royal Library, Denmark, Google Images
Worldwide libraries are some of the most stunning displays of human invention, inside and out. But today’s facilities must cater to a different user. The current library is about information management, and interior spaces must reflect the evolutionary trends of mobile data and its mining.
Twenty-First Century Patrons, Google Images
As we roam the halls of today’s libraries, their importance is apparent. The future is unknown, but for sure the institution will be a place that delivers learning as well as creates and solves mysteries within and beyond its walls.
The digital landscape inhales and exhales, giving libraries a renewed physical environment. These spatial innovations open their arms to the patron of the new millennium, but they also provide momentary safe-keeping for the printed book.
Tip of the Week: Let me introduce Mobile Photography Artist of 2012: British artist and iPhoneographer Sarah Jarrett. She has created a distinctive style that is achieved with either an iPhone or iPad. To describe her art is to cast a light on the emotions and reactions created by Jarrett’s iPhone art.
Words that surface for some or all of her images: ethereal, persuasive, ingenious, expressive, pictorial, fragile, imaginary, fanciful, strong, painterly, intense, revelatory, technical…
“Cool Brittannia V,” Sarah Jarrett, 2012, Google Images
“January Snow,” Sarah Jarrett, 2013, Google Images
Her tagline is: “I am interested in the poetry of landscape. I am a beauty seeker and a dream chaser.”
To see the range of Jarrett’s work, please click here to peruse her blog. Click here to see an announcement about her award.
We hope that you will join the Monday challenge and share your iPhoneography with us.
Here are other entries:
http://graciebinoya.com/2013/02/25/iphoneography-monday-food
http://ayearinmyshoes.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/iphonography-challenge-architecture
http://watchingthephotoreels.com
http://savvydesign.wordpress.com
http://angelinem.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/iphonography-monday-on-wednesday-architecture
Note: As always I welcome any comment about this post or any part of my blog.
Lens and Pens by Sally 
Your images always inspires us to dream bigger. Thanks.
Thank you, and enjoy your week.
Beautiful play of lights, shadows and patterns. Have a great weekend.
Thanks, enjoy the rest of the weekend.
I love your last photo, the lines and shadows are wonderful. I had recently done some indoor photos at San Francisco Museam of Modern Art, so I opted to not repeat that, and for this challenge chose to showcase the architecture of a ceiling http://angelinem.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/iphonography-monday-on-wednesday-architecture/
Thanks, I enjoy finding small pockets of interest inside old or new structures.
Pingback: iPhonography Monday (on Wednesday): Architecture | AngelineM's Blog
Thanks for the Pingback. Just added your link to my post.
I love libraries. They are treasures in so many ways. Great photos and a wonderful topic. Our libraries and our librarians have been our angels of hope during the last few years. They all deserve medals for maintaining a vibrant library system in a time of great stress and chaos.
I could not agree more. In many ways libraries are and will continue to be part of the beating heart of our global culture.
Thank you – very interesting perspectives!!
Thanks, lovely to hear from you as always.
Sally, I love #4–colors, angles, shapes.
Here are two of my favorite libraries: the Beinecke Rare Books Library at Yale (http://amis.org/meetings/2007/images/beinecke1.jpg) and the new British Library (http://changehere.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/british-library.jpg and http://blog.londonconnection.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/800px-BritishLibraryInterior02.jpg)
The view of the British Library makes me want to visit its treasures. Many thanks.
No. 4 is my favorite but I can’t articulate “why.” Maybe because I especially like the contrast with the blue.
Thanks, sometimes it’s simply the way our hearts and minds respond to an image.
I like the stairwells – satisfying abstract images.
Thanks, I did enjoy making two versions of the same image.
“Information management”, “mobile data and its mining” add to an atmosphere that seems institutional, sterile, engineered….I compare that to the haphazard stacks of Scholar & Poet Books (which is our home business), and the turret nook in the old public library where my daughter curled up in a window box with ivy climbing the outside walls. I like the organic feel of a book, the fiber of paper, the connection to a growing, living thing. Call me old-fashioned. I prefer the scale of the original vision.
I AGREE. Hopefully, Special Collections will always be a part of the newer model of libraries. These departments house rare books, printed materials (such as manuscripts), variety of other books, and coveted collections/ I was fortunate to work in Special Collections at the University of Delaware Library. Each day a variety of books of all ages moved through my perusal. I was in heaven.
Yeah! I was a music major…special collections manuscripts meant musical scores without the editor’s markings, in the composer’s hand….wondrous stuff, indeed!
Rare books and manuscripts are some of the most valued collections at any library. They can be the heart of historic and historical research and a wealth of answers, clues and questions for learning and scholarship.
very nice, Sally. I like the clean lines of the ceiling which you highlighted on the last photo.
Thanks, it’s an old library but pockets of fascinating designs.
Luckily I had just taken these shots today because the weather was perfect! http://ayearinmyshoes.wordpress.com/2013/02/25/iphonography-challenge-architecture/
I saw them, and they are perfect for the challenge. Thanks.
Pingback: iPhonography Challenge: Architecture | A year in the Life
Thanks, glad you’re participating.