I got back a few days ago from some time away with my girlfriend Olga, including a couple of days looking around the city of Bilbao. This is a great city that has in the past decade or two really put a lot into rebuidling it's image and moving away a bit from it's industrial past.
There's some amazing architecture around the city ranging from the pretty old town to some amazing structures down by the waterfront. After a bit of a wonder around i decided to make the most of my new lense and set myself a challenge: architecture not normally being my thing i thought i'd try and get some nice architecture shots and abstracts from the skyscrapers, bridges and crazy buildings that were around. This led to some surprising results, very different to my normal work, but i'm quite pleased with myself really.
Some of the glass windows on a large pair of skyscrapers down by the river
My new Canon 70-200 f4 L lense performed awesomely, some of the pictures are so lovely and sharp. I need to get used to photographing with such a long lense that exaggerates even the slightest movements of your hands dramatically and can cause camera shake very easily. I couldn't afford the image stabalised version, but that will probably mean i end up with a better technique so maybe its a good thing.
Part of an awesome suspension bridge across the river
A wider shot of one of the skyscrapers by the river
the first day we spent in Bilbao mainly involved just wondering around, finding crazy structures and interesting shops and cafes/bars. There's many interesting and random things dotted around, for example we found some interesting cone structres that turned out to be the windows for a bar below the ground.
The second day we spent in Bilbao was put aside for the awesome Guggenheim museum. This is a truely amazing building and i decided to carry on my architecture challenge by attempting to capture the curves and shiny tones of this structure.
To be truely honest its quite hard to take a bad photo of this building, almost every part of it is interesting and has its own charm. I was particurly interested by some of the less photographed parts and less typical views, for example the large stairway beside the main building.
I also found an interesting wave shaped part of the building that really caught my attention as an interesting subject.
It's definitely worth a visit if you are in the area even if you dont spend time inside the museum. To be honest the outside of it is probably the most interesting part.
More shots from Bilbao can be found in my set on flickr.
