Reflecting On Downtown
Downtown Louisville is a mystical place. It's 'the big city' to the folks that don't live there, a dangerous, scary place to the white people whose parents fled it with the 'end' of segregation. It moonlights as a ghost town on the weekends, an oasis of concrete, steel and glass with only a stray car or two to trouble the out of place pedestrian.
It's also a bit of a weird place. They tore down the police station to build a massive new luxury hotel so now we have what I'm pretty sure is the only international convention center & police station.
Having lived downtown for a few years, back during the glory days of the Great Recession, I have spent many an hour wandering it's concrete valleys and got to know it well.
Most days the parking lots and garages outnumber the pedestrians, so I have a lot more photos of buildings than I do that downtown city life.
All that glass makes for some fun reflections. The warped reflections reflect the warped dynamics downtown nicely too.
Structure substituting for substance. There's no heart to downtown, no soul, no community. Multinational corporate offices and hotel chains, served by chain restaurants and bars.
Makes it a perfect place for protests because nobody really gives a shit what happens to it if things get out of hand. Back in 2020 it seemed like every building grew a plywood shell with surprising speed.
If you ever happen to find yourself in Louisville, I suggest you imitate the locals and stay away from downtown unless corporate homogony or architectural photography are your thing.
There are some cool museums and a fancy new sportsball arena but aside from that the photography opportunities are all that I can recommend.
Now I want to take sideways pictures of buildings. Long Beach is the same way. Convention center, aquarium, police station, same place.
A wide angle lens helps with that a lot. Got an aquarium to boot? Damn. How'd that particular combination come to pass? For some reason it reminds me of those Flying J/McDonalds/casino combinations you find off interstates in Nevada. It wasn't until after I quit living downtown that the police station moved into the convention center, has Long Beach's always been like that?
The aquarium doesn't share the same roof. I should be more specific. They all share the same couple of city blocks. Have as long as I can remember.
Queen Mary on the right, city hall left, aquarium right, across the street is the police station. Nicest group of high rises in Long Beach.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah, LMPD's 1st precinct just took up residence there so they could build an Omni hotel.
Queen Mary?
It's in the harbor, everything's connected by bicycle lanes. Here's a convenient imagine. Perpendicular to the Carnival Boat is the Queen Mary. The very right edge of that image, the white, round structure, that's the aquarium. That cluster of fancy buildings across the street is all the hoopla.
I'll be damned. When I first read Queen Mary that was what I thought of but I didn't think that could possibly be right.
Also, goddamn that looks like a lot more people live there.
Superb shots. No. 5 reflection shot is spot on! Shame the soul got sucked out the place. City centres in the UK a slowly becoming dead and in dire need of rethinking too
Thank you! From the histories I've read it has been a quite lively place in times past but white flight in the 60s and 70s put a hurting on it that downtown has yet to recover from. Any idea what's behind their decline in the UK? I feel like some of it is just a natural consequence of changing times but it's still sad to see.
This is a work of art, capturing images where architecture and reflections are combined within the same photographic frame.
Thank you! I'm a sucker for a reflection photo anyway but when you throw the architecture in the mix it just makes even more fun.
Hmm, too much glass and concrete for me and the precious. We prefer natural places, although your photos are pleasing.
Could have used the precious, my reflection kept mucking up some of the shots I wanted to get. Thank ya. Our preferences lie with the natural places as well but sometimes you have to settle for what's in range.
the precious comes in handy for many different applications, one just needs to use one's imagination.
Great photos.
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I love it! The pictures offer the sense of neverending buildings!! The reflection and the contrast between the buildings and the sky are also pretty cool.
Neverending buildings, yes! I used a wide angle lens for some of these, which probably helped with that. Thank you!
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