The Mediterranean lashes the base of a sea wall built on a foundation created by the Crusaders in the 12th Century, when Acre was Palestine’s chief port. The wall itself dates from the reign of the Ottomans, and survived the siege of Napoleon in 1799. I cropped down on the wall to draw the eye into the waves, intensifying their battering force.

When photographing buildings I always look for details that capture the essence of the buildings style and purpose. The Orpheum was built in 1929 as a vaudeville venue. Later, it would become a movie theatre, its elegant moldings and ceiling covered in black paint. In 1984, the city of Phoenix purchased the Orpheum and began a $14 million restoration. Today it is used for theatrical performances. In this image, I used a long lens from a few blocks away, shooting through the trees to focus on a sculpture of Pan, the Greek god of, among other things, theatrical criticism. Pan plays a flute, within a Baroque arch. The softly focused leaves frame the arch, taking us back into time.

Shifting my vantage point and using a super wideangle lens, I bring together the art deco Empire State Building and the art nouveau canopy over the 34th street entrance to the former B. Altman department store. I juxtapose these two architectural triumphs, placing them only inches apart within my frame. I contrast the eras during which the two buildings were constructed. Altman’s, the first department store on Fifth Avenue, was built in 1906, while the Empire State Building was erected in 1931.

Named after W.W. Midgley, who ranched cattle in Sedona in the 19th Century, this bridge spans the gorge where Wilson Canyon enters Oak Creek Canyon. It was built in 1939, the final link in the Oak Creek Canyon highway connecting Sedona and Flagstaff. I include only half of its span in this image in order to draw attention to the spot where its steel girders nestle into the glowing red rocks that give the region its identity. A row of trees, illuminated by the morning sun, appears to be incongruously crossing the bridge’s deck.

The setting sun bathes the ornate façade surrounding the crowded courtyard that stands before Kiev’s oldest church. I fill the frame with the façade, suggesting that the façade continues well beyond the limits of my photograph. It dwarfs the shadowy figures that surge through its entrance, a monument to both a religion and Ukrainian history.

The early 20th century iron staircase still serves visitors to this museum, which occupies the structure that was once the territorial and state capitol of Arizona. Most visitors would never see this sight – the base of the stairwell is hidden away in a storage room. However the door to the storage room was left open, making it possible for me to make this image. I used a new wideangle zoom lens for this image, set at its widest focal length: 7mm, which is equivalent to 14mm in 35mm terms on my camera. This superwide focal length expands the field of view to cover not only the staircase, but also some empty storage shelves at its base, which anchor the image. The ornate iron railings that lead the eye through the image define the character of the building itself, and the wide 14mm field of view intensifies the dizzying impact of the scene.

The Franciscan mission church San Jose de Tumacacori was established to convert the Pima Indians to Christianity. The church was constructed between 1800 and 1823, and was abandoned during the Mexican War of 1848. Today it remains a picturesque ruin, its cracking walls streaked with calcium and lime. I made this image from the edge of the old mission’s cemetery – which inspired me to build it around the darkness of a door that once led from the church to the grave.

The most unusual building at the Grand Canyon is the viewing tower designed by architect Mary Colter for the Fred Harvey Company. She built it out of hand-picked stones designed to give the tower an ancient look. It has been photographed by millions of visitors since it opened in 1933, so instead of shooting the exterior, I focused instead on its most architecturally impressive section – the tower interior. Using a 24mm wideangle lens turned vertically, I photograph its soaring balconies and amazing dome, covered in Hopi art. The dizzying view upwards creates an almost mystical atmosphere, as hundreds of prehistoric Indian images inundate the viewer with an overwhelming sense of the Southwest.

I try to express here the immense size, power and architectural grandeur of a lobby in the new convention center in downtown Phoenix. I use a 28mm wideangle lens to spread the scene, and tilt the camera both upwards and to the side in order to force the windowed walls to soar towards the deeply shadowed ceiling. I bind the walls together with repeating diagonal shadows that lay a pattern upon the green stone facing of the monumental gateway over the lobby’s entrance. Geometry, color, and rhythmic pattern join to express the lobby’s overwhelming scale.

Fiddletown was a trading center and supply point for nearby mining camps during California’s Gold Rush. Some of its original buildings remain – the most impressive being its blacksmith shop. I underexposed slightly to stress the pitted texture of its brick façade. That texture speaks of age and time, and this building has stood in place for almost 130 years. I layer the image by including the branches of a tree in the foreground, which increases the illusion of depth perception. The black shadows below the overhang and within the windows add to the sense of depth, pulling us into and through the structure.

Sometimes an interior view of a building tells a better story than an exterior view. Such was the case here. I shoot from high over the main concourse of the Shanghai Railroad Station, enabling me to make an image that greatly reduces the scale of the people far below me, and in the process makes the train station appear even larger than it is. I also use a 28mm wideangle lens that stretches my perspective into near panoramic effect. By shooting down on the scene, I give the viewer a glimpse not only of the entire concourse, but also a look outside of the building as well. The image contrasts two worlds – the relatively casual pace and spacing of the people walking below us, versus the chaotic Shanghai street jammed with buses just outside of the station’s window.

It is not often that one finds an imaginary building squeezed in between two real ones. But such is the case here. Neighborhood artists have enlivened a wall facing an empty lot between two buildings with a painting of another. Three people, each of them one story high, are apparently revamping this neighborhood, one of San Francisco’s most disadvantaged. I composed the image on an angle, altering depth perception, and making the painting seem to fill the space between the buildings. The incongruity of this concept draws the eye, and the vivid colors contrast strikingly to the surrounding facades.

The administration building of 1939's Golden Gate Exposition still stands. It later served as part of a Naval Base, which closed in 1993. I wanted to express the vast scale of the room, so waited until my friend and fellow pbase photographer Tim May wandered into an illuminated alcove leading to a stair well. Tim was not posing for me – he did not even know that I was making this image. He is small, and the room is vast, creating a strong sense of scale incongruity. There is also a bold contrast between the brightly illuminated alcove and the dark rotunda, which is lined with military murals from its days as a naval base. Because I used my spot meter to expose for the highlights around Tim, the rest of the scene gets darker and richer.

Rhyolite is a ghost town just across the Nevada state line from Death Valley National Park. One of the many stores that served the 10,000 gold and silver miners who worked the mines in this area during the early years of the 20th Century still stands behind its homemade sign. It is now little more than an empty shell, just like the false front that tries to make it look more impressive than it really is. The building is now for up for sale, and stands forlorn in the early morning light. I interpret this building’s uncertain future by underexposing it, allowing the sign to glow and the building itself to recede into darkness.

The old walled Moroccan city of Essaouira still retains its 18th century character. Orson Welles filmed "Othello" on these walls in 1949. In this case, I wanted to put a group of buildings into a context that gives it a sense of place. The hint of blue fishing boats filling the foreground layer of the image does just that. The pastel colors of dawn define both ramparts and buildings in an atmospheric manner.

I tell the story of the Mormon’s Temple Square by merging the spires of two of its most distinctive structures, the 1882 Assembly Hall in the foreground, and the famous 1893 Salt Lake Temple in the background. I made this image from a few blocks away with a lens focal length of about 180mm, taking great care to position the spires in the frame without overlapping any of them.

The Salt Lake Temple, which took 40 years to build, and has walls nine feet thick at the base and six feet thick at the top, is the first Mormon temple to feature a standing angel Moroni statue. The gilded statue stands on a huge ball at the very top of the building’s central tower. It sounds a trumpet, which in this case heralds the coming of dawn that strikes the pinnacles of the temple. By showing only part of the temple, I invite the viewer to use his or her imagination to picture the rest of it.

The Flatiron Building is a unique limestone wedge that neatly fits into the crossing diagonals of New York’s most famous streets, Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Designed by the famed architect Daniel Burnham in 1902, it appeared one year later in one of Alfred Stieglitz’s most famous images: http://masters-of-photography.com/S/stieglitz/stieglitz_flatiron_building_full.html

I have always been moved by that image – its prow moves through its snow swept setting like a ship adrift in a winter storm. It was a challenge for me to photograph the same structure 103 years later without any hint of Stieglitz in it. To do so, I decided to use this famous building as context rather than subject matter. I use as my base layer, the abstracted statue of Lincoln’s Secretary of State William H. Seward in Madison Square Park just across the street from the Flatiron Building. It was late in the day, and the low sun outlined Seward’s body with rim lighting as I shot his statue from behind. I use Burnham’s famous façade as my backdrop, filling my frame with its windows, many of them reflecting the deep blue sky and the surrounding buildings. Floor after floor flows through the image as a series of rhythmic diagonals, including one near the top created by a slash of sunlight. We never see the famous prow that gives the Flatiron its distinctive shape. My goal was not to describe the Flatiron Building, but rather to embrace a historical figure with a historical backdrop.

Chambers Street is lined with 19th Century buildings as it crosses the city’s old downtown. Fire has always been a threat to such buildings and it remains so today.

I wanted to make a building picture that speaks to this danger. As I walked along Chambers Street I found a fire escape directly overhead. Just across the street was an old building in the process of renovation. Using a 28mm wideangle lens, I was able to get both into my frame, and waited for those two clouds, which imply smoke, to flow out of the old building. Part of the lower cloud is quite dark, throwing a shadow that implies threat. Even the modern structure at lower right helps, offering an incongruous counterpoint and placing the image in the present time.

Hiroshima's former Industrial Promotion Hall was gutted by the firestorm triggered by the world's first atomic bombing. Its ruins are preserved as a memorial. I abstract the building itself by shooting into the sun, which drastically under exposes the image and makes the sky itself a dark gray. The flare of the sun symbolizes the blast of the atomic bomb itself over this very spot.

The most important parts of Beijing's famed Forbidden City are being completely renovated for the 2008 Olympic festivities. The largest of its buildings, the Hall of Supreme Harmony, is entirely covered in scaffolding, giving me a chance to make an image never before possible -- people at work in the sky over the imperial palace. I find this ballet in the sky to be more incongruous and abstract, as well as richer in human values, than any post card view of the building itself. Most visitors were disappointed that they could not see this world famous building. I was delighted by the renovation – it gave me, as the saying goes, a chance to make lemonade out of a lemon.

Grafton, Utah, lies along the Virgin River just outside of Zion National Park. In 1886, its Mormon settlers built this adobe building to use as a school and church. In the early years of the 20th Century, its families moved to land with better irrigation, leaving this old school and a graveyard behind. This image offers more than a description of the building itself. It goes further, providing a ghostly context for the building. It stands alone in a desert, under wisps of clouds. I used a 24mm wideangle lens to stretch the scene, and stress the height of the clouds as well as the sweep of the landscape, while keeping the size of the building as large as possible within the frame. (If I had used a narrower focal length, I could have included the same content by backing up, but then the building would have become smaller and lost its emphasis.) The key to the expressiveness of this image is the placement of the diagonal cloud over the chimney of the building. It appears as smoke, yet the building has been vacant for more than 100 years.

The sun was creating deep shadows on the strikingly yellow façade of Santa Ana church, and I waited for a person to enter my frame to provide contrast in scale. Finally, the perfect subject arrived -- a woman bearing a staff, a figure out of the San Miguel's past. She seems so small in comparison to the walls of the huge church, symbolizing the power it has over the lives of those who choose to worship there. I use the woman as context to express how big the building is in terms of its scale. I also crop the building so that the huge slabs in its side seem to soar forever, suggesting that the power of a church can be infinite. By not showing the whole structure, and leaving much to the imagination of the viewer, we say more about it.

The stairs within these old Dutch houses are too narrow to accept furniture. Their builders solved the problem by fitting permanent winches into the pediments of such buildings. These hoists are part of what makes Amsterdam look like Amsterdam. Many of them are still in regular use. Some buildings are constructed to lean slightly forward to expedite the winching process. I stress the winches in this wideangle image by underexposing the buildings, abstracting them in backlight against the sky to create a rhythmic flow of projecting hoists.

France ruled Laos, along with Vietnam and Cambodia, from the 19th Century until the middle of the 20th Century. Only fragments of decaying French colonial architecture remain in Vientiane, the capital city of Laos. This is one of them – a decaying house near the city center that is still inhabited. It was falling apart, covered with ugly electrical wires, and virtually walled off from public view by high fences and trees. It was unreachable. Which gave me the idea for this image. I abstracted the house as a series of fragments, partially hidden from view by bushes and trees. The warm glow of late afternoon light beckons, but the tangle of vegetation keeps us away. It sets up a tension, which goes well with the theme of decay, the long decline from grandeur.

Very few wooden buildings survive from the days of ancient Bagan. One that does, however, is a monastery constructed entirely of teak. Its facade is covered with intricate carvings, a fantasy in ancient wood. When I stood back and tried to photograph the whole incredible façade, all I had was an image describing what the building looked like – a literal post-card type picture. The closer I came, the more I saw of the fantasy the artisans brought to this structure hundreds of years ago. I finally decided to concentrate on a single sculptured figure. It stood at the very center of the façade, and was surrounded by pointed projections that resembled tongues of fire. I was able to position the figure within the deeply shadowed black diamond-shaped area. Otherwise foreground-background mergers could easily have destroyed the coherence of this image. By stressing only the single figure, I am able to abstract the building, give it character and express the skill and creativity that went into it.

Caved in roof and all, this old Sierra stone barn speaks of a time long past. I photographed it in a fierce wind, which churns the autumn sage into frenzy at my feet. Instead of shooting the barn and using its environment as context, I shoot its overwhelming environment, and use the barn as context. Without the brilliant colors and and flying branches of the heather threatening to engulf it, this picture would be little more than literal description. I am expressing the longevity of this barn by stressing its colorful setting. It is wild, grasping, and virtually all consuming. Yet somehow the barn has outlasted all attempts to obliterate it. Damaged as it may be, it still endures.

The Guggenheim, Frank Gehry’s architectural masterwork, has been likened to a beached ship or a gigantic flower. I photographed it from across the Nervion River on an overcast afternoon, when it looked more like a medieval castle wearing 21st century armor. I have seen many photographs of this building but never one like this. Why? Because most photographers prefer to shoot buildings in just after dawn or at dusk, when the light is warm and textures show brilliantly. Or else at night, when light abstracts and color astounds. But I was not given any choice in the matter. When to shoot the Guggenheim was out of my control, because I was on a tour that spent only a few hours there. As the fates would have it, the skies were leaden. As any travel photographer on a tour can tell you, you play the hand that you’ve been dealt, and try to get the most out of it. I immediately realized that context would have to replace beauty as my point. So I hiked across a bridge and took a position opposite the museum, using the shimmering Nervion River as reflective base for my image. I then noticed that although the skies over Bilbao were dark, there were still clouds at work in the sky. So I waited for a dark cloud to approach the amazing curved titanium panels that Gehry uses to cover the building. When it got close enough to echo the thrust of Ghery’s panels, I made this photograph.

I used my spot meter to expose for light playing the towering central panel – the only one panel that seems to picking up a reflection at this time of day. (You can see another, much closer image of this central panel in my Gallery Two on Incongruity). My shot gives the building its brooding, medieval look by abstracting most of its detail except for that panel, and stressing its shape instead. A close study also reveals tiny people walking past the museum on the other side of the river, adding scale incongruity and showing just how big this museum building really is. (The neighboring building and arch at the right are not part of the Guggenheim, but they are exhibition halls. You can view the striking reflective surface of one in my Gallery 12 on Color.) This picture of the Guggenheim Museum would not make a pretty postcard image because its dark, coppery colors defy viewer’s expectations. I don’t think the museum would want to use it in its promotion, either, because overcast days don’t really show off the reflective qualities of Gehry’s panels. (See my discussion of that in my Gallery One on Abstraction.) Yet I feel that this image does tell a story. It becomes an abstraction that excites the imagination, making us think of other things and allowing the viewer to fill in his or her own details. It speaks of its huge scale, and makes a visual reference to Spain’s own historical context -- its massive ancient castles and fortresses standing guard across great moats. This picture defies convention and takes a few chances, a fitting match for Gehry’s daring, controversial architecture. What does my picture say about this building to you? Please leave your own comments, questions, and suggestions below so I can respond and we can all learn more from them. Thanks.

The key to taking pictures of buildings and structures is simplification. I try to find a single important aspect of a building and somehow emphasize it photographically. The most important complex of historical buildings in China, the Forbidden City is a walled collection of gates, palaces and gardens that covers 180 acres of space. Twenty-four Chinese emperors and their retinues of maids, eunuchs and concubines roamed its 10,000 rooms between 1421 and 1911. It is impossible to tell the whole story in one picture – there simply is too much to say about such a stupendous historical, architectural, and artistic site as this. For this image, I concentrated on a single, simple idea – scale. The Forbidden City is big, and I wanted to embrace it all yet still not show it all. I had to find a way to grasp it, yet abstract it, implying its scale but not describing it. I visited the Forbidden City twice. On my first visit, with an organized tour, I explored the inside – hall-by-hall, object-by-object. On my second visit, I returned by myself, but never went inside. Instead, I climbed Coal Hill, which stands just behind the Forbidden City within Jingshan Park, by far the best spot to appreciate the sheer scale of the palace complex. Nature had stepped in by adding fog to abstract the scene, allowing me to photographically imply, rather than actually describe, the nature of the Forbidden City. The complex is designed as a linear series of huge gates, courtyards, halls and palaces. Using a 245mm telephoto conversion lens on my digital camera, I was able to flatten perspective, zoom over the trees in the foreground, and pull the great structures closer together as they recede into the fog. The closer you look at this photo, the more you’ll see. The fog simplifies the image, yet there is still fascinating detail visible. Note the tiny figures entering the gate at the bottom – they tell us how large the structure is. A small bird wheels in the sky overhead – capturing it was not a matter of luck. Digital imaging is free – there were many birds flying about, and I shot this scene twenty or thirty times until I was able to place one in the right spot.

This historic pagoda was built during the Tang Dynasty in 652 as part of a Buddhist temple complex. It was among the tallest structures in Xian, at the time the largest city in the world. To move beyond a postcard view, I walked through the surrounding neighborhood until I found these life-sized Tang Dynasty wrestlers made of bronze. They bring the dynamic flavor of the time to the scene, while the tower itself acts as context. Using the wideangle end of my zoom lens, I moved in on the figures until they dominated the frame, and filled in with the pagoda and is surrounding structures as background. Without the incongruity of those 1300-year-old wrestlers at work, this picture would be only a literal description of a building.

The Great Wall sprawls across Northern China, spanning 2,400 miles from the sea into Gansu Province. Most of the wall was built during the 16th century to keep Nomads and Mongols out of China. Its fortified towers, signal beacon towers, and garrisons, along with its roadway wide enough for five or six horsemen, proved to be only as good as those defending it. Today it survives in ruin and reconstruction. We visited this semi-restored section at Jin Shanling, about 70 miles north of Beijing. Because of its remoteness, this part draws relatively few tourists My objective was not merely to once again describe the wall – it is one of the most photographed structures on earth. Instead I wanted to say something about its size, and about the reactions of those who come from all over the world to view it. I found a high position that gave me a good vantage point over the wall, and using the 28mm wideangle end of the Leica's zoom lens, I was able to stretch the shot to embrace six watchtowers as the wall snaked its way across the landscape. I brought these towers up to just under the top edge of the picture – this picture is no about the hazy sky, so why include it? I noticed four visitors plodding along the wall’s walkway below me. Two of them kept on going, but two others stopped right in front of me. One buried her head in the slot in the wall once used for a defensive position. While she dreamed of ancient archers, her patient friend crossed her legs, placed a limp arm on the wall, and hid behind her purple umbrella. Through this physical interplay, which dominates the lower half of the image, I tell the story of how at least two visitors came to grips with up and down history of the Great Wall of China.

The Three Gorges Dam project at Sandouping has produced the world’s largest dam, four times larger than the Hoover Dam in Colorado. Work began on the project in 1994 and still continues. When complete, the dam will be over 7,000 feet long, 600 feet high, have 26 hydro turbine power generators, and will contain a 400-mile long reservoir stretching upriver to Chongqing. Once again, my story line is based on sheer scale and great energy, because that is what this dam is all about. The 24mm wideangle lens is essential for this task – without it, the vastness of the huge dam is negated. The slight curve that wideangle distortion adds to the perspective is more than acceptable -- it intensifies the thrust of the huge structure as it slashes across the frame. The energy aspect of my story comes from the surging waters of the Yangtze River just below me, and the billowing spray at the base of the dam. The spray in the air glazed my lens and softened detail just enough to add a touch of abstraction. I virtually fill the frame with the maelstrom below, lifting the dam, its towers and the cranes still being used to build it, as high as I can in the picture to allow as much room as possible for the roiling waters to express the point.

The Dragon is an ancient Chinese symbol. Its emperors ruled China from the Dragon Throne. The dragon often appears on ceilings and on rooftops to ward off evil spirits and the dangers of lightening. I even found the dragon engraved on the ends of the ceramic tiles on the roofs of Beijing’s Temple of Heaven complex. Once again, less can be more – instead of showing the whole structure, I move in on just the end of the tiles and use a macro approach. This allows me to stress the detail that few will notice, but to me it symbolizes the time and the beliefs of a particular era in Chinese history – in this case, the Ming Dynasty. I was told that these tiles were made at the time of Emperor Yongle, between 1406 and 1429.

(I revisited these same tiles three years after I made this image. I backed up a bit and re-photographed them, this time adding expressive context that repeats the theme of the dragon again and again. You can see my new version of it by clicking on the thumbnail.)

Shanghai sits on the sea at the mouth of the Yangtze. Its land space is limited, and its eight million people make the population density of Shanghai one of the highest in the world. Its skyscrapers reach towards the heavens, as does this monument in the People's Park. In this image, I photograph two structures – the monument and the skyscraper, and give them both meaning by rooting my image on the body language of the three exercisers in the foreground. The people’s legs and arms echo the shape of the lower part of the monument, while the upper thrust of the monument repeats the upward path of the skyscraper. The flow of motion begins at the lower left hand corner with the angle of the woman’s foot, and ends in the upper right hand corner, with the point of the skyscraper reaching into the hazy Shanghai sky.

In striking contrast to my early morning shot of Shanghai, in this image the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island's Central District vividly stand out against a backdrop of fog-shrouded Victoria Peak as they catch the dawn's first light. From these buildings come Hong Kong's power as one of the world's major trading and financial centers, and this image speaks of that power with a detailed display of sleekly burnished architecture, new buildings under construction, and contemporary pastel colors that imply modernity, wealth, and elegance. A small boat churns across the river in the foreground, giving the scene both scale and depth.