Photograph of the Landmark Hotel in Charlottesville

Landmark Hotel in Charlottesville

The included photograph is of the Landmark Hotel building in the Downtown Mall area of Charlottesville. The photograph is a time exposure taken at night. The camera used is designed to take architectural photographs. You can take photos of a building and other tall structures without getting the usual distortion (large bottom, small top, and walls no longer parallel).  It has a lens that shifts.

You really need the shift lens camera to get a realistic image of the building because the only other strategy would be a telephoto from a long distance.  This is not workable in the case. There are too many buildings around it that are relatively tall.  

It’s a night photo, and my Son and Daughter in law helped with the camera set up. 

The recent history of the Landmark has been covered by most local publishers, so I won’t even go there.  Visually, it is strikingly higher than the other buildings on the Mall, and the upper stories of the building were only completed but not the exterior framing. Most of us living here no longer see it. It’s now a background element. 

It’s on my track for coffee refills  so I often pass up the street by it. On windy nights the left over cables hanging from the higher floors make a clanging noise.  It’s eerie, maybe a bit like what a ghost ship at sea might sound like.