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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Seventeen: Memories in Metal and Stone: How monuments, sculpture, and tombs express ideas. > Palace of the Fine Arts, San Francisco, California, 2007
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12-JUN-2007

Palace of the Fine Arts, San Francisco, California, 2007

Architect Bernard Maybeck designed this lavish structure for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. It was built as a temporary wood and plaster structure. When the exposition closed, money was raised to duplicate the building with permanent materials, but the process took 40 years. In the 1960s, philanthropist Walter S. Johnson led a drive the rescue the crumbling palace from demolition, and in 1975 it was presented as gift to the people of San Francisco. The classical beauty of Maybeck’s vision is still fresh in this photograph. I used indirect reflected light on this image as well. I emphasized the figures closest to the lens, forcing them to flow into the smaller figures behind them. The towering urns in the background give an overall sense of scale to the massive structure.

Leica V-Lux 1
1/125s f/4.0 at 30.8mm iso100 full exif

other sizes: small medium large original auto
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Phil Douglis06-Dec-2008 18:49
That's exactly what I had hoped to achieve here, Carol. It is a series of scale incongruities, made even more so by my camera angle. It is Maybeck at his most overwhelming best.
Carol E Sandgren06-Dec-2008 00:59
The fascinating part of this image IS the scale of it. It appears to be all mixed up to confuse our eyes. Small figures, towering figures, and medium sized (relatively) urns are all unrealisticly sized. And you get that lovely warm morning light to shine upon it all.
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