Shanghai Hotel

Shanghai Hotel

© 2005 Martin Liew

Shanghai Hotel

It was a great challenge upon taking this picture, in terms of composing and finding the "right" vantage point/angle. The building on the foreground is Shanghai Hotel and River View Hotel on the background.

I was attracted by the grandeur of Shanghai Hotel with all the spot lights shining upon its majestic building structure. As I wasn't able to frame the whole building with a TLR of 75mm fixed lens, I had to compose and frame in a way to show the scaling and dimensional size of Shanghai Hotel. Hence River View Hotel came into view in the background. There was a strong spot light shining not directly on it but enough to view its name, creating a slightly dim effect compared to the foreground building lights. The lights from River Vew Hotel rooms showed enough shadow details which in turn made the building more three-dimensional. Because of this, I was able to show the depth of field between these two buildings. Here the lighting plays an important part.

Shanghai TLR • KODAK TMAX400 • 3min 40secs