Take a Seat

Take a Seat. Like many of the images here this photograph was taken in Berlin – one of my favourite cities – in the auditorium of the Konzerthaus in Gendarmenplatz. Built between 1818 and 1821 by the great architect and painter Karl Friedrich Schinkel – making use of the exterior walls of the burnt-out old National Theatre on the same site – the building was badly damaged in WWII and reopened as the concert house in 1984. I took the photo on a daytime tour of the Konzerthaus, when the huge opulent chandeliers are not in use and the only lighting is provided by a few bright CFL lights, so the colour rendering was appalling! Hence the conversion to monochrome, although mono might in any case be the best way to present this very graphic subject – I confess to adding a couple of rows of seats at the front to fill the corner. The overall light level was also challenging, hence the 1/8 sec exposure and a big thank you to Nikon's Vibration Reduction.

Technical: NIKON D300, f=32.0 mm, ISO1600, 1/8 sec @ f6.3

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