A Walk Across The Rooftops

The city of Glasgow has a distinct architecture, and is particularly noted for its 19th-century Victorian architecture, and the early 20th-century "Glasgow Style", as developed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Mackintosh was an architect and designer in the Arts and Crafts movement and the main exponent of Art Nouveau in the United Kingdom, designing numerous noted Glasgow buildings such as the Glasgow School of Art, Willow Tearooms and the Scotland Street School.

Glasgow has many industrial and commercial buildings of significant architectural merit, the most notable of which is the former Glasgow Herald Building. The lower floors were used as production space and the newspapers were dispatched onto the waiting lorries at the numerous openings all along Mitchell Street. The upper floors were used for the editorial and commercial side of the operation and again illustrate Mackintosh's unique style.
In 1999 the building was completely refurbished to celebrate Glasgow's status as UK City of Architecture and Design and renamed The Lighthouse Scotland's Centre for Architecture, Design and the City.

One of the stunning features of The Lighthouse is the uninterrupted view over Glasgow's cityscape from the Mackintosh Tower at the north of the building, which is accessible via a helical staircase from the third floor. It is this viewpoint that we intend to take our first steps in to he art of ‘Bulb Photography'.

Bulb photography is a technique where the lens of the camera is left open for longer than usual (usually for some seconds).
The camera shutter is often operated manually and is left open for as long as the shutter release is pressed. The effect of this is that the camera often captures images not usually seen by the naked eye (such as the streaks left by car headlights, rather than the cars themselves).

Sadly the views turn out to be less dramatic than we had hoped for, not to be undone we venture over to the modern viewing platform at the south of the building, which forms the buildings sixth floor and is only accessible via lift. The ambient light conditions are unforgiving but the glass encased platform offers a stunning opportunity to capture some photo opportunities against the cityscape.

Battling against time we capture some stunning portraits before walking briskly to Glasgow’s East End for our 2:30pm appointment and Celtic Foot Park for an official tour of the stadium. The tour of course is a pure Eric self-indulgence and a return to the home of his favorite football club: Celtic.

The all-seater stadium is also known as Parkhead and occasionally nicknamed Paradise by Celtic fans. It is the largest football stadium in Scotland by capacity, and the third-largest in the United Kingdom after Old Trafford and Wembley.

The tour leads us through some of the most prestigious behind the scenes areas of the stadium, including the boardroom, the trophy room displaying the club’s vast range of trophies from past and present including the European Cup. The Media Room, the Executive and Directors’ Box, the players' tunnel and dugout, finished with a 15 minute documentary on Celtics humble beginnings and the significant role they have championed for the poor and needy of the east end of Glasgow.

As we leave the stadium with a kind and genuine handshake from our friendly tour guide we happen upon a Celtic legend and all round nice guy, ‘Paul McStay’ who is standing in the reception waiting to meet a member of the clubs hierarchy.

Life can’t get much better than this ;-)

Glasgow Panoramics

In an effort to satisfy our new found passion for capturing ‘Panoramic Landscapes’, which are made by taking a series of overlapping shots and using Photoshop to join and blend them together seamlessly. We seek out the high vantage points around Glasgow to capture our inaugural efforts at this genre.
Unfortunately for us, Glasgow is more renowned for the river which flows through it, than it is for it’s prominent hills. The vantage points that we manage to ascend reveal a fairly disappointing skyline that may make a Glaswegian swell with pride but make pretty bland viewing for the neutral observer.
Cathkin Braes situated in the South East of the city is regarded as the highest point of the city and it is here that we shoot out first panoramic (click images for full scale size):

As a contrast to the industrial outlook offered by Cathkin Braes we travel back in to Glasgow City and go to the Necropolis Cemetery. This is a fascinating Victorian garden graveyard adjacent to Glasgow Cathedral, or the dead centre of Glasgow, as it is referred too by the local wags. Within these hallowed grounds you can find monuments designed by major architects and sculptors of the 19th century, including Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson, Charles Rennie Macintosh and JT Rochead, in every architectural style, created for the prominent and wealthy entrepreneurs of the ‘Second City of the Empire’.
It’s location on a hill east of the city centre offers us another opportunity to indulge our panoramic urges as we capture some outstanding vistas from this city’s most eerie location.