I shot Hoober Stand on the 12th of January at 11am, it was the second published image of my Architectural Challenge Series.
Elizabeth Stocker of Nigel Tyas Ironwork suggested this building as she remembered having to draw this as an art project. "The task was set to draw the tower as the perspective was difficult to illustrate with the building being three sided, tapering up with curved corners."
The low winter sun focussed the shadows of the trees on the front facade of the building, I wanted to capture that to convey its location in this very dense wood.
As the building is virtually surrounded by trees, I decided to use them to the benefit of the image rather than working against it. With the sun being very low, I got in position down a steep bank and used the angle to exaggerate the shadows of the bare branches on the front of the building along with the height of the tower itself. The two trees either side helped to lead the eye up the tower and give it both a feeling of strength but also of being compressed, a little claustrophobic, which is how it seems with the close proximity of the trees. Because of the tower's location in the woodland, the stone work had become very green and the image in colour was quite strong but, the strong colour took something away from the composition. Taking colour away showed more of the original form of the building and with the age of Hoober Stand, I liked the idea of it being shown in monochrome, it somehow seemed right.