Throughout his professional career, Daniel Hewes has looked for ways to further capture the beauty, history, and meaning of architecture beyond its primary purpose with architectural photography.
There’s a certain amount of awe that comes with being at the foot of an impossibly tall building. Urban Planner Daniel Hewes once tried to describe this sensation.
It’s just the feeling of being so small but knowing something like this was man-made. Something that was built with hands and tools. Something that started from pebbles on the ground and then brick by brick, concrete slab over concrete slab, metal over metal, it grows bigger than the ones who made it. These architectural wonders withstand nature, the elements, and time, as they become monuments of human ingenuity. Then the question comes, how do you capture that essence?
Major cities like Beijing, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C. and ancient cities like Rome and Athens have all thrived with architecture and effective urban planning strategies.
Architectural photography captures the positive changes of cities or urban areas as they grow and develop in today’s industrialized world.
Daniel Hewes believes that architectural photography can help communities and individuals develop a stronger appreciation for these structures not only for their practical design but also for their aesthetic and artistic aspects.
Lighting, angles, setting, context, are all vital pieces of photography. The unique thing about architectural photography is that you can see buildings and structures from many different points of view. Some buildings only come alive at night with lights and iridescent glows. Then you have church like buildings with tinted glass that refract all kinds of light sources. There is then modern architecture with abstract shapes and colors that display the aesthetic of a modern time. New monuments and projects are even being planned and built at this very moment like South Korea’s Tower Infinity.
Daniel Hewes has followed and worked with many urban planning professionals and photographs around Boston and surrounding areas to further develop these inspiring concepts.
Buildings and architecture are symbolic of how far humanity has come as a species. We started with caves and shelters made from leaves and branches that demonstrated art in more simplified ways. Today buildings soar way over our heads, taking technology and art to new heights we never thought possible.
Buildings may eventually fall but our records of them, our photos and their essence will remain as footprints of how far we’ve come and how much we’re moving towards a brighter future.