A Melbourne architectural photographer at Valencia’s City of Arts and Sciences

As soon as we began planning the Spain trip, I knew I had to find a way to fit Valencia into the itinerary. For years I had seen images of the futuristic City of Arts and Sciences and was naturally very keen to spend some time there capturing the buildings in my own style. The drive up from Cartagena the day before had been particularly stressful as I battled through a particularly fierce rainstorm on the motorway, often with visibility down to just a metre or so.

The next morning the weather looked particularly favourable, and so we walked the 2 km’s from our apartment to the complex to start creating images. The City was designed by Santiago Calatrava and Feliz Candela, with construction commencing in 1996, and subsequently inaugurated in 1998 with the opening of L’Hemisferic. As fascinating as the complex is to me as an architectural photographer, I do appreciate that it caused no little controversy due to the tripling of the initial 300 million Euro budget and the subsequent financial burden on the region, combined with multiple allegations of financial mismanagement and excess. Ultimately I personally very much enjoy the futuristic architecture as a visitor, and so spent a few fabulous hours in my own head space looking for the best light and angles for each photograph.

The following images are a combination of standard exposures, and a my playing with long 5+ minute exposures in order to render a more ethereal quality to the the scene.

As usual all images were shot using my trusty Canon 5DSR and a variety of lenses such as the 11-24f4 L, 24-70 f2.8 L II, 17mm TS-E f4, and the 70-200mm f2.8 L II. More images from the Spain trip can be found on my website at www.michaelevansphotographer.com