Rice University – Lovett Hall
Rice University is home to a lot of interesting architecture. That is appropriate for a university with an architecture program. So, I recently decided to brave the Houston heat and venture down to Rice to get some photography in; I’ve been locked up in the air conditioning for far too long.
I decided to start with Lovett Hall. Built in 1912 as part of the founding of the university, Lovett Hall is Rice’s administration building. It is named in honor of the university’s first president, Edgar Lovett. Over time it has become an icon representing Rice University. It is featured prominently on the university website and other descriptive material about the university.
Lovett Hall is built in Mediterranean Revival style. This design emphasizes light brick facades, quadrangles, archways, cloisters, and decorative columns. Because of this it has a very distinctive and classic look. However, perhaps the most noticed feature is the sallyport that welcomes people into the university.
The Shot
Lovett Hall is 300 feet long but only 50 feet wide. Reportedly, President Lovett insisted that the building be thin to allow efficient ventilation in Houston’s humid weather. That day, as I stood sweating in the quadrangle, I appreciated the wisdom of his requirement.
In practical terms this meant I needed to choose which long façade I wanted to shoot. I chose to shoot from within the quadrangle as this façade includes cloisters which I think are really cool.
I love B&W and my favorite lens is the Canon 24mm tilt-shift. So, no surprise on what I did with this scene.
In this case I chose the tilt-shift not just to control perspective but also to make a wide panorama image. I was able to do this in 3 shots by using a full left and right shift. Tilt-shift lenses work well for panoramas as they don’t create any distortion or “warping” of the image.
Processing
Lovett Hall covers one end of the triangle. It connects to Herzstein Hall (left) and Sewall Hall (right) via the cloisters. In processing this I chose emphasize with light just on Lovett Hall as that is the subject. With a selection on Lovett, I used a curves adjustment in Photoshop to raise the highlights and midtones. Since I was shooting from about one-third of the way into the quadrangle I had a lot of foreground, so I cropped much of it to emphasize the main subject.
The Other Shots
Earlier, I indicated that I decided to “start” with Lovett Hall. Due to the heat I also decided to end my excursion there too. In this case “end” means temporarily suspend as I hope to return at some point in the hopefully cooler future.
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