Barcelona - Casa Batllo (Gaudi designed house) and the Palau de la Musica

You can not visit the city of Barcelona without seeing the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. If you saw the last blog post showing the Sagarda Familia church, you know that he was way ahead of his time. Today's blog post shows images of Casa Batllo, the home that Gaudi designed for himself in the heart of Barcelona and also includes images from the music palace, with it's spectacular stained glass work.

Let's start with Casa Batllo.

This is the view of the house from the street. it doesn't take much to notice that the architecture is totally unique from all the other surrounding buildings.

In order to get a better photograph of the building (with less distortion), I walked across the street and took this shot of the mosaic covered walls, windows and unique balconies. With the exception of these first two exterior shots (which were taken with the Canon 28-300mm lens), all of of the photos in this blog post, were taken with the Canon 5D Mark III with the 24-105mm lens.

Then I walked back to the front of the building to determine the wait to get in. For those who do not know me...I am a pretty impatient person and I really do not like waiting in lines. I asked the person working the line and they told me that the line was approximately 45 minutes. But I noticed an empty lane that said "Fast Pass". I asked about that and they told me that for any extra 5 pounds I could bypass the line. Oh heck yeah, that was the best money spent yet! And so in I went...

This is the inside of the front windows that you see in the first photo of this blog. Gaudi used a lot of shapes and colors in his modernism designs.

And this is a view of the inside of the building, which is at least 4 stories down from a large skylight. This shaft of light helped light the home from the inside, since most of the exterior walls were connected to other buildings and would not let any light in.

I saw this unique stairway and had to take a shot. Gaudi rarely used straight lines in his architecture.

Here is another view of the inner shaft of the home.

Even the design of the roof was unique.

I moved to different spots to photograph this roof from different perspectives.

I love the curves and monochromatic style of this hallway. It is so different from anything I have ever seen.

This is yet another view of the inside of the home, but this is my favorite of the three. Since this was close to the skylight, there was an abundance of light to show off the deep blue colors in the tiles. I could have positioned the camera up over the glass, but instead, I stood back and included the glass in this composition. I love the way the curves in the glass work against the geometric tiles in the top part of the frame.

After touring the Casa Batllo, I made my way over to the Palau de la Musica. I had seen photos of this building and really wanted to capture photos inside. As it turns out, the only way to get into the building is to take a guided tour. I waited 30 minutes for an English speaking tour and then entered this amazing building.

While the tour guide was talking to all the people in one of the rooms, I made my way outside to get an unobstructed view of these columns.

And since the guide was still keeping the people busy, I made my way into the main room. This is the room that I so wanted to capture in my camera! And yes, it is true, I was too busy taking photos to listen to most of the tour.

It is easy to be captivated by the stained glass, but I wanted to make sure to capture some of the other details of the building.

At this point, the tour had moved into the main theatre, so I focused on different areas of the walls and ceiling.

This is a photo looking straight up at the stained glass window directly in the center of the theatre.

And here is a tighter shot to show the level of detail in the glasswork.

And then I waited for everyone to move out of the room, to capture this photo. The only thing that disappointed me was the construction that was going on to the right of the theatre. All that scaffolding and people.

But, as I looked at the scene, I noticed to perfect symmetry of both sides of the theatre. I figured that I could take the windows and chairs from the left side of the theatre, copy them, and then flip them and paste them into the right side of the photo.

Because the columns, chairs and even the outside walls were identical, I was able to do so fairly easily! And this photo is the end result. This is one of my favorite photos from the week in Barcelona.

Most of the photos I had seen of the Palau de le Musica were taken from the straight on position. So in order to get something a little more unique I moved to the side of the theatre to get this perspective. This was also my "safe shot", avoiding the construction, in case I was not able to easily fix the others shots above.

Stay tuned for one more post from Barcelona... A visit to Guell Park.

_________________________________________________________________________________

If you are interested in purchasing any camera equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. I would really appreciate that.

_________________________________________________________________________________

And also, remember that you and your friends can enter your email address at the top right of this blog to get an email any time I write a new blog post or send my monthly newsletter.

_________________________________________________________________________________