SEC Armadillo, Glasgow



SEC Armadillo, Glasgow

The Building

Designed by Foster + Partners and opened in 1997, the SEC Armadillo forms part of the SECC complex on the river Clyde in Glasgow. The unique design was inspired by the shipbuilding legacy of the Clyde and represents an interlocking series of ship's hulls. The building has a capacity of 3,000 people and hosts conferences, theatre, music and comedy.


The Photograph

This is a large, impressive building with unique look. Last time I visited this area I was using a Laowa 9mm f/2.8 on Fuji X-T3 and I struggled to capture the scale of the building, and ended up with a more abstract image concentrating on the cladding and lighter coloured "hoops".


For this visit I was using a nominally less wide angle lens, a Laowa 15mm f/4.5 on a Sony A7RII. However, the Laowa 15mm f/4.5 allows +/- 11mm of shift which allowed me to take a series of four images which I could then stitch into a single image. You can try the same thing without a shift lens but it is very difficult to do that without distortion and perspective problems (which was why I struggled first time around).


Once I had the four images stitched into one (in Lightroom) I moved across to Photoshop and started creating a series of selections to allow me to handle each part of the building separately, using levels adjustments and gradients. I also cleaned up some of the distractiing reflections in the glass.

See more of my pictures at my Gallery

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