Norddeutsche Landesbank - Hanover
First published in 2020
The administration building of the Norddeutsche Landesbank (also called Nord/LB) in Hannover is located near the old city hall very near to the city center. The unusual architecture is contrasting quite a lot compared to the rest of the city, which does not have a lot of outstanding modern architecture. It is in the meantime nearly 20 years old, but still quite impressive.
The tower is surrounded by a block perimeter development, but this has passages that are open to the public so that you can get inside.
From a photographic point of view, the distance between the perimeter block development and the tow-er is an issue. With my 12mm lens, I was just able to cover the whole tower, but I didn't like the distortion of the higher areas. So I decided to create a panorama that gave me enough space to straighten the image in post-processing.
We visited the building in the late afternoon in September when the light was already nice and soft. However, the contrast between the higher and lower parts of the tower was still quite high. So I finally ended up with an HDR Pano.
A visit to the building at the blue hour (preferably on a weekday in winter when the offices are lit) might solve the contrast problem, but since we had a dinner date, this wasn't an option.
After developing the picture in color, I decided to make a second version in monochrome. I converted it to a high-contrast black and white image and then shifted the original colors to blue.
This is of course an artistic, very graphic version that does not aim to represent reality. But on the wall, it could be a nice eye-catcher.
