Category : Des Moines, IA

Des Moines has an unusual concentration of buildings that were constructed before electric lighting was adequate, and that single fact makes several of its venues better to photograph than their modern equivalents. A 1913 office building had to put every desk near a window, which forced tall openings, narrow floor plates and high ceilings — so a converted one has daylight that actually crosses the room rather than dying a metre in.

A 1919 grand hotel put its ornament on the lower floors and its windows upstairs, which means the light and the decoration are in different places and the day works best when that is planned for rather than discovered.

Iowa's climate cuts a particular way here. Winters are cold with short days, but the sun stays low all day — which suits textured stone, formwork-marked concrete and carved oak far better than summer's high sun does, so a January wedding at several of these venues photographs unusually well provided the outdoor block is scheduled early rather than assumed at the end of the afternoon. Summer humidity is the opposite problem, fogging a lens carried from air conditioning into garden air for up to twenty minutes.

The guides below are venue by venue: why a geodesic dome casts a web of shadow rather than stripes, why a Masonic hall has no windows in its principal rooms, and why a convention hall is the hardest combination in this series — large and neutral at once.