Category : Wisconsin

This is a small collection covering two cities, and both are defined by water. Milwaukee sits on Lake Michigan, which moderates its temperature, manufactures fog in spring when warm air moves over cold water, and provides an eastern horizon of open water — so sunrise is spectacular and sunset happens behind the city rather than over the lake. Madison sits on a narrow isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, with water on both sides.

That is genuinely unusual and genuinely useful: it means there is open sky and reflected light from two directions at once, and that whichever way the afternoon has gone, there is a shoreline facing the other way within a few minutes' walk.

The Milwaukee Art Museum needs specific mention because it is the hardest exposure problem in this collection. Calatrava's Quadracci Pavilion is white — emphatically, deliberately white — with a vaulted hall of pale ribs under a glazed roof and a moving brise soleil above it. A white interior under a bright sky is a meter's worst case: average metering will render those surfaces mid-grey, which drags the whole frame down and leaves faces badly underexposed, while exposing correctly for skin puts the architecture close to clipping. Expose for the face, accept that the white runs high, and check the highlight warning on the ribs rather than on the dress.

The building can carry being bright; it is supposed to look bright. Latitude here is around forty-three degrees, so summer evenings are long and winter afternoons are short, and lying snow again acts as a large neutral fill from below. These guides cover each of the eight venues individually — what the light does, what the material does, and where to go when the room runs out of daylight.