There’s a new mall in out town.  It opened about a almost two months ago.  My kids and I had planned to visit it on opening day, but one thing led to another, and we instead ended up in a mall about two kilometers from the new one.  And today, we had planned to take pictures of it.

I have not had the opportunity to take a look at the place.  On the daily commute to the office, I saw the mall’s construction almost daily.  And relative to other malls by the same developer, this was relatively small.  It did have a lot of things going for it, including the full support of the city government.  The mall construction was incumbent on the construction of another bridge to ease the expected traffic.

By chance I went to that mall just this past week because the utility company moved their customer support office from a third mall, to this one.  And I was impressed and very much surprised by what I saw.  It was very bright.  Though I knew it was going to be well-lit, as I pass by the building every evening on my way home.  It’s practically blazing at night, even without any neon lighting.

I went into the building just before noon, and from the glare of the direct sunlight to the lobby, there was only a slight diminishing of the light.  The lobby was glass-fronted to the roof.  And with the wide lobby, this resulted in sunlight streaming in full force.  And along the main hallway running perpendicular to the lobby, one end was also a glass wall.

To capture how bright the building was, we planned to take pictures of the lobby from the top floor, this should show the sunlight streaming inside the building.  Another shot of the lobby would be from the ground floor, shooting upwards at an angle to capture the whole wall of glass and the big metal pipes which support it.  Wide-angle and quite close shooting upwards and from the side would show the vanishing of the glass and metal structure.  Unlike the concrete walls, the glass is set at an angle where the top has a slight overhang.  The close wide-angle shot would show the angle to its advantage.

Other shots of the building would be from several vantage points outside it. There’s the pedestrian overpass as one vantage point.  Shooting from there would also show the river and another mall across the river.  Another angled shot would be from the bridge.  This would frame the mall and the overpass.

some other shots from across the river would give it a good perspective.  Another good photo would be one where the train is crossing the river, with the mall as background.  But this would have to taken from the second bridge, and about two hundred meters distant.

Pictures of malls can give a false sense of perspective unless there are other buildings or structures within the frame, or there are people in the picture.  The other buildings would give more perspective and comparison in terms of size.  While the people would give the picture some sense of dynamics.

We’ll have to reschedule another time as the weather did not cooperate today.