La Pedrera or Casa Mila by Gaudi: Balconies and Ironwork

Casa Mila by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi is logic defiant, even hard to frame properly with the camera!.

This modernista house is also known as La Pedrera (quarry) and has been featured in my blog several times.

Today I just want to concentrate on that set of irregular balconies with elaborate and impossible ironwork.

As you notice, the stone is cut and aligned in such manner that the balcony appears to undulate, like foamy waves that cast seaweed upon the shore.

Of course the seaweed would be the floral adornments in the wrought iron.

Gaudi was commissioned by the industrialist Pere Milà to build Casa Milà in 1906 and finished it in 1910.

It's a Unesco World Heritage Site since 1984 and thanks to Caixa de Catalonia (the bank that bought the building) it was restored and opened to the public in 1996.

Mermaid Captured in La Rambla, Barcelona

This mermaid was captured with my Nikon D70s while fishing for human statues along La Rambla, Barcelona. Fishy things there were indeed in the sea of tourists, like pickpockets or trileros trying to swindle people with cards, but those were dangerous species to play with. Besides I felt charmed and subdued by the irresistible chant. I tried to tie myself up to a lamp post and covered my ears like some modern Ulises but then she pulled out a small jewel box covered in shells, insinuated a smile and I succumbed. One more euro!

A Marvel of Marble Human Statue

This is for me one of the greatest human statues at Las Ramblas de Barcelona. It was hard to capture white colors properly. As you know the ccd of the camera can be fooled by bright or dark surfaces thus making the picture too white or too dark depending on which surface you focus. The guy was smiling at me after I gave him one euro. Sometimes a picture is worth the money and these street artists really deserve it.

Note: Barcelona Photoblog has been invited to be part of Saatchi Gallery Online, a free showcase for photographers and a world leading interactive resource created for the art community. See some of my pictures here at Saatchi Online.