Hotel Zaza and Gables Republic Square – Austin, Texas

I’m in Republic Square Park looking east at a recent 24-story brick tower. Opening in 2019, the building is split between the Hotel Zaza and the Gables Republic Square, an apartment building. With so many glass skyscrapers these days, it’s refreshing to see a more tactile building material. The solid-looking red brick has a weighty-ness to it that glass doesn’t have.

Speaking of glass towers, you can see two of them on the right. 300 Colorado and the Colorado Tower, which I featured from the south in this post, contrasts effectively against today’s subject.

I’ve talked a lot about the tilt-shift adapter I’ve used to create these images to reduce the perspective distortion. In the FotodioX tilt-shift adapter review, I gave an example of a failed photograph using this setup. That photo is from this same park but facing the south-east. I get the worst distortions in the top corners. Today’s example shows how I can skirt this weakness by not having distortion-prone architecture in these areas.

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