The Pope’s Hat

So now that you’ve seen some interior shots of Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland, California, I thought I’d show you the outside.  Yes, this is over the top but for some reason I couldn’t help myself!  (The image was tone-mapped using Nik HDR.)

One of the things I learned about this cathedral’s architecture is the purposeful marriage of ancient (concrete and wood) and new (glass and steel).  This concept is not only used in the construction but in the symbolism as well, which I hope to share more of in the near future.

The Old:  I was amazed to learn that the first recognition of concrete was 12,000,000 BC in Israel where reactions between limestone and oil shale during spontaneous combustion occurred to form a natural deposit of cement compounds.  In 300 BC, Egyptians furthered the discovery of lime and gypsum mortar as a binding agent for building the Pyramids.

The New:  The outside is shaped like a pope’s hat and is made of newer materials, glass and steel.

This “pope’s hat” is a beautiful piece of architecture in my opinion and changes depending on the light hitting the glass.  At night, it is beautifully illuminated!  I will have to go back and some night shots.

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Cathedral Circle

Lately I’m enjoying playing with distortion whether it be a pano or in photoshop.  For this image I took the one full frame shot from my previous post – here – and used the transform tool to distort it into the sphere-like image below.  I was trying to get the top to meet but I didn’t have quite enough image to do it.

Hope everyone is having a great Sunday so far!

Full Circle (almost)

 

Cathedral of Christ the Light (2 images)

Here are a couple more images from my camera club outing to Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland.  We had a most excellent docent who gave us all kinds of interesting information about this church.  I was totally fascinated!  I decided that I would post a picture or two for a few posts along with something I learned about the Cathedral that I found interesting.  This cathedral is full of symbolism and is a representation of ancient and new coming together.

There is a history of churches being built in the shape of a cross, but this one is different.  The footprint of the Cathedral is the shape of a fish.  You’ve probably seen those fish symbols on bumpers of cars, jewelry or greeting cards.  I always thought that was a new Christian symbol, but I came to find out it is very old.  The shape is a vesica piscis, (fish bladder in Latin) which is an oval with pointed ends created by the intersection of two circles of the same radius.  The shape of the vesica piscis calls to mind a fish, which was used as a symbol by the earliest Christians because its Greek spelling— ΙΧΘΥΣ—could be used as an abbreviation for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.”

To carry this even further, in ancient times people didn’t wear the cross as people do now.  The cross in ancient times represented death and pain…criminals were crucified and it was very bloody.  If you admitted you were Christian, you would be killed, so the cross was not worn.  So instead, when someone was wondering if another was Christian, they would draw in the sand or dirt with their foot half a fish.  If the other person completed the other half of the fish by drawing with their foot for example, both knew they could talk about their faith together.

Not only is the fish the footprint of the church, but its shape is repeated throughout the church as you can see in the ceiling.  After all that I’ll leave you with these images!

Cathedral of Christ the Light

Cathedral of Christ the Light