Angel of the North - Gateshead Angel, Antony Gormley OBE, - 

Gormley's Angel of the North is the most notable engineering projects on Tyneside since the building of the Tyne Bridge:
* It is believed to be the largest angel sculpture in the world,
* It is one of the most viewed pieces of art in the world - seen by more than one person every second, 90,000 every day or 33 million every year,
* Its 54 metre (175 foot) wingspan is bigger than a Boeing 757 or 767 jet and almost the same as a Jumbo jet,
* It is 20 metres (65 feet) high - the height of a five storey building or four double decker buses,
* It weighs 200 tonnes - the body 100 tonnes and the wings 50 tonnes each,
* It will withstand winds of more than 100 miles per hour,
* Below the sculpture, massive concrete piles 20 metres deep anchor it to the solid rock beneath,
* It is made of weather resistant Cor-ten steel, containing a small amount of copper, which forms a patina on the surface that mellows with age.

The Angel is becoming one of the North East locations you must photograph and it is very rare to get the site totally to yourself, no matter what time of day you visit.

The top photograph shows the Angel in location alone on a hilltop site near the busy A1.

The middle shows the copper / brown coloured patina that has formed upon the steel, it also clearly shows the Ribs. They were deliberately used as an external skeleton cut from 50mm thick steel, as Gormley wanted the structure that holds the Angel together to be integral to its appearance. I used a polarising filter to saturate the colours and darken the sky.

The bottom photograph by introducing a figure, albeit prone, introduces scale to the image.