Comparisons...

I was reading David DuChemin’s blog about comparisons, and realized I had a good example. David said that one method of making more interesting photographs is to have comparisons in it. In the photograph below, we have the new and the old.

Here we have an example of two restoration projects. We have an extra piece of the Statue of Liberty restoration. We also have one of the restricted blocks of the infectious disease hospital at Ellis Island.

Think of the frustration that someone would have had. As an example, one of the Italian translators would only be able to speak one dialect of Italian while the prospective immigrants would have spoken only one of hundreds. If you or your child was found to be infected, and you were unlucky to not speak the dialect that the translator did, you might be isolated without being able to understand why. It led to folks being locked away in one of these blocks if they became violent.

Capturing the spirit of a place...

While the restoration of the hospital at Ellis Island is progressing, the restoration is obscuring certain elements. Some of this needs to be done, certainly the asbestos in the air would make this a no go zone for folks who aren’t wearing face masks. The Save Ellis Island folks commissioned street artist JR, to try to restore elements of the folks who worked there and the folks who were patients.

This nurses changing room was just down the way from the morgue and autoclave.

If windows could talk...

A few years ago, I was at the forgotten side of Ellis Island. This was the hospital side of Ellis Island where they sent the immigrants who ill at time of arrival. I wonder how many people stared through these windows in confusion, or in hope.

There are relatively few broken windows in this section. I do have to wonder at the drain pipe though…

Sometimes your emotions can deceive you

A few months ago, I went on a photo seminar in Utah. When I went to take the picture below, I had thought it was nothing special. But I went through the motions to get a good capture, so technically it was ok. Then a few weeks later, I was going through my pictures and did a black and white conversion. I was much happier. So was I right when I took the picture, that it was nothing special, or was I right not to delete and see what I could do with it?

Classes - in a covid world

Last month, I took a class with R. Mac Holbert through Santa Fe Workshops. It was a class about Fine Art Printing. It was a wonderful class. Mac teaches well, but I realized that I needed to dig into photoshop more.

The side effect of taking classes is that you get inspired to try out what you’ve learned. The usual class, makes you want to go out and make pictures, which isn’t as possible in this world of the pandemic. But Mac’s class is post processing class. So you get inspired to dig through your old photo catalog. As long as you’ve kept the original files from your camera that is. Which thankfully I do. So in the covid world those Zoom post processing class work better because you can get inspired and do something about it.

The current picture I was taken by, is a night shot from Crater Lake NP. I was trying the Nikon D810A which is adjusted for doing astrophotography. Which means that filter in front of the sensor was adjusted to allow a little more infrared, so you can see more of spectra of the stars. Since I’m not an astrophysicist, I just like the colors.

One of things that makes this picture unique, is that there were fires in Crater Lake NP, which imparted a rather unique glow. Fires of course also go into the infrared. And if you examine the Milky Way in this picture there are colors that mapped into our visual range that we normally are unable to see.

It's been an odd world lately

It’s been an odd world lately, Almost from dystopian science fiction novel. This picture is a bit of an odd perspective, an infrared take on a summer afternoon in the mountains.

Chicago Creek

Here I was using my super color infrared converted Nikon D7100, with a 720nm filter to limit it to colors of light that I can’t see. I know that rattlesnakes can sense infrared, but I think this picnic area had far too much traffic in it for their tastes. Thankfully though I could practice social distancing since there were not that many people around.

Taking pictures of flowers in the rain

Since things have been weird in the land of COVID-19, I decided to do some photo editing. About a year ago I was out with some friends in Darke County in Ohio, and wanted to do some macro work. Here I was standing out in the drizzle, (yes, spring in Ohio so it was raining), and was taken by this budding flower.

Pointillism

I was reading “Expressive Nature Photography: Design. Composition, and Color in Outdoor Imagery” by Brenda Tharp and it occurs to me that Tony Rizzuto was trying to convince us to try Pointillism when were in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

Tony Sweet may have thought the same thing in our online Macro Photography class.