I was out this weekend doing street photography and came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to frighten folks. So instead of using the pro photo gear, I would just use my little Fuji X100T.
I’ve never been in this place, but it had what a real estate agent called curb appeal. I could imagine it being busy evenings.
Last week I ended up at the Vehicle Vault with members of the SWPhotoClub. They had a collection of interesting cars in their public display area.
This is a car from 1916. What interested me was that they carried around a full toolbox to fix it if the driver/mechanic had the need. But I suspect that passengers didn’t need to worry about the cost of having a driver/mechanic on staff. Mercedes vehicles tend to appeal to the upper class.
I spent some time looking at and photographing the 11th Ave Hostel renovation. As usual, the Denver Architecture Foundation, and the owners of the building did a great job explaining to us concepts that I had never heard before.
This facility was originally built in 1903. Since in 1903, automobiles were a rich man’s plaything, they didn’t need to worry about a garage for the cars. Then again, many people had horses. So the picture below was the entrance to the stable. Once your steed had passed through the doors, there was a small pasture.
In the days when this building was built, gas lighting was the usual style of lighting in a building. Most places didn’t have electricity. These days electricity is a necessity. So you need to run power for electric lights. And of course so we can charge our cell phones.
The original owners didn’t want to destroy the walls to add electrical conduits. And the folks doing the renovation honored that as well. Nice to see the GFIs.
Here I return to the theme of contrasts. The contrast of seeing something you could have seen in the 1800s to today’s impulse to mark up anything of significance.
A view from an ancient mill in Great Smokies National Park
I was on photo trip with Tony Sweet when I saw this.
This is one of those pictures that passed through multiple software applications. The latest pass was On1 photo raw 2022.
There are times when getting out with your local photo club can be fun. These days it helps to go out with others to restart your photography.
I belong to multiple photo clubs, but one I’m talking about today, is the SW Photo Club in Littleton CO. They’ve restarted their events, and sometimes you can tie the topics at the meeting together with a photo shoot.
A few weeks ago Kristi Odom talked to us about doing macro in your backyard. Kristi is a Nikon Ambassador and just started to shoot macro subjects about when the pandemic hit. So we went to a shopping center to practice some of the things she told us.
Unlike my usual macro shots, I decided to follow Kristi’s lead and use a very small aperture to try to get as much in focus as I could.
At another photo shoot, one of our members wanted to show off his light writing skills. As the NPAN guys say, when you do light painting, you’re illuminating the subject, and when you do light writing, you’re photographing the lights directly. And I came to the conclusion that the person in front of the camera is the performance artist. So I suspect that the performance artist in this picture is either Fred Matzen, or possibly myself.
If you want to do this you can pick up some battery powered lights at Dollar Store or a Five and Dime, and go out with your camera and tripod after dark. And then your friend and you can spend time dancing in front of the camera, or doing free form movements.
What if you wanted to do macro photography closer than one to one. Or as I said in the title of this piece, get close get really close. What would that reveal?
One of challenges, is that when you’re using an extension tube along with your macro lens is you have even less depth of field than normal.
I particularly liked the brown against the yellow. Jessica from RMSP would tell me that it’s a picture with a lot of energy and harmonious colors. I have to wonder what the bees or other pollinators would see it as, since they see things in light that we can’t see.
I think Robert Capa would say that I’m close enough.
I have to wonder at some of leaps that nature makes at times. Here we have a flower that appears to be inside out. And you have to wonder how evolution made this interesting leap. Why is this flower opening up the pollen parts so much, when most flowers don’t do that. Is Mother Nature after bigger pollinators?
For those of you that are interested this was at the Denver Botanic Gardens in early fall.
I brought my own light, and used a ring flash to bring out the flower
One of the problems that modern society has is we are very good at obscuring the night sky. At this point well over 33% of the world population can’t see the Milky Way. For the folks in Europe , only 60% of them can’t see it. It gets worse for us Americans, 80% can’t see it. I remember the first time I saw the Milky Way. I was camping in Kansas in a lean to, and looked up and spent a good 15 minutes examining it.
Perhaps that’s why Milky Way pictures are popular, because most Americans can’t see it. Or maybe it’s just the fact that some of us can now afford cameras that make it possible.
About 5 years ago I went out with a group led by Joseph Roybal and one August night we went up to the top of Mt Evans. After finding the place busy with other mountain explorers we found a place a little less busy. After doing some photographs of the surroundings in the twilight, we settled in to let the darkness envelop us.
While you can see that there is some light pollution, you can see the Milky Way core. You can also see that there is snow on the ground. Proving that above 13000 feet the August nights can still be cold.
There is a group these days, the International Dark Sky Association. They are trying to convince all of us that perhaps we don’t need to shine our lights up in sky.