On a recent trip to northern Michigan, my wife and I visited Traverse City Commons. I’ve posted shots from this location before. The site is the location of the old Northern Michigan Asylum where they are converting the old buildings into retail, office and residential spaces. The weather the morning we arrived was cloudy, but breaks were beginning to appear in the clouds. As the sun peaked through it shone on the roof tops and really highlighted the towers/cupolas that are a key feature of the main building.

I’ve been going through my Lightroom catalog looking for interesting things to post to my Google + account and I came across this shot that I took at the Gilmore Car Museum in 2008. The car is a Buick Skylark Roadmaster, but I don’t know the year. I’ve just always liked this shot, the combination of red, black and chrome.

Port Oneida is an historic farming area in the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The area has an interesting collection of old farmhouses and out buildings. My wife and I were driving through the area on a less beaten path when we came across this farmstead. There was a farmhouse off to the right which was interesting, but I thought these two buildings had more character.

The Mackinac Bridge in northern Michigan is the third longest suspension bridge in the world and is the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere. The suspension part of the bridge is 8921 feet and the total length of the bridge is 26, 372 feet. The bridge was built to connect Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. The bridge spans the Straits of Mackinac which is where Lake Michigan meets Lake Huron. The concept for a bridge at this location had been pondered since 1884, but wasn’t built until 1954. The bride opened to traffic in 1957. One of the fun events surrounding the bridge is the annual Labor Day ‘Bridge Walk’. Each Labor Day, half of the bridge is dedicated to foot traffic and you can walk the bridge starting on the north side. The middle lanes of the bridge are made out of a steel grate to let the wind pass through. As you walk across the bridge, it is interesting to look down through the grate at the water below. If you’re lucky, a freighter might be passing under the bridge at the time.

I recently purchased a B+W 10 Stop ND filter and I’ve been looking for opportunities to try it out. My wife and I were on vacation last week and one evening I decided to try my hand at a long exposure landscape shot. I’m still learning the tricks to making long exposures work so this shot was as much of an experiment as anything. The sun was setting on the other side of the island but I had noticed that there were some clouds that were going to get some of the late sunlight. I headed to a spot which I thought might make an interesting composition and set up. I took a couple practice shots and then put on the 10 stop filter. The exposure was 2 minutes. Post processing involved working to lighten up the tree area on the left which was rather dark in the raw image. I spent a little time with some curves layers trying to adjust the brightness/contrast of the rocky area in the foreground as well. I’m not sure this qualifies as a great landscape shot, but I’m happy with it.

My wife and I are spending some time in Northern Michigan, including Mackinac Island situated between Michigan’s lower and upper peninsulas. The island has a great collection of summer ‘cottages’, most of which are really large homes. They were generally built by wealthy industrialists and needed to accommodate family and servants. A nice example of a typical Mackinac Island cottage is ‘Brigadoon’ shown above. This cottage has a wonderful view of Mackinac Island’s harbor.

This shot was taken a couple of years ago when my wife and I were in New York City celebrating our anniversary. My wife had never been to Grand Central so we decided to check it out. On display in the main concourse was this Maserati Quattroporte automobile. I like shooting cars and architecture, so this seemed like a perfect find! It was cloudy outside and there wasn’t a lot of bright light flooding Grand Central so the lighting wasn’t the greatest. I was using my Olympus E-3 which tends to be grainy at higher ISO’s so I stuck with ISO 100. The car was isolated from the unwashed masses with heavy velvet rope held up by a series of metal poles. I was able to set my camera on top of one of the poles to get this shot. The image is rather sharp even though the exposure was just 1/6th of a second.

This shot was taken in the old wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). I’ve always liked this gallery and I’ve been here a few times to take pictures of it. Each time is a little different, different people, different light, etc. I had a blog post back in 2010 with an image similar to the one you see here, but with a completely different method and style of processing. For that image I went with a grittier, almost HDR look. I liked the way the processing brought out the detail in the floor, but I’ve always felt that this shot was meant for black & white. I also wasn’t too thrilled with the number of people in the shot, so I went back at a later date and took the shot you see above. In this shot, there is only the one woman on the bench, which I like better. I also chose to convert the image to black & white. Initially I created an image to which I added a bit of film grain, however I ultimately decided that I wanted a smoother look. I edited the shot to hide the grain layer and used Lightroom noise reduction to help smooth the shot out even more.

I’ve been rummaging though my archives looking for interesting images to post to Google+ and I came across this shot that I took in 2008. I was in New York on business and I was staying in Midtown. I had some free time so I took the opportunity to walk over to Rockefeller Center and take some pictures in that part of town. The GE Building, also known as 30 Rockefeller Plaza or just 30 Rock has a restaurant and club on the 65th floor called the ‘Rainbow Room’. On either side of the building there are entrances which are marked by these neon signs. I was feeling experimental so I took a few shots of the sign using a slower shutter speed and zooming my lens while the shutter was open. Of the ones that I took, this was my favorite.

The mid 30’s Cord automobile has long been a favorite of mine. The distinctive feature being the ‘coffin’ nose and the exposed exhausts. On of my favorite Cord’s is a model 810. The car was introduced at the 1936 New York, Los Angeles and Chicago auto shows. The show car was unique in that it had copper accents. The show car is on display at the Auburn, Cord, Duesenberg museum in Auburn, Indiana. The 810 was designed by noted car designer Gordon Buehrig. The 810 was originally going to be a 1935 Duesenberg but after incorporating a front wheel drive design, the vehicle was renamed Cord.