This shot was taken in the new wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). I was drawn to this shot by all the lines. I just liked the way the railings around the staircase looked against the lines for the window frames in the background. It has a very mide-century modern feeling, even though the building was completed last year. In looking at the shot now, I think it would look better with a person sitting on the bench, maybe about 1/3 of the way in from the right side of the image. I think a person would add a nice ‘organic’ element to the strong geometric nature of the shot. I’m curious as to what other people might thing.

I took a short trip into Detroit to try out my new camera and a rental lens. I decided to get some more shots of the abandoned Detroit Central Railway Station (or Depot). The building has been abandoned for several years, but the beauty of the structure remains. I certainly hope that something can be done to save a least a portion of this building.

A few weeks ago my wife and I went to an exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) called The Lens of Impressionism – Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850–1874. It was a great exhibition. Before the exhibit, I wandered around the museum. The museum consists of two wings, an old wing housed in a Beaux Arts style structure, and a new wing which was recently completed in a very modern style (seen here). My main focus was on the architecture and I took several interior shots. In general I’m not much of a ‘people’ photographer. I’ll wait until people are out of frame before taking pictures, particularly architecture. However, there are times when having the person in the right place makes the shot and I think this is one of those times.

Every year for the last few years my family and I go skiing at Mont Tremblant, a ski resort an hour or so north of Montreal, Canada. One year we stayed in a nearby condo, but we found that we preferred to stay in one of the hotels in the pedestrian village which is located at the base of the slopes. This year I made reservations a little later than usual and the place where we had stayed in the past was booked. I looked through some of the other hotels in the village and decided to try Le Sommet des Neiges, which is a big hotel right at the base of the slopes. Great location, although it was a bit more expensive. I was very pleased with the location. You could come off the slopes, go through some automatic doors and be right in the ski locker area of the hotel. Very convenient. We were also fortunate to have a room which overlooked the slopes.

This image shows Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company I work for recently moved to a new office and we wanted some images from around town to adorn our walls. Since we all enjoy Zingerman’s food, we named one of our conference rooms “Zingerman’s”. A print of this picture now adorns the wall of that conference room.

This image comes from the old wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art. I was visiting the museum to see the Lens of Impressionism exhibit and managed to take several interior shots of the museum while I was waiting for other people in my party to arrive. This image shows the main staircase in the old wing of the museum. I shot this from the bottom floor looking up toward the top of the building.

After having taken several pictures of the exterior of the University of Michigan Museum of Art over time, I decided to take my camera inside to take some interior photography. At the same time, my wife and I took in an exhibition called The Lens of Impressionism. The exhibition was quite interesting. It was a collection of photographs and paintings from the mid to late 1800’s and it showed the effect that photography had on impressionist painting. The photography was amazing. The clarity of some of the images was truly stunning. Anyway, this has nothing to do with the image above!

The shot above shows the new Mott Children’s Hospital which is currently under construction on the medical campus at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. This is a 4 shot HDR (was supposed to be 5) with some additional post processing (mostly cleaning up some flare spots in the sky).

This shot of downtown Detroit, Michigan was taken from Campus Martius park during Scott Kelby’s 2nd Annual Worldwide Photowalk. The tall building in the center is the Penobscot building and is one of the more recognizable buildings in Detroit.

This shot shows the Wintergarden portion of the Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan. The RenCen is also the world headquarters of General Motors. This is another picture that I took on this years Worldwide Photowalk organized by Scott Kelby and friends. The RenCen was the starting and ending point for our walk. We finished the walk and had some lunch at the food court. When I came in from outside, I took this shot. Shortly thereafter, a security guard approached some of our photowalk members and informed them that there could be no photography inside the building. There was even a vague threat to one of our photographers that they might confiscate his camera. It was later learned that it was ok to shoot with point and shoot cameras, but not ‘professional’ cameras. What a load of crap. Anyway I have this one shot which I think came out all right. The picture has a slightly greenish cast to it because the glass is tinted green. I debated about fixing the white balance, but I kind of like the color cast.