his image start life as an 8 shot HDR. The subject is one that I’ve visited many times, an old schoolhouse west of Ann Arbor, Michigan. I’ve worked on a couple variations of this shot. One was a straight color HDR, a second was a simpler black and white conversion of the color HDR and finally this version. In all cases the thing I liked the most was the clouds in the sky. My original black and white conversion created a reasonably dark sky which looked pretty nice but I decided to go for a more antique look with this version. To me it looks like the sort of image that appeared on old stereoscope cards. I used to love to use my grandparents viewer to look at their cards in wonderful 3D and perhaps that’s why I like the way this image came out.

After posting yesterday’s image, I took another look at the raw shot and thought that there were some things that I could do with the original orientation that would also make for a more interesting shot. The horizontal shot I posted yesterday is more focused on the person, whereas the taller shot I think does a better job of showing the person in the context of the surrounding architecture. I used Silver Efex Pro2 to convert to black and white and to add a vignette and sepia tone. I think the vignette helps draw the eye to the person, while still being able to see a larger context.

ometimes a crop can make all the difference in an image. The image you see above was taken in the new wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). I was trying to capture the classic ‘musuem’ shot which shows someone contemplating some piece of art. As I walked through the gallery, I noticed this gentleman standing and looking at something and I liked the way he was framed by the walls of the museum. For some reason I decided to shoot this vertically. I think I was captivated by all the angles and lines which were captured by the wide angle lens. However, the vertical nature of the shot was more about architecture than the person. As I looked at the image, I wondered what it might look like if I had shot it horizontal, so I tried a relatively severe crop to convert from vertical to horizontal. I liked what I saw so I did a fairly simple conversion to black and white and the result is what you see above.

his picture was taken during a recent walk around Ann Arbor, Michigan. We were having a period of heavy snow and I wanted to go out and see what kind of pictures I could get. This shot shows the gate of a local fraternity building known as the Shant. I shot this with my 50mm with the intention of getting a closeup with some hopefully nice blurring in the background. I deliberately selected a portion of the gate that I thought captured some interesting shapes.

This past weekend we had a brief but intense snowstorm. I thought it might be fun to go shoot in the snow so I packed up my camera and drove into Ann Arbor. I ended up parking the car right in front of this store. Actually the Red Shoes store is really out of frame and what you are seeing in the background is Lexi’s Toy Box, a local toy store. I’ve always liked the exteriors of these two stores and I liked the way they looked in the snow so I grabbed a quick shot before walking around town to get some more pictures.

couple of weeks ago I ventured over to the west side of MIchigan in search of something different to shoot. I found some interesting subjects and headed back home. I hadn’t had any lunch, so on the way home I decided to stop and get some food. The weather was kind of snowy and the roads were a bit of a mess so my intention was to get a quick lunch and head back on to the highway. I saw a sign for a fast food restaurant so I thought I would get off and grab a bite to eat. Normally these restaurants are right at the exit so you can get off, eat and get back on. However, when I got off at this particular exit, I found out that the restaurant was about 5 miles north of the highway. I debated for a bit about just getting back on and going to the next location, but finally decided to just put in the little extra time since I was already off the highway. On my way up the road I passed by this old church. I thought it had some interesting character so I decided after I had my lunch I would come back and take some shots.

Every year Detroit hosts the North American International Auto Show, and in recent years there has been one day of the public show where they encourage photographers to come an hour before the show starts to take pictures. This is the third or fourth year that I’ve gone. It’s nice to be able to walk through the show when it isn’t very crowded. This shot was taken from the front of Cobo Hall looking across the street to the old Ponchatrain Hotel, now serving as a giant billboard for Mercedes Benz.

Monday was a holiday so I took the opportunity to take a road trip to find some new subjects to shoot. I had this notion to head three hours west of where I live to visit Grand Haven, Michigan to see if I could get some interesting shots of the lighthouse located there. I knew there was a snowstorm coming in and I was thinking I might get lucky to see some big Lake Michigan waves pounding the lighthouse. When I got there the snow was definitely falling, but the visibility was so poor that I couldn’t even see the lighthouse. With the wind whipping snow and sand, I declined to walk through the snow to get closer to see if the visibility was any better. Instead, I looked for some other subjects. On the way out of town I passed this old railroad coaling tower. The structure peaked my interest so I pulled over and took a few shots.

Continuing the theme of the last couple of days, this is another shot I took during our recent snowstorm. This barn is located on the other side of the road from where I took the Snowy Trees shot and just up the road from where yesterday’s Headstone picture was taken.

Just down the road from where I took yesterday’s image is a small cemetery. I’ve always felt odd about photographing in a cemetery, but I do find old headstones to be interesting. I suppose it is somewhat cliché to shoot a cemetery in winter, but with a blustery snowstorm going on around me, it just seemed like the right thing to do! The wind was really nasty and cold so I didn’t spend a lot of time here. I tried various angles and focal lengths and ended up liking this one the best.