I haven’t had a lot of spare time recently to go out and do a lot of shooting, so I’ve been spending some time going over my Lightroom catalog and looking at images that I may have overlooked before, or for ones that I might want to try some different processing on. This image is one of the former. The shot shows the Rackham Building and the newly constructed North Quad dormitory on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. I took this picture last May on a bright, sunny Sunday morning. I had wanted to get some shots of the new dorm as well as see what other interesting things I could find. This picture was taken right after I got out of my car. The sun was behind me and creating some nice hard light on the Rackham Building. I also liked the bit of North Quad which was in the frame. Since North Quad was still under construction, there was a fence around the building and the angle on this shot pretty much hides all of the construction related things surrounding the building at that time.

his image is another one from my personal snowstorm photowalk that I took a couple of weeks ago. The picture was taken in the University of Michigan Law Quadrangle during a brief, but intense snowstorm which lasted a few hours. The building in the background is one of the buildings which comprise the buildings known as the Lawyers Club. The Law Quad has an interesting history. The buildings were all funded from a law school alumuns, William Cook, who requested that the school be built in a design reminiscent of Cambridge University. Construction of the Law Quad took place between 1924 and 1933. Mr Cook never saw the completed school.

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 image is not my usual style, I sort of took it on a whim. I had gone out to shoot some shots of the University of Michigan campus during a snowstorm and I had just parked my car and was getting my gear ready. I popped my lens on and decided to fire off a quick shot looking out the windshield of my car. Just a quick grab shot and that I wasn’t really expecting much from. A few weeks after I too this, I noticed it in my Lightroom catalog and I thought it looked sort of interesting. Given the somewhat abstract nature of the shot, I knew this had to be black and white. A simple conversion using Silver Efex Pro and a bit of sharpening and I ended up with my final image.

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.

I’ve been posting a lot of grungy, dark images the past few days and I decided it was time to do something a little more colorful. I took this shot in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 2009 and its been sitting in my ‘blog possibilities’ collection for a while so I decided to trot it out. The image shows the Acme Mercantile store on Liberty Street. The store has all sorts of interesting items for sale. I took this shot on a walk I took around town focusing primarily on using my ultra-wide angle lens (7-14 Digital Zuiko 2x crop factor). The image was produced as an HDR from 5 exposures, with some additional processing.

This shot is a companion to yesterday’s image showing just the steps of Angell Hall on the campus of the University of Michigan. Not much more to say, really. I really enjoy raking light when it shines across surfaces which create deep shadows. After taking the picture of the steps I switched lenses to my 16-35 so I could get a wider shot. The tree had red/brown leaves which I thought looked good in the sunlight against the stone of the building. I debated about keeping the image in color, but after I played with a black and white version I decided I liked it better.

For mid November in Michigan, this past Sunday was very pleasant. It was a bright sunny day and I took the opportunity to walk around Ann Arbor looking for interesting things to shoot. I went out mid-afternoon, which meant the sun was already at a low angle since the sun sets here around 5:20pm right now. I was hoping to get some architectural shots which took advantage of the raking light. The shot above shows the steps of Angell Hall on the campus of the University of Michigan. I liked the patterns the sun had created on the pillars and steps so I took this shot.

One of the amazing things about the 16mm fisheye on my D700 is just how wide an image you can get. The D700 viewfinder does not show a 100% view and I was surprised when I was looking at my fisheye shots at just how much more information I had on the edges that what I saw in the frame. In the shot above, however, this wasn’t the case. The main subject of this shot is a mural painted on the wall of a building in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The mural was originally done in 1984 and the original artist was just in town to touch it up. Originally there was a bookstore located in the space above the mural, but has since moved to a different location. The mural depicts Woody Allen, Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Hesse, Franz Kafka, and Anaïs Nin.

I’ve been feeling someone uninspired in my photography of late, getting bored with shooting similar subjects. I really enjoy shooting with a wide angle lens, but I typically use the wide angle for architecture shots to give me enough material to create reasonably straight lines. However, I’ve always enjoyed seeing images of architecture and other subjects which have been shot with a fisheye lens. So, just for fun and to mix things up a bit, I decided to rent the Nikkor 16mm fisheye for use on my D700. I went out for a walk around town late yesterday just to see what sort of interesting images I might be able to create with this lens. I managed to get a few that I liked and I enjoyed shooting with this lens.