This last weekend I went to the Classic Car Club of America (CCCA) car show held at the Gilmore Car Museum near Kalamazoo, Michigan. There were some terrific old cars at the show (and I’ll likely post some shots of those as well), but the museum itself is worth the trip. It’s set on 90+ acres and houses hundreds of cars in various barns. They also have a recreation of a 1930’s era Shell service station, which is where this shot was taken. I was walking through the station and I really liked the look of all the old tools, manuals, and other service station materials. My grandfather owned a station years ago and it brought back pleasant memories.

I took this shot of a classic automobile dashboard at a car show held at the Gilmore Car Musuem in Hickory Corners, MichiganThe museum has a terrific collection of cars spanning the decades, and they also have some nice special events. I’m attracted to older cars, particularly those of the 30’s, because they have such wonderful design elements. This dashboard to me just oozes craftsmanship and design.

There is a golf course just west of Ann Arbor which has this nice old Farmall tractor on the edge of the course. I’ve photographed it several times, most recently this past fall. For this trip, I used my 70-300 lens to get more detail and shallower depth of field. For an alternative look at this same tractor, check out an earlier image that I posted to this blog.

I was out running errands recently and managed to find a street parking space almost in front of the Arbor Brewing Company located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. As I was parking, the signs on the front of the building caught my eye. I’ve always liked the typography used on the signs and think that the tree in the logo is quite cool as well, very ‘arts & crafts’ looking. Anyway, I thought there was a good picture to be had so I took out my camera and took a few shots. This shot was my favorite of the set.

This is a shot of Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan. The image was taken at 7 am, just as the morning rush hour was getting started. I didn’t have a tripod with me (and the transit police probably would have hassled me anyway) so I just set my camera on the staircase railing. I wanted to use a relatively slow shutter speed to capture some movement, but I didn’t want everything to be blurred. I really like the fact that there is a mix of people who are blurred, and others who aren’t. This images is a toned black & white converted from a color image, but in reality the color image doesn’t look that much different.

We finally had a nice spring day in Ann Arbor this past weekend and I decided to take the opportunity to wander around town with my camera. I took several shots, most of them using my 7-14mm wide angle lens. This particular shot shows the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum from what used to be the front of the building. The museum opened in 1982 in what was originally a fire station.

This is a shot of a local restaurant/bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The weather here has been cold and snowy for some time, and when we had a nice day following a storm, I decided to take advantage of the sunny day to walk around town to see what I might find. I started out using my 70-300mm telephoto (2x crop factor) because I wanted to get some detail shots. As I was walking up Main street, I noticed this restaurant from across the street. I had always liked the typography of the restaurant’s sign, but this time there was just a bit of snow on the front which added something to the image. I particularly liked the bits of snow on E’s.

This shot shows Federal Hall in New York City. The site of Federal Hall, located on Wall Street, is where George Washington took the oath of office as the first President in 1789 and was also the site of the first Congress, Supreme Court and Executive Branch offices. The original building was torn down in 1812 and ultimately replaced with the current structure in 1842. The new structure served as the country’s first customs house. This picture was taken during a gray, snowy day, and my processing attempted to keep that feeling. The image was originally in color, but the color image and the final image aren’t really that much different in tonality. The other thing I did was to pump up the grain. If you look carefully, you can see streaks of snow in the image as well.

The Renaissance Center in Detroit, Michigan was built in the mid-70’s. At the time, the thought was that this new set of buildings would help provide for a ‘renaissance’ of the city of Detroit. Alas it wasn’t to be. The building was more of a fortress than anything else. It had large berms which faced the main street, and the other side was the river. This created a structure which was more of an island than anything else. A couple years ago, General Motors purchased the buildings and moved it’s world headquarters to it. There was a bit of irony in this, since the Renaissance Center (aka ‘RenCen’) had significant funding from the Ford family.

This shot was taken in front of Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The front area of the auditorium has a large plaza area, and near the edge of the plaza there are drainage areas. These areas are covered by the decorative metal work you see here. I originally worked with the color version of this image (seen here), but after revisiting, I decided that black and white might be good as well. I liked the color version because it highlighted the rusty color, but I like the black and white version because it focuses more on the geometric pattern.