This is a shot taken recently in Chelsea, Michigan home to Chelsea Milling, makers of Jiffy Mix and also the home town of Jeff Daniels, whose family owns Chelsea Lumber Company. The main subject in this shot is the Clocktower, which was built by the Glazier Stove Company which once operated the worlds largest oil stove factory on the site. The Clocktower building was once the tallest structure in Washtenaw County. The tower served the dual purpose of holding a 20,000 gallon (76,000 liter) water tank for fires and for keeping time. While the Clocktower no longer serves as a water tower, but the old water tank is still encased within the tower just below the clock faces.

We’ve been having a pretty blah spring here in Michigan, lots of cool rainy days. It hasn’t exactly motivated me to go out and shoot. Sunday started out this way, but in the afternoon the sun started to come out and the temperatures warmed up. I decided I might as well go out for a little while and see if I could find something interesting to shoot. I spent a little time in Chelsea, Michigan shooting around the train station and old clocktower they have there, but none of those pictures really thrilled me. On the way home, I went past this grain elevator. I like grain elevators, they have an interesting industrial quality to them. I stopped and took a few shots including the one you see above.

This is a shot of the Clocktower area in Chelsea, Michigan. I’ve been to Chelsea many times to take pictures of the Clocktower. I’ve tried HDR, night shots, etc. For this shot, I went wide, trying to capture more context, in this case the railroad cars and railroad tracks. The original image was in color, but I particularly liked the look of the sky when I converted the image to black and white.