I love winter (as long as it snows) but sometimes you just need to get away for a bit. I’ll be taking a short break from my blogging activities but will return shortly. In the meantime, I figured I would post this shot that I took on a trip a couple of years ago to North Myrtle Beach, SC. This image has been sitting around waiting for me to decide to do something with it. I’ve always liked the repetition of the chairs and the warm color but I held back posting it anywhere. I just purchased the PhotoTune suite which includes Focal Point 2. I decided to try it out by slightly altering the field of focus. It’s not a big change, but I like the added blur. I also used PhotoTools to bring out just a bit more color and contrast.

I figured that after a series of asylum pictures it might be nice to do something completely different. This shot was taken a couple of years ago when my family and I returned from a trip. The picture shows the tunnel which connects Concourse C to the main McNamara Terminal at Detroit’s Metro Airport. The tunnel is quite interesting. There is ambient music playing in the background and they use continually change the color of the lights. There are two long moving sidewalks which pass by long panels of glass sculpture. It’s a really nice change of pace from the typical chaos found in airports.

I like to take pictures of classic automobiles but dealing with lighting conditions that you can’t control, reflections of cars and people, etc. can make it difficult to get a nice final image. I like to focus on the details which make these cars so interesting and sometimes the reflections are really a distraction. In the image above, I actually liked the reflections. The picture shows a 1932 Packard Stationery Coupe on display at the Classic Car Club of America (CCCA) show held at the Gilmore Car Musuem near Kalamazoo, Michigan. I took the shot primarily because I liked the way the reflections looked in the curve of the spare tire holder and other places on the car.

This past weekend I attended the 2009 Eyes on Design car show held at the Edsel and Eleanor Mansion in Grosse Point Shores, Michigan. The event is an annual affair and is a fund raiser for the Detroit Institute of Ophthalmology. This is the shows 21st year. Each year has a different theme and this year highlighted advertising and cars. Many of the cars on display had a framed advertisement for the vehicle next to it. It was interesting to see the way cars have been marketed through the years.

At this past weekend’s ‘Motor Muster’ held at Greenfield Village, the show displayed more than just automobiles. They had a nice collection of older scooters and motorcycles, and they had a great collection of bicycles from various decades. The image above is of a Schwinn, most likely from the 50′s (I neglected to take a picture of the info card, so I don’t have the particulars on this bike.) I did punch up the color a bit in the post.

Here’s an image that is a bit different than what I’ve been working with recently. This is actually an older image that I took at a friend’s house a couple of years ago. The image shows a Le Klint 172 pendant lamp, tinted to give it a little color. I took the shot by first turning the light on. I focused in on various parts of the lamp until I got a composition that I liked. For this image, I took the raw image, added some contrast and then played with the hue/saturation slider until I got a result that I liked. I have a couple other versions of this lamp, including a black and white image that I really like. I recently found a group on Flickr which is devoted to Le Klint.

On Liberty Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan is a terrific little store with a variety of interesting merchandise. The store is Acme Mercantile. I took this shot of the storefront on a morning walk through town. For some reason I was in the mood to take storefronts that day. Most of the images I shot on my walk were taken with the potential to make an HDR image. I set my camera to shoot 5 bracketed exposures, 1 stop apart. I was doing this hand held and I set my camera to fast shooting and clicked off 5 quick shots at various exposures in an attempt to minimize movement. Of course, one problem was that it was windy that day, so any thing which could be affected by the wind (like leaves on a tree) created motion that I didn’t want.

As I was heading in to work one morning, I noticed that there were some interesting clouds in the sky and thought I might be able to capture some images with nicely lit clouds. I work near the University of Michigan, so I drove over to the campus area to see what possibilities might await me. I parked near the UM Law School and I liked the way the morning light was shining on the Law School Reading Room. Since I had my tripod with me, I decided to shoot several exposures to create an HDR image. I’ve always liked what HDR can do with brick and stone so this building was a natural.

Palio is an Italian restaurant in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The side of the building is painted to look old, a combination of trompe l’oeil and real features. My goal in this shot was to highlight the color and texture of the painting.

This shot was taken in an area of Ann Arbor known locally as ‘Graffiti Alley’. During the day time its a very pleasant place to wander around, it’s very bright and very colorful. The graffiti on the walls ranges from simple tags to more complex creations.