On my recent excursion to Greenfield Village I made a stop next door at the Henry Ford Museum to shoot some of the indoor exhibits. One of the more impressive sights when you enter the main entrance is this Northwest Airlines DC-3 aircraft suspended from the ceiling. The Henry Ford Museum does not have a large collection of aircraft, but it does have a handful of interesting and historically significant aircraft in its collection.

f you look through a portfolio of my images you might notice that I enjoy taking pictures of old, mechanical things. I just really like the design elements that were often used in older technolgy. It seemed as if the machine was as much art as it was functional. I think this picture from the Edison Illuminating Company building at Greenfield Village is a good example. The picture is a crank wheel attached to an electric generator. I believe this particular generator came from Edison’s power plant located on Pearl Street in New York City. The wheel serves a simple purpose, to turn something, and it could have been made with simple spokes, but this one used spokes which create a star pattern which caught my eye as I was looking for elements to shoot inside the station.

I’ve only got a couple more days before I have to send my lens rental back so I took advantage of the wonderful weather we had this weekend to once again visit Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The day started out somewhat cloudy, but the temperature was pleasant and as the afternoon wore on, the clouds moved on. As I was walking by this building I noticed that the clouds were starting to break up and make some interesting formations. The sun was also getting lower in the sky and was adding some additional warmth to the building. I had been shooting with a longer lens, but I decided to switch back to the fisheye to see what I might be able to capture.

The Armington & Sims machine shop at Greenfield Village is a great place for lovers of old tools and machinery. I also like the variety of old wooden items they have in the shop. This picture shows a cabinet which is used to contain a variety of small parts. The cabinet sits behind a railing which made it tricky to get a good shot.

The Armington & Sims machine shop in Greenfield Village was built in 1929. It was named after a maker of steam engines in Providence, Rhode Island. The building houses a working machine shop which would have been used as a ‘job’ shop to build and repair various parts for industry. The shop was originally powered by steam, with the steam engine sending its power to the machinery via a system of belts and pulleys. If you look near the top of the image, you can see a series of pulley wheels and their belts which power the machines to the right. Today the shop it powered by electricity. While primarily an exhibit of what a machine shop would have been like in the day, the shop is still used to produce parts for items needed in the village and museum.

As promised yesterday, here is the black and white version of yesterday’s color HDR of the Detroit & Mackinac Caboose from Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Processing was quite simple. I took the image produced by Photomatix into Photoshop and ran Topaz Adjust to increase clarity. I then used Silver Efex Pro to convert the image to black and white. I went with a film style with little grain and added a bit of a vignette. I finished it off with a light sepia tone.

Taking inspiration from Dave Wilson, Bob Lussier, Brian Matiash, Jacques Gudé and others, I decided to go out this weekend and find some interestis generally nice to shoot as well. I happen to be a member of the Henry Ford Museum which has a great collection of old artifacts, mostly relating to manufacturing. Part of the museum membership also includes Greenfield Village, which is a historical village created by Henry Ford to maintain items of historical significance to American industry.

My wife and I have been visiting the Good Hart area in northern lower Michigan on and off for many years. We used to rent a house on Lake Michigan in an area known as Middle Village. Almost across the road from the house we rented was an old, decaying structure. It wasn’t until this year that I actually bothered to take some pictures of it. Given the state of decay I wouldn’t be surprised if the building is gone in the next few years. Middle Village itself was originally an Ottawa Indian village. A Jesuit Mission was established at Middle Village in 1741 and was rebuilt by Native Americans in 1823. A church, built in 1889 and a cemetary remain. The church is still used during the summer. Some additional information about the area can be found here.

his is an interior shot taken at the Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City, Michigan. The asylum consisted of several buildings, some of which are currently under renovation for commercial use. Many of the buildings are still in rough shape, including this one. I was able to get a shot of the interior by sticking my camera through a missing window pane. While taking the picture I could feel a breeze on my face as wind blew through the building. There was a very distinctive old and musty smell to the air.

The shot above shows the new Mott Children’s Hospital which is currently under construction on the medical campus at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. This is a 4 shot HDR (was supposed to be 5) with some additional post processing (mostly cleaning up some flare spots in the sky).