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.

One day I was sitting at home when I noticed that some interesting clouds were forming in the sky. I took this opportunity to head in to town and do some architecture shooting. I had been wanting to get some more shots of the new Stephen Ross School of Business building on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The building offers some interesting opportunities for architectural photography. There are many different colors, textures and shapes to explore. …

This shot was taken in North Myrtle Beach, SC where I had spent some vacation time last year. The beach there is quite wide and firm at low tide and people like to ride bicycles on the sand, particularly recumbent tricycles. People really seemed to like to ride these things in circles, making interesting patterns in the sand. I was heading out of our hotel room to look for pictures to take and I noticed these two cyclists on the beach making some interesting patterns in the sand. Just as I was framing the shot, they decided it was time to move on. I had wanted to capture both cyclists as they were riding, but I was only able to capture one, just as he was leaving the edge of my composition. While I wish I had a shot of both of them, I am actually quite pleased with getting the one cyclist.

This is a shot of the new Ross School of Business building on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The building was recently opened to students. I took this shot while it was under construction.

I took this shot of a classic diner at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corners, Michigan. The museum is a great place to view classic automobiles and if you like cars from almost any era, I highly recommend making a visit. The image itself was created from a digital photograph that I took while I was there. I modified the image to black out the sky and then I applied a Cutout filter in Photoshop to give the image a posterized look. I really liked how these changes brought out the color and design character of the building.

A few month ago I took a trip to the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana. The museum has a great collection of vintage automobiles, not surprisingly Auburns, Cords and Duesenbergs. I love these cars for their interesting details. This particular image was created from a digital photograph of a 1931 Cord convertible. This is a detail shot of the front fender area. I liked the various shapes in the image and I wanted to make the image less about the car and more about the shapes so I did some tweaking of the image in Photoshop. I played with the colors and used some artistic filters to create the image you see above.

A couple of years ago I attended my first vintage car show. It was the Orphan Car Show held annually in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Each year the show features a handful of ‘orphan’ cars, cars whose maker or nameplate has been out of business for 7 years or more. In 2007, the Checker car company was one of the companies featured.

This is a somewhat stylized shot of the Greyhound bus depot in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The depot is still functioning, but the sign has seen better days. When I took this shot, I wanted to focus on the details of the sign and it’s current condition. The sign used to have a nice blue background for the lettering. Now, almost all of the blue is gone. When I started working with this image I decided to give it a bit more of a pop art look to it. The filter didn’t really have much effect on the sign itself, but it made the building next to the depot a bit more

This is an older image (about 2 years old) that I took of Barton Dam near Ann Arbor, Michigan. Even though I had lived in Ann Arbor for years, I had never been out to see the dam. It’s right outside of town so it’s not like it would take a major effort to go see it, I just never bother. One day I decided to take my new camera and go check out the dam. I was hooked. I’ve made several trips back to take pictures at different times of the year. This particular image is one of the first ones that I took. …

This is a shot of Radio City Music Hall in New York City. In the background you can also see 30 Rockefeller Center. I was in town on business and walked down to Rockefeller Center to take some shots. I didn’t have a tripod so I had to do everything hand held. I remember standing across the street from Radio City to take this shot. I tried to support myself has best I could in order to get a clean shot. My Olympus E-3 has in camera stabilization and I think that helped keep the shot clear as well.