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.

f you have been following my blog for any length of time you should know by now that I enjoy photographing mechanical things. There is something about old, analog technology which I find fascinating. Perhaps it’s the texture of old metal, perhaps it’s the color, and sometimes it’s just the shear size of the thing. This object in this image had all of those things. This picture was taken at theHenry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The museum has a great section of large generators and steam driven machines and every time I visit there I’m drawn to that area. I don’t recall exactly what this picture is showing, I just remember really liking the way the gears looked.

I had recently posted some black & white images both to my blog as well as Flickr and I received a comment on one of them from one of my Flickr contacts, Gary Easter, an architectural photographer. He mentioned that I might be interested in seeing a portfolio of historical Texas churches that he had put together. I was, and when I view the portfolio I was inspired to take a look at some of my earlier work to see if I could improve on some of my conversions. One of the things that I really like about Gary’s black & white images is the deep blacks and high contrast in some of the images. As I revisited some of my earlier conversions I found a couple that I thought could be improved on.

I was looking through my Lightroom catalog for something to post to the blog when I noticed this shot. Originally I wasn’t excited about it. I liked it, but I didn’t think it was special. Still, there was something about it that I found attractive so I spent a little time with some post processing to see what I might come up with. The shot is from Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park Lab building located in Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. This was pretty much a grab shot as I walked through the building.

This shot is a companion to yesterday’s image showing just the steps of Angell Hall on the campus of the University of Michigan. Not much more to say, really. I really enjoy raking light when it shines across surfaces which create deep shadows. After taking the picture of the steps I switched lenses to my 16-35 so I could get a wider shot. The tree had red/brown leaves which I thought looked good in the sunlight against the stone of the building. I debated about keeping the image in color, but after I played with a black and white version I decided I liked it better.

For mid November in Michigan, this past Sunday was very pleasant. It was a bright sunny day and I took the opportunity to walk around Ann Arbor looking for interesting things to shoot. I went out mid-afternoon, which meant the sun was already at a low angle since the sun sets here around 5:20pm right now. I was hoping to get some architectural shots which took advantage of the raking light. The shot above shows the steps of Angell Hall on the campus of the University of Michigan. I liked the patterns the sun had created on the pillars and steps so I took this shot.

We had another nice late fall day here in Michigan, so I spent some of it wandering around Ann Arbor and on the campus of the University of Michigan. I was primarily using a 70-200 f2.8 lens that I had rented to play around with. The area I took this picture in is known as ‘The Diag’ since it is a large square area where several diagonal paths intersect. The shot was taken mid-afternoon, and with the recent switch to Standard time, the sun was coming in at low angle. With all the trees in the area, the sun made interested areas of light and shade. I had been primarily shooting campus architecture, but I saw these two people sitting next to the tree in the sunlight and I knew I had to take a shot.

Ok, maybe it’s not really a garden path, but a path none the less. This shot was taken at Traverse City Commons, also known as the old Traverse City State Mental Hospital also known as the Northern Michigan Asylum. The hospital buildings and grounds are being converted from decaying hulks into retail shops and residential condos. A few buildings have been converted, but there are many others that are still in rough shape. The image above shows one such cluster of buildings.

One of the best things about living in Michigan is when you get a warm, indian summer day in late October. The sun is starting to hang a bit lower in the sky and the afternoon light is terrific, particularly when coupled with blue sky and red or yellow leaves on the trees. Last weekend I spent an afternoon at Greenfield Village and the day just got better as the day went on. It was getting close to closing time at the museum and I was walking toward the entrance when I passed by the quarter-size replica of Ford’s original Mack Ave. plant. Something about the light on the building, the leaves in the tree and the clouds in the sky just compelled me to take this shot. I popped on my rental 16mm fisheye and set up my tripod to capture shots for an HDR image.

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.