On a recent quest to try out a new Nikon lens (the 28-300) and to visit places that might make for interesting HDR images, I visited Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. As I mentioned in my previous post, Greenfield Village was created by Henry Ford to celebrate American industry and achievements. The image above was taken in the DT&M Roundhouse. I believe the railroad car in the picture is a caboose from the Detroit and Mackinac railroad.

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.

I was looking through my Lightroom catalog trying to find images which might be fun to play with using the Silver Efex Pro plugin I just purchased. As I scanned across the folders, I found a series of images that I had taken at the Michigan Central Depot in Detroit, Michigan. The building is famous for both its beauty and sorry condition. It has been threatened with demolition, and yet it still stands. Several movies have been shot here and it is a popular place for urbex photographers to visit.

I’ve been doing black and white conversions in Photoshop for some time now, but I’ve always been interested in the results I’ve seen from Nik’s Silver Efex Pro plugin. Well, I finally took the plunge and purchased it. As a quick test of the software I decided to try it out on an image I had been playing around with.

The picture shows the Greyhound bus depot in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The depot itself was built around 1940 in the Streamline Moderne style. I’ve always enjoyed the look of this building, although its a shame that it hasn’t been kept in better shape. I took this picture on an early morning walk I made around town a couple of months ago.

One of my favorite car shows of the summer is the ‘Eyes on Design’ car show held annually at the Edsel and Eleanor Ford mansion in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan. The show always has a great collection of interesting vehicles old and new. This picture shows a customized 1955 Thunderbird which was given the name ‘Goldenbird’ by its owner.

My wife and I spent some time in New York for our anniversary last year. One of the areas we visited was the financial district, particularly the area around the World Trade Center area. This shot was taken in the winter garden portion of the World Financial Center. The day outside was sort of cool and somewhat rainy, but the winter garden was quite nice. When I looked up at the ceiling, I knew I had to get a shot of it.

I seem to be in a black and white mood of late. This is a picture of one of my favorite cars at the Gilmore Car Museum in Hickory Corner, Michigan (between Battle Creek and Kalamazoon) This picture was taken at the 2010 Classic Car Club of America show held at the Gilmore. The car is a 1935 Dusenberg SJ564 Convertible Couple. I’ve always been fond of mid-30’s automobiles, particularly those with the exposed chrome exhausts. Duesenbergs have them as well as some model Auburns and Cords. All great designs.

I don’t get to New York as often as I would like to any more. I used to be able to count on at least a couple of trips each year for work, but not so much any more. This particular image was taken a year ago when my wife and I visited New York for our wedding anniversary. It was the first time I had visited the museum and I certainly hope to get back to see it again. It was a cloudy and somewhat rainy day when we visited which meant that the skylight above was mostly white, instead of blue. The interior was not extremely bright, so I had to bump my ISO to 1250 to get a reasonable shutter speed. Unfortunately the camera I was using at the time, an Olympus E-3, doesn’t do well at higher ISO settings. I love the camera, I just wish it did better at higher ISO.

For the past few days I’ve been playing with a Nikon 24mm PC-E lens. I like to shoot architecture and I thought it would be fun to try a lens which would let me do some perspective correction in camera rather than in Photoshop. I still have a lot to learn about using this lens, but I really like it (which I could afford one). This shot of the new North Quad dormitory on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor was taken with this lens. I was lazy and shot this hand held. With a 24mm lens I was able to capture most of the building without tilting the camera too much, and then I used the shift capability to reduce any keystoning. The nice thing about being able to do this optically is you keep the full resolution of the image rather than stretching/compressing pixels in Photoshop.

This is another shot of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. While spending time on the island, I took a walk one morning hoping to get a morning shot of the hotel. The morning had been cloudy and rainy but as I left my hotel room the sky started to clear up. The island isn’t very big, particularly the ‘downtown’ area, so it didn’t take me long to walk from my hotel across town and up the hill to get to the Grand Hotel. I took a few shots as the sun came out from behind the clouds but I noticed that the flags which normally adorn the porch weren’t flying. Somehow it made the hotel look a little to plain. As I was shooting, I noticed these gentlemen starting to put the flags out on the porch. I thought it made for an interesting shot.