My family and I just returned from a short vacation in Puerto Rico. We stayed in the San Juan area, but we took a trip to the south side of the island where we visited the city of Ponce. Ponce was an interesting experience because non of my family speaks Spanish (we can read some) and there was very little English spoken in Ponce. We didn’t have a good map of Ponce and the city has very tight streets. We spent some time in the town square where I took this picture of the Ponce Cathedral. The church itself is on the National Register of Historic Places as “Cathedral Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe of Ponce”.

This image shows one of the galleries in the new wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I really like the clean architecture of the new wing, very modernist. The new wing does a nice job of showcasing modern art.

This shot was taken in the new wing of the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA). I was drawn to this shot by all the lines. I just liked the way the railings around the staircase looked against the lines for the window frames in the background. It has a very mide-century modern feeling, even though the building was completed last year. In looking at the shot now, I think it would look better with a person sitting on the bench, maybe about 1/3 of the way in from the right side of the image. I think a person would add a nice ‘organic’ element to the strong geometric nature of the shot. I’m curious as to what other people might thing.

This is another shot I took at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The picture shows a machine which was used to manufacture light bulbs. The museum lighting is pretty dark and I didn’t have my tripod with me so I bumped the ISO to 2000 to get this shot. While the noise levels even at this ISO aren’t too bad, my thought when I took this was to create more of a ‘artsy’ image with heavy processing using Topaz Simplify. I was more interested in the shapes in the shot than trying to capture the machine in a more realistic fashion.

This shot shows a 200 Kilowatt Dynamo from the Edison General Electric Schenectady Works. This machine is on permanent display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The Henry Ford Museum has a wonderful collection of historical artifacts but I’m particularly drawn to the large generators they have on display. The size, color and design of these machines is truly impressive.

I took a short trip into Detroit to try out my new camera and a rental lens. I decided to get some more shots of the abandoned Detroit Central Railway Station (or Depot). The building has been abandoned for several years, but the beauty of the structure remains. I certainly hope that something can be done to save a least a portion of this building.

I recently purchased a Nikon D700 camera to ultimately replace my Olympus E-3. I loved my E-3, but there were certain features that were lacking and Olympus seems more interested in developing their micro 4/3rds cameras than releasing newer pro level cameras so it seemed time to make a switch. I received the D700 yesterday and managed to find a little time to take a few shots with it. I still have a lot to learn about how I want to configure the camera and how to best make use of it, but I think I’ve got the basics.

A few weeks ago my wife and I went to an exhibit at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) called The Lens of Impressionism – Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850–1874. It was a great exhibition. Before the exhibit, I wandered around the museum. The museum consists of two wings, an old wing housed in a Beaux Arts style structure, and a new wing which was recently completed in a very modern style (seen here). My main focus was on the architecture and I took several interior shots. In general I’m not much of a ‘people’ photographer. I’ll wait until people are out of frame before taking pictures, particularly architecture. However, there are times when having the person in the right place makes the shot and I think this is one of those times.

Every year for the last few years my family and I go skiing at Mont Tremblant, a ski resort an hour or so north of Montreal, Canada. One year we stayed in a nearby condo, but we found that we preferred to stay in one of the hotels in the pedestrian village which is located at the base of the slopes. This year I made reservations a little later than usual and the place where we had stayed in the past was booked. I looked through some of the other hotels in the village and decided to try Le Sommet des Neiges, which is a big hotel right at the base of the slopes. Great location, although it was a bit more expensive. I was very pleased with the location. You could come off the slopes, go through some automatic doors and be right in the ski locker area of the hotel. Very convenient. We were also fortunate to have a room which overlooked the slopes.

This shot shows the back end of a 1959 Buick Electra 225 which was on display at the 2009 Concours d’Elegance held at Meadowbrook Hall in Rochester Hills, Michigan. The Meadowbrook Concours is always a highlight of the summer for me, since I love to photograph classic cars and this show has them in abundance.