I recently purchased a new Wacom Intuos 4 Tablet primarly to use with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop CS4. This product was recently announced at the NAPP Photoshop World held in Boston, MA. I’ve been using a table for several months, mostly to help with creating layer masks in Photoshop. I was using an old Wacom Graphire tablet that someone at my work had decided they no longer wanted. I found using the tablet to be quite helpful in creating masks and doing fine grained work on my images, but that was the extent of my use. When I heard about the new Intuos 4 Tablet, I decided it was time to take the plunge and get a ‘real’ tablet. I was not disappointed.

This is a shot of a local restaurant/bar in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The weather here has been cold and snowy for some time, and when we had a nice day following a storm, I decided to take advantage of the sunny day to walk around town to see what I might find. I started out using my 70-300mm telephoto (2x crop factor) because I wanted to get some detail shots. As I was walking up Main street, I noticed this restaurant from across the street. I had always liked the typography of the restaurant’s sign, but this time there was just a bit of snow on the front which added something to the image. I particularly liked the bits of snow on E’s.

I was working through my Lightroom catalog this morning, working on adding keywords to some images when I came across this picture taken of Hill Auditorium. Hill Auditorium is located in Ann Arbor, Michigan on the campus of the University of Michigan. The architect was Albert Khan. This particular image showcases some of the fine detail work which exists in this building. In particular, this shot shows a tile embedded in the brickwork on the front of the auditorium. The tile was manufactured by Pewabic Pottery in Detroit, Michigan. This image has had minimal processing done to it, some simple curves and sharpening and that’s about it.

This shot shows Federal Hall in New York City. The site of Federal Hall, located on Wall Street, is where George Washington took the oath of office as the first President in 1789 and was also the site of the first Congress, Supreme Court and Executive Branch offices. The original building was torn down in 1812 and ultimately replaced with the current structure in 1842. The new structure served as the country’s first customs house. This picture was taken during a gray, snowy day, and my processing attempted to keep that feeling. The image was originally in color, but the color image and the final image aren’t really that much different in tonality. The other thing I did was to pump up the grain. If you look carefully, you can see streaks of snow in the image as well.

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.

This shot was taken in front of Hill Auditorium in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The front area of the auditorium has a large plaza area, and near the edge of the plaza there are drainage areas. These areas are covered by the decorative metal work you see here. I originally worked with the color version of this image (seen here), but after revisiting, I decided that black and white might be good as well. I liked the color version because it highlighted the rusty color, but I like the black and white version because it focuses more on the geometric pattern.

This is a picture of the State Theatre in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The theater is located in the central campus area of the University of Michigan. The theater was designed by C. Howard Crane, who also designed the Fox Theatre in Detroit, Michigan. The theater was built in 1942. Originally a single screen theater with balcony, it was carved into four theaters in 1979. Later, the bottom two theaters were closed and converted to retail space. The two upper theaters remain, occupying the original balcony space.

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. …

I love taking pictures of classic automobiles and so I took a short road trip to the Gilmore Car Museum to attend one of their outdoor classic car shows. This shot shows the hood ornament, or ‘mascot’, of a Pierce Arrow automobile. I was lucky that the car was parked next to another car with such an interesting color, since it gave me a nice background. I think the blue goes quite well with the chrome of the figure and the gold of the arrow. I used a long lens to get a very narrow field of focus, but my preference would be for more of the figure to be in sharp focus. Maybe this year…

This image was taken in the Depot Town area of Ypsilanti, Michigan. I was visiting the area to attend the annual Orphan Car Show held nearby. As I was walking to the show, I saw this sign. I really liked the vintage character of it. This part of town has some really nice old buildings and many of them have been rehabilitated. I took this shot with my 70-300mm lens on my Olympus E-3. Processing was fairly minimal.