So, I went to the annual Motor Muster at Greenfield Village and came back with a shot of a … radio. Actually I do have some pictures of cars, but I think I’m hitting a block on my car photography. At this show I saw many of the same cars I saw last year (and the year before), and while I enjoy looking at them, I’m finding it harder to come up with interesting ways to shoot them. It’s hard to get a good shot of the entire car because there are generally people in the way so I tend to focus on details. However, after shooting details for so long I find myself mentally rejecting shots before I even take them because I remember taking something similar in the past. Anyway, the show was fun even if I didn’t get a large number of ‘keeper’ shots.

On a recent Saturday I decided to take a short day trip into northern Ohio. I wanted to drive on some back roads to see if I could find anything interesting to shoot. For this trip I decided that my destination would be Defiance, Ohio. I thought Defiance looked interesting because it is located at the intersection of three rivers. I found a couple of interesting things to shoot on the way as well as a few interesting things in Defiance itself. One of those was this old railroad building. It was hard to tell if the building was still in use, but I liked its simple character.

When I think of a ‘Studebaker’, I think of the funky looking cars that were made in the 50’s and 60’s not a stately automobile on par with Duesenberg, Packard, etc., so I was somewhat surprised to find that the car belonging to this hood ornament was a Studebaker. I took this shot at the Classic Car Collectors of America show at the Gilmore Car Museum. When I go to these shows, I generally find some aspect of the car that looks interesting and I might not even know who made the car. As a way of keeping a record of what shots belong to what cars, I’ll take a picture of the identification sign that is usually posted in front of the car. So with this one, I saw the hood ornament and thought it look interesting, and after I took a few shots, I took a picture of the identification sign and at that point found out that it was a Studebaker. This years show had a special emphasis on cars manufactured in Indiana. Studebakers were manufactured in South Bend.

When I went to the Classic Car Club of American car show at the Gilmore Car Museum I took both of my camera bodies. I’ve been using primarily my Nikon D700, but I still use my Olympus E3 on occasion. I had equipped the E3 with my 50mm F2 Zuiko Macro lens, an old manual lens that I used to use with my Olympus OM4 back in my film days. It was a nice change to use a completely manual set up. Focusing was manual, as was setting the aperture. When I changed aperture, the lens closed down and made the viewfinder darker, which made focusing a little more challenging. I like this 50 macro on the E3 because at the 2x crop factor its like using a 100mm lens. This lens also takes really nice images.

This picture was taken a couple of years ago at the Gilmore Car Museum near Kalamazoo, Michigan. The museum is a great place to see cars throughout the ages. The museum sits on a large piece of farmland and has several barns which house the cars. They have been adding to the museum over the years. Last year they opened a new building dedicated to Franklin automobiles. The Classic Car Club of America has a barn as well. The museum continues to expand it’s collection and is a great place to visit if you like automobiles and automobile history.

A couple of weeks ago Mike Olbinski, a photographer I follow, posted this shot of a grain elevator that he found while driving through Kansas. This got me in the mood to find some interesting elevators in Michigan, since Kansas is quite a ways away for me. I did some scouting on Flickr and managed to find a couple of good possibilities. One was a local elevator in Ypsilanti, Michigan which I posted last week. The other one was this old elevator in Henderson, Michigan. What I liked about this one was the decay and faded paint job. If you look carefully, you can see old signage for ‘Purina Chows’ and other products that were available at this location.

In my quest to find new material to shoot I took a short road trip into northern Ohio this weekend. I had seen a picture of this structure posted by one of my Flickr contacts and I thought it would be interesting to see it myself. I headed down to Toledo, Ohio, where I picked up US-20 heading west. Once I got out of the Toledo area, the road opened up to wide open farmland. I was hoping I might see an old barn or two, and I was really hoping I might find one with a painted “Mail Pouch” tobacco sign, but no such luck. I did see one barn which I’m pretty sure used to have a sign painted on one end, but it had been freshly painted over. Anyway, I pressed on until I reached Fayette, Ohio, a small town in western Ohio. There, on the eastern side of town, is “Hal’s Garage”. My understanding of this building is that it is just a private garage, not a working garage, but I still think it is pretty cool. I love the old signs and the way trunks of cars are used as awnings.

ontinuing my quest to find interesting grain elevators to shoot, I present this image taken of a feed and grain store located in Webberville, Michigan. I was actually passing through Webberville on my way to find an old grain elevator that I had seen during a Flickr search. I hadn’t really planned on stopping in Webberville, but I figured, what the heck maybe there would be something interesting to shoot. The first thing you see when you approach Webberville from the highway is the large Archer Daniels Midland elevator and complex. I took some shots of it, but the picture I really wanted to get would have been difficult since it would have involved shooting from just outside of the security gate. I really didn’t feel like dealing with security so I passed on that shot. However, I had noticed just down the tracks a bit, there was another, smaller elevator. I managed to find the road which led to this feed and grain store. It wasn’t quite as rustic as I would have liked, but parts of the building had an interesting character. I took a few different shots from different angles and I liked this one the best.

Recently I’ve been in a bit of a shooting slump and I’m trying to come up with little projects which might help me out. I’ve always had a fascination with old grain elevators and seeing some shots from other people got me inspired to do some hunting to find structures which might be interesting to shoot. I decided to search Flickr to see what others have found to help focus my effort instead of driving aimlessly about in search of something I may never find. I happened to run across an image of the elevator taken in Ypsilanti, Michigan. I live nearby and I knew approximately where this elevator was located, so I decided to check it out this past weekend and ended up with the shot you see above. I particularly like the sign for the Frog Island Brewery.

We had some nice weather last week and all around I saw trees flowering and leafing out. I decided to take a quick drive around the campus of the University of Michigan to see where there might be a good combination of architecture and flowering landscape. The shot above shows the Intramural Building with a nice line of flowering trees. Not sure what kind of trees they are, but they looked nice.