Tag: greenfield village

Tooling Along

Posted under Greenfield Village

Tooling Along

With fall in the air and lacking something new to post I thought I would post this shot I took last year at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. Greenfield Village was created by Henry Ford, so it’s not surprising that the Model T and other old Ford automobiles should be prominently displayed. The museum offers rides in some of the older cars. This visit occurred in mid November on a wonderful Indian summer day. It was getting later in the day and the streets of the village were becoming empty. The less crowded village streets became a nice background to the old Ford automobiles that were still tooling around the village that day.


I took this picture of a 1933 Plymouth hood ornament during the 2011 Motor Muster held at Greenfield Village. The gentleman who owned the car gave me some information on the history and evolution of Plymouth hood ornaments. The 1933 had the flying figure and by 1934 they had switched to a stylized sailing ship. The key bit of information was that the 1933 ornament actually used gold in the medallion. True or not I thought the ornament was pretty cool. I took the shot with a 105mm macro lens that I had rented. I have a couple other shots which used a more open aperture, but the field of focus was too thin. I closed it down to f16 for this shot and managed to get more of the ornament in focus. Sometimes razor thin DOF looks cool, but for this sort of shot I prefer to see more detail.


Gears

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Gears

have this thing for anything old, mechanical or metal. When I was at Greenfield Village this past weekend for their annual Motor Muster, I had the pleasure of seeing many things which fit that description. One of the coolest places in the museum (in my opinion) is the Armington & Sims machine shop. The shop has a great collection of original machine shop tools and is actually a functioning job shop for items needed at the museum. I was using a Nikon 105mm Macro lens that I had rented from LensPro To Go and I made a pass through the shop to see if I could get some interesting images. One of my favorites from this trip is this shot of some tool which had a great collection of gears. I didn’t have my tripod with me that day, but if I did I would have taken some brackets for an HDR image. The shop is too dark to take handheld exposures.


Silvertone

Posted under Greenfield Village

Silvertone

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.


Steampunk-ish

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Steampunk-ish

I didn’t really know how to title this post because I’m not exactly sure what this thing is. All I know about it is that it is some sort of machine used in the maintenance of railway cars and/or engines. I took this picture at Greenfield Village last fall. The Village has an old railroad roundhouse which is both an exhibit and a place for worker to work on the rolling stock owned by the museum. I was originally planning on created an HDR image out of this subject, and I took 9 exposures while I was there to do it, but when I actually processed the images in Photomatix, I didn’t care for what came out. Instead I did something much simpler. I used Topaz Adjust to bring out some more detail in the metal. I think it did a really nice job in this regard.


The Lab

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Menlo Park Lab

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.


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.


f you look through a portfolio of my images you might notice that I enjoy taking pictures of old, mechanical things. I just really like the design elements that were often used in older technolgy. It seemed as if the machine was as much art as it was functional. I think this picture from the Edison Illuminating Company building at Greenfield Village is a good example. The picture is a crank wheel attached to an electric generator. I believe this particular generator came from Edison’s power plant located on Pearl Street in New York City. The wheel serves a simple purpose, to turn something, and it could have been made with simple spokes, but this one used spokes which create a star pattern which caught my eye as I was looking for elements to shoot inside the station.


In yesterday’s post I showed the exterior of the Edison Illuminating Company building located inside Greenfield Village. This shot comes from the interior. Edison’s power plants produced DC power, and the power wasn’t very strong and didn’t transmit well over long distances. The further you were away from the power plant, the less power you got. The light bulbs in the building at Greenfield village run at about 40 watts, which is about the intensity of light you would have received from that plant if you were nearby. Of course, the bulbs actually lasted a long time at that power.


Edison Illuminating Company #1

Posted under HDR

Edison Illuminating Company

I’ve only got a couple more days before I have to send my lens rental back so I took advantage of the wonderful weather we had this weekend to once again visit Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan. The day started out somewhat cloudy, but the temperature was pleasant and as the afternoon wore on, the clouds moved on. As I was walking by this building I noticed that the clouds were starting to break up and make some interesting formations. The sun was also getting lower in the sky and was adding some additional warmth to the building. I had been shooting with a longer lens, but I decided to switch back to the fisheye to see what I might be able to capture.