my work is done here

As of today, I retire this blog, and out of the dust, a new phoenix rises.


Same thing, different address.


Thanks to everyone for everything, the last few months have truly been a pleasure..

I Love This City

What a positive graffiti, and beautiful bike.

p.s. Jonathan don't leave!

Gary

It has been a very eventful weekend. I'll talk more in class about it, I promise.

Above is the second story of a factory that to the best of my guessing was a facility that made plastic bottles and, possibly, other things out of plastic.

Below is the golden center of a day of taking chances. The jackpot, a gothic church with a 70 ceiling that pushed 70 feet. Those pillars diameter would be 10-12 feet, maybe more. This room was fantastic. Most of the images I put on this blog are before most of the post production. They are rough around the edges still.




Finally, the balcony over the stage at this church, the stage was strewn with hundreds of articles of clothing from the costume area backstage. There was 1 chair left center stage, not much pressure from the audience while performing anymore.




That should do it for tonight. I did shoot 2 gigs of photos that day, plus half a roll of Velvia. I expect some good results from the Velvia. I just keep creating more work for myself. I love it.

Let me know what you think.

4/14 - 4/17

Shots from the last few days, mostly HDR, some traditional.

My level of understanding of the medium is still rising, I am getting close to the point I'd like to be at so far with this new way of making images. Here are the latest additions.

Going down to Gary this weekend... I'll bring my laptop, I think I'll easily fill my camera at least once or twice. Hopefully I come home with some keepers.

The Foundry

I'll be back in the state on Tuesday late. Got to shoot on the beach and in my uncles foundry here this weekend.

Both of these photographs were of a cobalt pour, melting down foundry spills, skimming off the slag, and pouring a usable, sellable, cobalt ingot, weighing in at a red hot 300 pounds.

Perfect Storm

The world is a sea of change.

Box Car Series, Updated

This post is mostly for my and perhaps Naomi's referance.

Laying them all out side by side reveals that the 6th one needs lightening and contrast, and that the 8th one is not framed just right. These will be corrected before printing.

Spring Break

Only got a chance to shoot 300 or so shots over spring break, a lot of HDR stuff so that 300 can be considerably boiled down because of the immense bracketing involved in high dynamic range photography. Here's some of what I got a chance to shoot.

HDR

Forgotten Spaces

Non-Series Photographs

more, More, MORE!

I love doing this. I'm going back out to shoot some more. I'm sick so I didn't get to ambitious today, but this is the afternoon's work.

P.S. Click on the images to see them in detail.

More HDR

So I was out under the most beautiful sky we have had this year so far, in my opinion, without my tripod... why oh why do I make bad decisions? So I decided it was a conducive situation to do a little hand held HDR. Keep in mind that this is a compilation of 5 exposures, and I was hand holding my camera, thus the lack of alignment of some elements of the photograph. Anyways, I'm getting better at this... Sky's the limit.

High Dynamic Range

I've been working at understanding HDR for a couple of months now. I've been out shooting with it in mind many times and finally got a good enough grasp on it to share with you fine peers of mine. I need to bracket lower instead of so high, to get more shadow detail, but I am resonably happy with this first good result.

P.S. this damn blog messes with my contrast and brightness. It is not washed out at all in the image.

PS:CS3

Ok, I don't really know where to start, besides stating that I'm overflowing with tears of joy over Photoshop CS 3, I just downloaded the 2 day beta (which can be cracked easily so you can keep if for good, suprise suprise), and I havn't gotten further than opening a raw image and.... oh man. Talk about refinements. I am capable of making my shot just about perfect now before even entering photoshop.

Using the dialague box above you have increadible control of the tones in your shot.

Besides the Adobe Camera Raw 4.0 there is also a revised bridge, which is dark grey and very intuitive, it looks more customizable as well. I have noticed a new selection tool, and a "black and white" tab in the Image > Adjustments or Layer > New adjustment Layer paths. I'm sure there is much more.

Considering this program will be our next 5 years or so, I suggest we all get to learning it as fast as possible. Proficient is a great thing to be early when it comes to photoshop. Go get the beta folks!

Critique?

• The trees on the left... yay or nay? I can get rid of them if needed, I think they might crowd the shot a little too much.
• The blog made it a little darker than it should be, the image isn't naturally this dark.
• The tree on the right nicely frames the light, but should it be treated differently? Again, I can get rid of it if necessary.

I just was having some trouble finalizing this image. Shot it tonight, north point light station in front of a waning gibbous of a moon. Still plenty of reflected light.

Do any of you know about earthglow? The reason we can dark part of the moon as a hazy, dark, remainder is that the sun is reflecting off the earth at the moon the same way the moon is reflecting at us. So the dark part of the moon that faces earth will see the earth, lighting its night like the moon lights ours. Oooo.

Isn't science great?

Night Light

Another moon lit, late night waterscape. Barely pulled this one off, the moon was moving way too fast, so glad I got the shot though, this is one of my favorite night shots so far.

Snowbow

What? Snow makes rainbows too, but I figure its dumb to call a rainbow, which is in fact not made of rain, but snow, a snowbow.

Well it turns out it was in my best interest to drop everything at 12:00 on friday and leave at 12:10 to drive for 8 hours or so to Michigan... So I did, packed like a lightning bolt, got in the car, drove to madison with Howie, dug a car out of the snow for about an hour, and then drove straight north until we were in Houghton. Did some shooting on the way up, got dropped off at my Aunt and Uncle's house in Laurium Mi. Had a very late dinner with my cousin, and hopped in the guest bed. How and why did I suddenly go to Michigan? Well we drove up in a blizzard, and Howie was going (without telling me prior to dinner on Thursday) and his folks decided it would be better if someone went with him, to help drive etc. So I was offered an all expense paid ski trip, to my favorite place in America, the U.P. (Yeah that's right Amanda, don't knock the U.P. it is simply the best place around. I of course couldn't pass this up, so I said good bye to the girlfriend, packed the essentials, which included 2 cameras, some Velvia, various battery chargers, my laptop, skis, boots, poles, and of course some cloths.

Saturday was a day of knee deep powder overlooking Lac La-Belle and the channel out to Lake Superior. With 16-20 foot waves on Friday smashing in to the eastern coast of the peninsula I was expecting to go the extra mile... or 400 extra miles in this case, and get some waves crashing for Naomi's class and my crit on Monday, but with a bay full of pack-ice on saturday, the waves had expended all their energy before reaching anywhere near photographable areas. But this certainly was ok, there was skiing to be done.

Long story short, a lunar eclipse, another great lake, burning muscles, a home made jump, a cliff climb, a couple hundred photographs, a few bowls of soup, a game of scrabble, a visit to the hospitol for Howie (Ski's are sharp and landing just short of 720 degrees of rotation onto a very steep grade can be a painful combination), and 400 more miles later... I'm back, its late, and its time to get to work on some school work.

Here is what the weekend produced:

For Jonathan: A Barn Owl flew out of that barn right after my 10th or so frame of it, I know you love birds.

For Howie: You look fairly at peace, despite the gash in your knee and the blood staining the snow red.

For Amanda: You already got made fun of for talking smack about da UP eh.

For Sarah: That barn, I know you like them.

For Me: The abandoned drive in, I'd happily drive back to shoot it again when it isn't lit by moonlight.

For anyone else that actually reads this.... comment, prove you read it... I don't believe any of you!

Great weekend Howie, we'll do it again soon.

6-8 inches of snow, 10-14 feet of waves

As many of you may know by now, I am very in touch with this lake we are lucky enough to live by. When there are waves or ice or anything else that might be worth seeing, you'll find me at a beach or on the pier or somewhere as close to that lake as I can get. Well with this great blizzard we got 35 knot gusts and a good solid wind from the east to bring the fun to our side of the lake. The waves coming onto shore are huge, they rarely get bigger then 6-8 feet, and every couple months we get 10 footers. This weekend I've spent the majority of the time either sitting at the pier, or drying out at home getting ready to go back down. The waves are big enough to not just splash over the pier, but go over it at times. I have seen huge waves crash up onto the pier and flow right over to the other side. The pier being 12-15 feet out of the water means these are some once a year waves. I'll just wrap it up to avoid this being another huge post filled with my stories. The cops did come, they rarely don't when I'm out on a shoot, I guess its not cool to be sitting out in a car for an hour butted up against the pier with a tripod set up in the car... whatever.

Here are some of my personal favoirtes from 2:00 a.m. this morning.

The 2nd one down there is what it looks like when your lense gets covered in ice and fogs up. God I love my nikon, I was getting splashed on, hailed on, and my lense and camera were litterally frozen over with ice, not a single thing has ever gone wrong with that thing.


If anyone at all reads this before Monday... I'd very much suggest going down to the lake to see the warzone that is the water, its breathtaking.

Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is out of beta and, if you are a guy/girl who loves their stats about everything, then this may be a program for you. It takes the meta data from your shots and allows you to organize it by this. This may not sound necessary, and in actuality, it probably isn't, but its fun to see that you shot 547 images with your 20mm in the last 2 months, and only 12 with your 80-200.

In addition, you can rate every image you import if you like. In the conventional 0-5 * fashion. You can then sort say... everything with 4 or more stars, and in theory sort out all the lousy, blurry, out of focus, under-exposed, shots we take (not that you or I take those kind of shots ever... just for those of us who do).

It of course has the standard: toning, filters, other basic adjustments available for use on your images. I just started using it, but I imagine it will be more of a display tool, and more functional, intuitive adobe bridge.

Our (last?) Visit to Milwaukee Fertilizer Co.

I'll start where this story ends and work my way backwards. Matt, Howie, and I were admiring the open factory floor which was lit brightly by diffused light bounced into the hole ridden factory from every angle. We were taking the factory in one last time (it was recently sold to the state to extend the adjacent park further north up the lake shore). This would be our third, and in probability, last visit to the Milwaukee Fertilizer Co. I was the first out the large garage door that faced south, to the driveway out to the dead end of Depot Road. As I walked out the door I glanced up toward the dead end and through the bushes I saw a parked Police SUV presumably waiting for us. Not more then 2 feet out the door I immediately put my hand back, getting a fist full of Howie's coat, and pushed him back in the door saying nearly under my breath "cops". Howie turned and ran toward the far end of the warehouse with me still attached. His feet slipped a few times on the floor as I pulled him back toward me and said shhh shhh no need to run, lets take it easy. We walked swiftly and quietly to the nearest form of cover, being a 6 foot tall concrete block wall half way through the open floor. We all looked at each other, being put in this situation for the second time at this location. Howie decided it was best to hide and slipped inside of a large upturned half pipe on the floor about 4 feet in diameter. Matt and I stood and raced through what options we had. I peeked very slowly around the edge of the wall toward the door every 30 seconds or so. We decided we had a few options. Get out, stay here and get hidden, or go up into the upper floors of the factory where we could keep watch out the 3rd story windows at the road, and could get very hidden, very fast. Floors full of large conveyors, 6 foot tall gears, and miscellaneous machinery will provide a hiding spot for anyone in no time flat. I decided it would be best to slide out the side door on the opposite side as the previously mentioned door, make down the side of the factory to the back, which faces the lake, and hunker down on the hillside. If nothing else, the police would find 3 of us with cameras set up on a hillside photographing the lake, not in any danger, or doing any harm, or potential harm to anything or any one. We jumped the burm next to the circle drive on the back side of the factory and found some snow free grass near a tall leafless bush. We sat down, and immediately began talking under our breath about anything on our mind, surprisingly comfortable. After about 10 minutes I decided it was time to check to see if our friend had left. I made my way to the corner of the factory and looked down the long wall to the road, only to see the vehicle still parked. I whistled to Howie, who had his head up over the burm, and gave him the thumbs down and shook my head. His head dropped and I was back on the grass within seconds. Howie took my knife and started widdling a stick he had broken from the tree. Matt asked if anyone had their telephoto with them, as to start to document the police that we keep almost getting caught by. None of us did unfortunately. After another couple minutes I checked again and no Police were in sight. This time Howie got the thumbs up and an arm wave, and up they stood. Within the minute we had all of our equipment (in all 5 cameras, 7 or 8 lenses, 2 tripods, and probably enough filters to start a small store with) and we made our way for the corner again. I asked for confirmation from the other two members of the team. They saw nothing either so we quickly put the opening between the offices and factory behind us. We were once again under the cover of a large building and were safe, as we rounded the side of the offices we decided to pick up the pace. Matt said double time boys, and we swiftly made our way to the front entrance to the factory. We made it to the sweet public road and we felt better, but not great. 3 guys fully decked out in photo gear still doesn't sit right in the mind at the end of a dead end. We made the walk to the main road (we parked the car on a residential street so as not to raise any suspicion of an out of state plate parked at a dead end with nothing but old factories surrounding it. As we finally came around the last corner and stepped on the sidewalk, the car was in view, and we all literally gave a simultaneous sigh of relief. Click click, the doors unlocked, the trunk popped, and inside we were, all laughing and giving each other fives and pats on the back. Prior to this experience we basically reversed our walk out, making our way around back to scope out the situation. We entered through the back, making our way through the conditioning rooms, the elevator room, and into the conveyor room. We worked our way slowly up to the second floor, and finally up to the third floor, which is where the large conveyor from outside dumped something onto a funnel, which drops onto four chutes at 90 degrees from one another radiating outwards into four large holes in the floor, these holes lead to very large hoppers on the 2nd floor, which presumably fed conveyors and bucket conveyors that went to different parts of the factory. After the 3 floors had been shot, we made our way to the open part of the factory, climbed the ladder to the roof, did a little careful exploring of the fans and so fourth, and then promptly reverted to where this story began, at the end.

Even if we had been caught, the trip would have been worth it. Its a slice of history that will be lost in the pile of rubble it will inevitably soon turn into.

This is what happens when large carts get found by local hooligans... Pushed into the elevator shaft. The elevator is at the bottom of this shaft, with a metal grated ceiling. It is somehow holding back this... thousands of pounds of metal and wood.

Steve McCurry has an amazing show down at the VP gallery on Buffalo in the Third Ward, it is a breathtaking show with work in it everyone should see, with no reguard as to weather or not they are a photo major, I've been down to it several times and wouldn't mind going again. Gallery night, however, was just a week ago and I havn't been down there since before it, so I am not sure if the new photographer has the main gallery space. McCurry's work is in the permenant collection, it was not a temporary exibit, so I would expect the majority of it to be there anyways. If anyone wants to go, I'd be happy to go down there again.

Forgotten Spaces

Forgotten Spaces

One of my three works in progress, I've been working on a series or three for a few months now. This one is my pride and joy.... so are my other two, but that doesn't matter. Here's a couple shots from it. What I'm going for here is finding composition, and of course beauty in forgotten spaces. I've been finding them all over Wisconsin, as well as Minnesota and every other state I'll be going to for the next few years probably. I've had a particularly large ammount of success in some of the great abandoned factories around milwaukee. Slovoy Coke and Gas, the no longer accessible Pabst Brewery, and an old fertilizer factory in Oak Creek. My series isn't just any old pealing paint urban decay series we've all seen. It's an investigation into the places that were once alive with people, machines, electricity, and energy of life.

The Boxcar Series

Boxcar Series

Shot behind the National Warehouse Company
in:
The Fifth Ward