The composition plays with the contrast between the ambitiously-sized sign and the humble, rustic old store. The photo is about shapes and scale.

This is also a bit of a nod to Grant Wood’s famous 1930 painting, American Gothic. (See https://www.artic.edu/artworks/6565/american-gothic). Wood’s painting was inspired by a grandiose, ornate attic window in an otherwise humble rural farmhouse that Wood happened upon during a road trip. The absurdly oversized, incongruously Googie-style arrow sign here reminded me of that.

Captured with a small mirrorless camera and 21mm lens, on a compact travel tripod.

This was a case where I hadn’t really planned to make formal architectural photos and so had only a small camera with me, with no shifting lens. I made do by shooting wide with the camera level and cropping, which works but costs resolution and constrains how you can organize the frame. It worked well enough here, but I always feel like I’m leaving something on the table when I don’t have the right gear with me.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] One of the benefits of being in NYC during the film era was the ready availability of high quality commercial labs - often open 24hrs - that served the commercial photography, advertising , and publishing industries. Particularly for E6 transparencies, you could get dip&dunk processing in less than an hour at any time of day for a few bucks/roll. Basically no commercial photographers, and even few fine art photographers, bothered to maintain dark rooms.

@dwallach @karlauerbach I think I genuinely miss about 20% of darkroom work, and say “good riddance” to the other 80%.

@[email protected] Early digital photography had lower resolution and more limited dynamic range. But so what? So does some film.

In the early 2000’s, there was a lot of outright hostility toward digital photography from people who felt heavily invested in film technique. It’s a relief that that silliness has by now pretty much disappeared, and now film is simply another photographic medium that you can choose to adopt (or not).

I went all digital about a year after this photo.

I love that so many creative people are going back to film today and keeping a lot of that technique from being lost (not to mention maintaining film and developer industries), but I doubt I’ll join them. I don’t buy the argument that film photography is somehow more “pure” (whatever that means), or that digital photography is “cheating” because it doesn’t require certain skills. I’m glad I have film experience, but also glad to leave it behind.

The GX680 was a fun but very unusual camera that couldn’t quite decide what it wanted to be. It’s a truly gigantic beast of a medium format SLR camera providing (limited) view camera movements. It shot 120-format roll film with a 6x8cm frame (so a 3:4 aspect ratio), with a built-in autowinder. It’s sort of what you’d get if you merged a Nikon F4, a Hasselblad, and a Crown Graphic. Definitely not a point & shoot camera.

Captured with a Fuji GX680 camera, 80mm lens, T-Max 100 film. Some tilt was applied to control focus. It was very dark in there, and focusing required the use of a flashlight.

The Pennsylvania Avenue Subway was built to provide a sub-grade freight connection between the Reading Railroad’s main line and its “City Branch”. It served the Baldwin Locomotive Works’ Callowhill plant and the Philadelphia Inquirer’s printing plant, among other Center City industries. Abandoned in the 1980’s.

@SteveBellovin @moz @Asbestos @tomjennings At the SEPTA 30th Street station in Philly, there are these black balloon-like objects hanging from the rafters of the trainshed. They have a pattern that makes them look vaguely like an abstract giant eye. Apparently that’s enough to make some birds think there’s a big predator watching and move on to friendlier real estate. I wonder if the camera has a similar effect.

The Waldorf-Astoria is perhaps New York’s most prominent monument to jazz age luxury and glamor. It’s been the traditional residence for US presidents and foreign heads of state when in town (the “presidential suite” was meant rather literally there).

Built over the below-grade railyard of Grand Central Terminal, the hotel was equipped with a private rail siding and platform where guests could park their personal railcars(!). (Andy Warhol once threw a party on the platform.)

This was captured with a DSLR and a 19mm shifting lens, from a balcony of another building.

It’s mostly an exercise in angles and symmetry. The wedge-shaped dark cloud that appeared overhead, following the lines of the buildings, created a fortuitous moment.

The Waldorf was closed for an extensive renovation shortly after this was made and has not yet fully re-opened. Many of the rooms are being converted into condo apartments.

@[email protected] Yeah, I had no idea that fossil fuels polluted.

@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] That’s presumably because the birds are over on the bird site.

@[email protected] I wish you luck in your future efforts to save yourself from the embarrassment of making completely unwarranted assumptions.

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@Asbestos @moz I find it interesting that people are reacting to my photo by getting weirdly defensive about wind farms.

The scale of these wind farms is beyond what we’re equipped to process in day-to-day human experience. They conquer the landscape in ways we can’t fully comprehend even when they’re in front of us. In a sense, they’re abstract sculptures of themselves, mostly visible in fleeting glances from interstate highways or airplane windows.

This was captured near the Tesla substation (no relation to the car company) near Altamont Pass with a DSLR and a 400mm lens, compressing the turbines in a way that made them resemble a histogram.

There’s a lot of power being generated in those hills. The was an audible hum in the air and vibrations could be felt in the ground. In some spots, the camera rebooted from induced currents.

Infrastructure like this is easy to ignore, but has an accidental beauty that I think is worth examining.

This capture made extensive use of view camera tilt movements. The depth of field is quite shallow here, so the lens was tilted forward to keep the stems and leaves in focus from the front to the back.