A few weeks ago I enjoyed one of my outing with companion photographer Debra. We try once a month to take a Sunday and go somewhere and just shoot pictures of what we find. We come across abandoned buildings, funky stores and all sorts of other interesting things. This shot was in a very cool antique store in a town we never heard of. They had all sorts of cool stuff in a eerie of stores. We spent nearly two hours there shooting. I have published a shot previously of a bank safe hinge shot in one of the stores. This is a cool scooter type bike on a shelf. I have a bunch more you’ll see soon.
It’s fun sometimes to make photographs and have people guess what it is of. This weekend I created a few of those and I will present thins this week. Today’s image was made yesterday on one go my Sunday photo adventures. Simply it’s get in the car head in a direction and see what you find. And, we found all sorts of cool stuff. When I saw this image I had to shot it. Being a rust guy I was all over it. This is the back of one of those old chairs you’d put in your backyard. As the paint peeled new rust formed and then rusted more paint off. You can see the lines where all this happened. However this could also be an aerial shot of a muddy river. Hmmmm….fun isn’t it?
This is a weird place. My friend Debra and I were out for an afternoon of Sunday shooting and came upon this scary place in Bedford, IN. Actually the whole town was kind of creepy. But, I saw rust and peeling paint so we had to explore and take photos. we got good ones here – close-ups of peeling paint and rust. I also found a number of other places in town that were great and scary. The smell of gas here, the rusted takes, the rotting hoses all gave this place an apocalyptic feel. I took the image into a few apps and enhanced that feeling even more. Wonder what happens when a place like this prongs a leak. The ground was oil soaked and smell of gasoline was everywhere.
Every now and then it is fun to go out and shoot on a Sunday. I set out with my photo buddy and friend Debra and set a target of Spring Mill State park. Never one to take the direct route I decided we would travel through some small Indiana towns. We visited a few towns but in Bedford, IN we made a right turn and just started driving and came into the industrial area of the town. Kind of creep and as I post more images you’ll see why. I could do a whole photo story on this town. We started out photographing rusty gas tanks, then rotting doors, then we stumbled upon this gigantic junkyard and it looked very apocalyptic. There were old cards, machines, and thousand of old military howitzer rounds. Then we found giant abandoned factories and some very different neighborhoods. In one neighborhood as we crossed the tracks we see this pickup just sitting in the grass, an old swing set and a sign next to the railroad tracks. Behind us was a house with kids toys all over that sat only six feet from the tracks. I shot an image above with the signs, truck and swing and then decided to enhance it a bit to give more the feel for what I was seeing there. I’ll be working on more images this week.
Last summer on an evening with not much to do my friend and shooting partner set out to find a picture. I knew of a gravel pit as they are called here and we went to shoot there. The sky was changing rapidly with an approaching storm and things just fell into place. We got lots of good images. I worked this one on the ipad doing bunch of stuff to it. Kind of looks like it survived a nuclear attack. Sometimes you can find old things and just have fun taking pictures of them.
This image was shot yesterday. The building is the Carmel (indiana) Perform Arts Center or Palladium as it is known. It’s a big new building that is quite nice and very expensive. None the less I have fun shooting it. On the way back from the store I pulled in and did a quick pano with my iPhone. Assembled it and like magic with PhotoStream it was on my iPad. I then worked the image a bit in a couple of apps to come up with this. Just a fun day and a bit of fun time messing around.
I am still recovering from the rotator cuff injury and the most frustrating thing is I can’t lift a camera. I am going out for a drive today to shoot and I will use my iPhone. The picture above was shot with an iPhone and then jazzed up a bit on my iPad. It’s of a statue ( community art) in my town Carmel, IN. It’s just a fun shot showing how with cropping and some playing with camera angle you can come up with an unusual shot.
The other night after experiencing some dramatic storms the skies began to clear and just turn wonderful colors and they were so dramatic. My friend Debra grabbed me and we drove the block it takes to get to the Performing Arts Center. I jumped out of the car and began shooting away. I had grabbed my GH3 and shot in HDR mode – 5 exposures per shot. This technique allows my camera to shot over exposures opening up shadows and underexposures allowing highlights to be recorded. I then bring my images into Capture One and do perspective control (straightening lines on building so they don’t or do distort). Then I process he images to tiff format and run them through PhotoMatix combing all the exposures into one image. Then I took the image into photoshop and run them through a series of other programs. In this case I used a plug in called Topaz Adjust. So here is my artistic version of PAC at a dramatic sunset. I have more so look for them soon. Also, finished up some dramatic Moab B&W Images. Stay tuned.
