A month ago I lead a Phase One PODAS workshop to San Miguel Mexico. We had a blast and photographed a lot differently than we do at usual PODAS workshops. We did a lot of medium format street photography. This is an image I found in an alley that was also an above ground burial vault area. It was so very pretty and I could resist shooting and sharing this shot.
I had a little fun last night. Couldn’t sleep so I selected a shot I had on my iPad and played around with it. I liked the effect and so here it is. I am not usually an effect kind of guy, but sometimes one must play.
If you are a regular follower of this blog you will know one of my favorite things to photograph is rust and decay. This past Sunday I was out on a photo adventure and ended up in Bedford, IN. Interesting and typical small Indiana town. Not being satisfied with just Main Street I drove down a side road that eventually took us to an industrial part of town. It was very surreal. Big old gas tanks with rust and peeling paint, junk yards, abandoned factories. All very strange and somewhat scary. Today’s shot was made of close ups of peeling paint on these giant fast tanks. I love the rust color and how the paint is curling as it peels off. I shot hundreds of these and they are all kind of beautiful in their own way.
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.
This has been an incredible week with the PODAS workshop. I head home today only to leave on Wednesday for Scotland. I tend to move around a lot. One of the things that is fun to do is shoot what we photographers term street photography and San Miguel is perfect for this. So much going on. This shot was made near the ATM machine of a woman who is obviously begging. You see this a lot in Mexico. Sad. I composed quickly got a few shots off and then made sure to give her some Pesos. The power is the face, and out reached hand. More images will be coning from this trip as I have time to work on them.
Kind of hard to blog when I am running a PODAS Photography workshop. I am leading a group of Phase One users on a PODAS workshop in San Miguel Mexico. We are having a great time with intensive photography excursions broken up with time for sharing, laughing and enjoying our passion of photography. Visit the PODAS blog to follow everything that we do on this workshop. I’ll do my best to add entries when I can. Todays image is a doorway of a church outside of San Miguel.
I am leaving today for a week in beautiful SanMiguel Mexico. I’ll be blogging from there the rest of the week and also posting on my other blog the PODAS Workshop Blog. SanMiguel is just a lovely place and so is the surrounding countryside. Expect to see photos of people, street scenes and landscapes. I’ll be leading a groups of Phase One camera owners on this trip. Instructors will be Michael Reichmann and Mark Dubovoy. Visit the blog and see all the action.
Every now and then I like to post something a bit strange. On a recent trip returning from Alabama we stopped at an old junk store at an exit in Kentucky with a big dinosaur. In this junk store were some very stance things. Creepy things. This was one of them. Ugly dolls behind plastic. If I was a movie script writer I could think of a bunch of horror type movies that could be inspired by these. This shot is one of the old man doll. Tomorrow I think I’ll go back to posting pretty landscapes.
I love shooting in the city. Any city will do. What’s fun is that it is a dynamic environment. Weather, wind, light, people are always changing it. I am like a hunter as I am always looking up and down and behind me. I can see people I want to shoot or a building. I love coming bak and editing images. This image is one I like because it is of steel or maybe even old iron and it shows the city in the background. Kind of symbolizes the whole thing. The shot has a strong vertical and it balances the buildings in the background.
I love London, but I love copenhagen, Barcelona and many more cities also. This shot was made in a small place where there are these array of small fountains. I played here for a while trying slow shutter speeds, longer lenses etc until I came up with this shot which I really like. So today here is LOndon Bridge and fountains.