10/15/19

On my way out to Pennsylvania, I stopped at a place that has always intrigued me when I saw it from the highway.  This is the original Mail Pouch Tobacco Warehouse in West Virginia.  It is still operating today as a Swisher International warehouse.  This image may look like just a normal shot but I had to take it up close with just a normal wide angle lens on so it is actually 3 shots stitched together with a good amount of work behind the scenes done.  I find it funny sometimes all the work I do to a photo but you would not know just to see it without knowing the behind the scenes work.  Anyway, this is the company that those old barns had painted advertising on them that you can still find a few of today including a couple along the Pennsylvania turnpike.

9/10/19

Today starts the Palindrome days, things that read the same forwards as backwards, 9 10 19.  There are several in a row and will not happen again until Feb 02 2020.A little different post for today.  I love old train stations and I was in Salina Kansas recently and found this one.  This is the old Union Pacific Depot there and it is in need of repair but still a neat looking building.

1/17/18

I have had this image around for a while and never shared it for some reason.  G+ had a theme of Arches today and it reminded me of this image so thought I would share it here as well.  This is the main area of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis Minnesota.  It was opened in 1907 and was the first basilica in the US.  It was so ornate and beautiful inside and huge.  I visited it a while back and took several images of which this was one and is an HDR image to bring out the detail.

10/18/17

This is an image of Topeka, Kansas that I shot one evening while at my work conference.  The window at the hotel I was staying at actually opened and fairly wide too.  My room was on the 7th floor and this was the view I had to the north.  To the east it was great for watching the full moon rise which will appear in a photo soon.  😉

9/23/17

I took this image back in June after an evening out at Konza Prairie.  This is the stone barn at sunset that has been restored and converted into meeting areas.  Some of the barn features and woodwork and stone was kept in the interior restoration and it is quite beautiful inside as well as out.

5/8/17

Is summer here already, it's quite warm out today with mid 80s already.  Stressing out my new plants with this kind of heat.  My image today makes me cooler looking at all the water.  😅  This is an older image taken during a visit to Chicago, my favorite city.  I took this from up in the John Hancock building and it is looking out towards Navy Pier and Lake Michigan.  If you view large I believe you can see the state of Michigan way off in the distance.

4/25/17

In Wamego Kansas where they have the Tulip Festival every year they also have an old Dutch Mill.  I was looking for my info on it and noticed that the Redbud trees that are in my previous images of it are now gone.  I wonder why they removed them.  Anyway, this is a 3 shot vertical panorama done with my 70mm lens.  A Mill in Kansas with Tulips is a rather unique sight I think but made for a lovely one.

1/21/17

I am working on a project for Google Maps so I have been looking at older images of places I have been.  I found this image of one of my favorite places to photograph in Chicago, the old Water Tower.  I just love the character of this building.  I took this image at night in the rain but I think it turned out pretty well.  It always reminded me a bit of a castle.

11/26/16

I was going through the archives a couple weeks ago and came across some photos I never shared and like a lot.  This is from a trip to Chicago I took a while back for work.  Chicago is my favorite city, I've spent a good amount of time there over the years.  I love the architecture, there is so much to do and it's an easy city to get around in.  One afternoon after work was done I went walking and went up in the Sears Tower, I refuse to call it by it's other name,  :-) and was treated to some great views of the city.  This is one looking towards a couple of other well known things, the Hancock building and Lake Michigan.  The black dot is not dirt, it is a buoy in the lake.  :-)

8/2/16

While we were in Michigan we went into Detroit one evening for dinner.  I had always seen on TV how decayed and supposedly dying Detroit was.  That is not what I experienced at all.  It probably has some decay in certain areas, all cities do, but downtown Detroit is beautiful with old architecture that is quite interesting and art deco and then in contrast some new style that looks rather futuristic.  I liked very much how this shot of the GMC tower with the MGM Grand as a sliver on the left turned out so that's why I am sharing it today.  The processing I did gave it even more of a futuristic appearance I thought.  I wish I had more time to spend in Detroit, it seemed quite the interesting city.

3/3/16

I am so disappointed that we couldn't even get a drop of rain.  It's bad enough we can't get snow but sucks that no rain either.  I'm just feeling blah and uninspired as well and too darn busy everywhere.  My mood is putting me in a monochrome type of mood I think.  I do love this image though.  I took this in West Virginia in Babcock State Park of the Glade Creek Grist Mill.  I thought this view of it worked quite well in B&W.  It's a very picturesque place.

1/23/16

Well, our 5 to 6 inches of snow is nothing compared to what they are getting out east.  My dad in Pennsylvania has a foot already and still coming down at 1 to 3 inches an hour!  Yikes.  I am glad we don't get snows like that.  We are just cold and dreary today with our bit of snow on the ground.  Today's image comes from a tip out to PA and an outing to view covered bridges in the central part of the state.  A large number of them have been kept up and restored and painted but this one, the Mount Pleasant, was very worn and faded looking so I decided to turn it into a monochrome image that I thought worked fairly well.  I gave it a sepia tone as well.

12/31/15

Well, here we are at the last day of 2015, Happy New Year's Eve!  Let's hope next year is better than this one has been at times.  Especially the way it ended with all the stress.  At least we are ending it on a sunny day.  I have been rather uninspired to shoot photos lately except of birds and some of those have not been my best shots.  :-)  I have been looking at old albums and reworking some images and this is one of them.  This is Waggoners Bridge that I shot in Pennsylvania a few years back when on an outing to shoot covered bridges with my brother.  This one is privately owned and one of the more picturesque that I shot that day with the waterfall in the background that can be viewed underneath it.

11/25/15

Well, looks like our last nice day for a while.  I need to get out and do some things.  Anyway, today's image is one I went 16 miles out of my way to see in Lincoln County, Kansas, west of here.  It's a historic double arch limestone bridge that was built in 1908.  This is a 2 shot panoramic image of it.  It spans the south fork of Spillman Creek which was dry on the day I was there in October.  When it was built they used wooden arches to support the rocks until the final Key Rock, the uppermost center one in each arch, was set in place.  It originally had stone banisters on each side but they were removed to widen the bridge.  In 1946 it was part of a state highway.  In 1993 it saw it's last use when the highway was moved a bit to the west to straighten out some sharp curves in the road.  I liked the textures and color the limestone has taken on, not typical and made me wonder if it had been coated with something.

7/3/15

I'm writing this early because I won't be able to be on the computer much at all if any today.  This image is the color version of the one I took for my Black and White Project.  The theme this week was Architecture.  This building demonstrates some interesting textures and shapes that were in use in the late 1800s.  While Limestone was the predominate material due to it's availability and proximity, brick was used in some early buildings and was much more expensive.  The B&W version can be seen in the About Me link to the right of this Blog on my Google Plus page if interested.

I was able to get this off the application for Historic Registration for this building.

 History: Bertrand Rockwell, a civil war veteran began his dry goods/grocery business in Junction City in 1865 in a one story frame building. He later built a two-story building on this site which was destroyed by fire in 1888. Rockwell immediately rebuilt after the fire. The existing building was completed in 1889. Holmgren & O'berg did the stonework, the stone being quarried west of the city; William Lawrence was the carpenter and Say & Hughes were responsible for the brick work. The building was remodeled in 1909. The Rockwell Store was a prominent business in downtown Junction throughout the early years; the store closed in 1925. This location was later occupied by Woolworths, the Scott Store, Duckwalls and Sjoholm Furniture. Duckwalls opened in this location in 1954; at that time the building had a modern slipcover over the facade. The original facade was restored by Dr. Ned Price in 1986. The building is now occupied by Rent-A-Center.

1/24/15

This is a view of  Kansas City that I got one morning a few weeks ago as we were headed in from the north to visit the art museum and do some shopping.  I liked the color the sky had that morning due to the cloud cover and I liked that I captured some birds in the sky as well.  I was not driving while this photo was taken, in fact, I was in the back seat.  :-)

11/25/14

I decided to try another split tone and I liked how it turned out so I am sharing it here as well.  i thought the process lent itself well to this type of image.  This is the Columbia-Wrightsville bridge in Pennsylvania.  This is the longest multiple arch concrete bridge in the world, 6,657 feet including the spans over land.  This was a split of red and yellow on a B&W image giving it the sepia look.

11/11/14

I took this photo quite a while back in Minneapolis, MN on a trip there for work.  I had never shared the image but when I was invited to do this Split Tone Challenge, this bridge came to mind as I had seen other architectural type images that worked well.  This, of course is the color version but you can see the other at the link in the About Me on the right.  This bridge is in a park where Minnehaha waterfall is located.

10/9/14

I'm doing a B&W 5 day project over on Google+ .   My photo for today was this one and I thought I would share the color version here.  If you are curious what it looks like in B&W you can just click the link on the Right Hand side in the About Me section and visit my G+ page.  This is an 1880s stone house on our property that has quite a lot of character.  i do need to trim brush though before it's totally overgrown.  :-)

8/19/14

This is a shot of the Dutch Mill in Wamego, KS that I took this spring but never shared.  The Red Bud trees were blooming like crazy at the time even though the tulips were not due to the late spring we had this year.