I mentioned in my post about Toronto how the different transit systems look and feel, even when capturing them in a similar way. Here are four shots of the Toronto, Paris and Washington DC subways. All four are behaving similarly – long handheld exposures as the trains pull in to the station, yet all four look and feel quite different.
Every year at the end of June/beginning of July the Smithsonian Institute puts on the Folklife Festival down on the National Mall. They bring in craftspeople from various cultures around the globe to demonstrate ways of life in those cultures, from farming and fishing to music and dance. This year China and Kenya were the countries represented. I went down on the 4th of July this year to take a look and see what was on display.
You could see this pavilion on the mall from 14th Street every day driving by. I wondered what it was all about and had to stop and see it close up. The building is built like a traditional Chinese city gate, but made of a bamboo frame and covered in paper. I never did see what the Zuni Icosahedron thing on the front of the gate meant.
Sometimes it’s just the simple things that attract your attention. This banner flapping in the wind made such a bold graphic statement with its geometry contrasting with the organic cloud forms.
Here are the bamboo wind chimes that filled the structure of the paper gate. One thing that amazed me was how fast they were able to disassemble the gate structure – it was literally up one day, gone the next. You can take that as a commentary on the ephemeral nature of existence if you like.
In the Kenyan area of the festival, they had this traditional fishing boat on display, and Kenyan craftsmen were working on rebuilding it. Not visible here but in the stern were areas that had obviously seen significant wear and tear.
And finally, as part of the Chinese installation, was this figure. I’m calling him Bao’s Big Boy as he looks like a Chinese Bob’s, or perhaps the love child of Bob’s Big Boy and Astroboy if they were to have a relationship. Toss in a dose of Young Pioneer and you’ve nailed it.
On the way up to Toronto, we stopped off at Niagara Falls to take in the view.
This is the Rainbow Bridge over the Niagara River, as seen from the observation deck on the American side.
The “we” is my best friend Steve, his wife Missy, and her sister Marybeth.
Missy had never been to Niagara before so it was a must-stop. I think Steve and Missy are going to come back for a long weekend when they’re by themselves and not rushed to just enjoy the place.
The shots are a little gray looking because we were severely backlit – we were at the falls around 2:30 PM and the sun was still very high in the sky, and the falls were west/southwest of where we were standing. Can’t change geography, so we just had to compensate for what we had to work with. Next time if we want photos with the falls as a backdrop, either I’ll bring a flash for fill or we’ll just take them in the morning when the sun is coming from the east.
All images once again care of my trusty Rolleiflex 2.8E on Ilford FP4+.
A long time ago, I saw this interesting little gadget sitting in the used equipment case at my local camera store. It was a panorama adapter for Rolleiflex cameras that enabled you to shoot up to a 360-degree panorama on a single roll. It has a built-in bubble level (which is absolutely critical). You put the camera on top, then focus and compose as normal. Once you have the focus and exposure set, you don’t change them (this is also critical). Take the first exposure, then push in the little locking lever, rotate the camera to the next increment on the dial, and take the next picture, and so on until you have shot as many frames as you want to shoot. It is critical to maintain focus and exposure as set on the original frame because changing focus will mean that things in one frame will not be in exactly the same proportion as they were in the previous frame,therefore they will not blend seamlessly. Ditto for exposure – if you change the exposure from frame to frame, ESPECIALLY if you are shooting color film, you’ll never be able to match the frames.
Done right, you get this:
It isn’t perfect because with the long exposures (45-90 seconds each – I forget which I used, but as you can see they’re all exactly the same) traffic patterns don’t flow through the underpass during all three exposures, and the lens flare from the street light in the middle picture doesn’t carry over to the same degree in the left picture, thanks to the lens hood. But you have to look at it to see the three frames separately.
If things aren’t perfect, then you end up with:
While the alignment is pretty close, the color is off a bit on each frame. This took quite a bit of Photoshoppery to get it to match as well as it does. I kind of expected this outcome when trying this shot because I knew the traffic patterns wouldn’t line up from frame to frame, and wanted to see how it would turn out. I think it worked well enough as an effect, but I’m on the fence as to whether I’d try it again.
If you don’t have everything perfectly level, you get:
Also lots of Photoshoppery went into getting the colors and density to match from frame to frame. This one has been rotated and cropped to get it MORE level, but you can see between the oval of the fountain and the overall tilt, it wasn’t level and square enough.
And last but not least, another experiment with disjointed traffic flow around Dupont Circle.
Another part of this experiment was to see how Kodak Ektar 100 does with long night exposures. My previous (and still) favorite for night photos is Portra 160. While Ektar hasn’t dethroned Portra for this purpose, it proves it can stand on its own and I don’t need to carry multiple emulsions with me when I travel to cover every scenario. I can bring a few rolls of Portra 800 for when I need to shoot hand-held in low light, and the Ektar 100 for everything else.
I was up to New York twice in the span of two weeks and brought along the Rolleiflex both times. I only got to put a roll through each time (I was rather time delimited in both trips, and was not there to photograph but to attend specific functions). Here are some of the shots I took:
This was a store window in Rockefeller Plaza, facing 5th Avenue. The Cole-Haan store had done up a display made of their driving loafers in the shape of a classic Jaguar E-Type (one of my favorite vintage sports cars).
The Financial Times building – love the clouds behind it, backlit in the morning sun.
A pair of female torsos by Jim Dine at 6th Avenue and 52nd Street. Please ignore the file name – I got it completely wrong when saving the file before looking it up.
The cast-iron facade of a late 19th Century building on lower Broadway, as seen from the fourth floor window at ABC Carpet & Home. If you’re not familiar with ABC Carpet & Home, it’s a gigantic interior decor store, with four floors of everything from linens and fashion and furniture, from antiques to ultra-modern to Asian-inspired. Not for the faint of wallet – even little decorative tchotchkes are $30. But it’s a cool place to browse for inspiration.
In the lighting department at ABC Carpet & Home.
I’m not feeling particularly motivated to crank out my usual essay on the images I post, so today’s post will be more of a no-words posting, other than to say all images come from a wander up and down 14th Street back in early December.
I’ve probably talked about this before – I have a genealogical as well as spiritual connection to the National Portrait Gallery. An ancestor of mine, Senator John Ruggles of Maine was a big fan of all things patent related. During his tenure as a senator (1830-36), he realized that the US Patent Office was in horrible disarray. They were housed in an old building in poor condition, and as such it was a terrible disservice to patent seekers, patent holders, and the nation as a whole – if it was hard to get or defend a patent, innovators would leave the country and take their industries elsewhere. As a result, he managed to wrestle a patent office reform and the allocation of funds to build a new, fireproof, patent office building out of congress. The building now occupied by the National Portrait Gallery and the American Art Museum is that building. During the civil war, it functioned as a barracks and a hospital, and in 1865 it housed Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural ball.
The building was built not only as a warehouse and government office, but from the first it was open to the public as an exhibition space to come see the patent models submitted with patent applications. As such, it makes for a fantastic museum, complete with dramatic display spaces to showcase some sometimes rather large pieces of art. This niche is a perfect example – all it took was some velvet curtains and matching settee.
It has several of the most exquisite and dramatic staircases in the city, in my opinion. The following photos are of the main stairs that run from the F Street entrance up to the grand gallery on the third and fourth floors. There is another staircase that I can’t do justice to with the Rollei because it requires a wide-angle lens to show the sweep of the bannister and the giant mural of General Grant and his generals that spans the curved wall behind the stairs.
The brass and wood balustrade sweeps around in dramatic fashion. Wouldn’t you love to have a staircase like this in your house?
This chandelier is on the second floor landing. The window behind looks out into the courtyard of the dual museums. A few years ago, the courtyard was roofed over with a roof designed by Norman Foster. I was initially opposed to the concept of roofing the courtyard, removing the garden and paving the space with dark gray pavers. However, with time, I’ve come to love the space. They did keep some greenery, and made the space useable 365 days a year.
The chandelier is vintage mid-19th century gas adapted to electricity. It’s always a challenge to balance updating and modernization with historical preservation. I think they did an overall outstanding job with this building, and I’m thrilled to see it maintaining relevance and utility into the 21st century.
… but this time in color. I caught the sunrise reflecting on the windows of the houses at the top of my alley, and tinting the sky.
That inspired me to set back up at twilight and take this version, with the sky gone deep blue but not yet black.
Just so you know, to take these photos I had to set up my tripod in the bathtub and then stand on the rim of the bathtub to be able to compose these shots. The things I do for my readers 😀
Nemours was the home of Mr. Alfred I. Dupont, one of the wealthiest men in America in the early 20th century. When stripped of his directorship at Dupont, he sought out new business opportunities including investing in Florida real estate. Spending a significant amount of time in Florida, he needed a car, and kept this Buick rumble-seat coupe at his property there. The car, unlike the others garaged at Nemours, is in original, survivor condition, complete with faded paint and dulled chrome. What makes it all the more remarkable is that the car survives without major damage (or blood on the bumpers!) as Mr. Dupont was by the time he owned the car deaf in both ears and blind in one eye.
His third wife, the true love of his life, outlived him by nearly 40 years. Her last car was this 1960 Rolls Royce Phantom V. According to the docents, this Phantom V is the #2 production car of that year, with #1 being in possession of Her Royal Britannic Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II.
This headlamp belongs to the second Rolls Royce in the Dupont stable, a 1950 model if memory serves.
From the A.I. Dupont estate, Nemours, outside Wilmington, Delaware. A.I. Dupont, director of the Dupont chemical company, built the house as a gift to his second wife in an attempt to grow her affections for him. The 40,000 square foot house was built in 18 months. The interior features an elevator that runs from the basement to the third floor, a billiard room, bowling alley, an ice factory (the house was built before electric refrigeration, so they needed to be able to produce their own ice to keep the ice boxes cold), and a central vacuum system. The laundry was put in a separate building perhaps 30 yards from the main house so they could say they sent their laundry out.
This is a view down the lawn from the mansion front, looking to the colonnade (which crowns a massive fountain on the other side). The garden urns have been prepared for winter with their canvas covers and their fountains drained. Even today, the estate totals some 300 acres, down from the original 3000.
I was at Nemours between Christmas and New Years to see it for the last open weekend of the year (it closes at New Years and re-opens in May). The house interior is decorated as the Duponts would have decorated for the holidays. No photos of the interior are allowed, so I do not have any pictures from inside the house. Photography on the grounds is acceptable, however, so I took these pictures of some of the details outside. In the spring, when garden tours are offered, I’ll have to go back and shoot the gardens in greater detail.
Here is a sphinx, one of a matched pair, guarding the front porch of the house. I loved the way her white marble glowed in the late afternoon winter sun.
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