MOSTLY M.A.M. IN BLACK & WHITE

Last weekend I found myself wandering around urban Milwaukee looking for photo opportunities.  I wound up taking a number of shots of one of the iconic venues, the Milwaukee Art Museum, but also took a few keepers other than the museum.

In shooting the museum my concern was to take unorthodox shots--something new--but that's not exactly how it started.

I did want to include the other photographer in the scene, if only to provide some perspective.  Having said that, the shot is unorthodox in the sense that it is cropped to exclude the peak of the brise soleil.  That may or may not be a good thing.

Here are some other shots more or less in order of decreasing orthodoxy.

If one was not familiar with the general design of the museum, it might be difficult to figure out how these semi-abstracts relate to the overall design.  Sort of like the story of several blind men trying to understand an elephant by each only touching a different portion.  I thought turning these shots into black & whites helped to bring out the lines of the structure's abstract design.

As indicated, I did keep a few other shots that I took, including the following.

This railroad track shot didn't really work.

I think there were a couple of problems here.  First, the light was pretty flat.  An early morning shot might have helped.  And second, I could have used a lot more tracks or tracks that were curving more.  In truth, I was uncomfortable because I probably should not have been standing on these operating tracks in the first place.  I also assumed that there were surveillance cameras around and it would have been only a matter of time before someone came to chase me off--or worse.

This next shot is of the Discovery World building, situated to the south of the Art Museum.

Not a great shot, but I liked the lines including the dark diagonal.

Finally, is a shot of more less random commercial downtown buildings, this one in color.

There were two things about this shot that attracted my eye.  First was the fact that the shot incorporates parts of no less than five buildings at different distances, plus a reflection of a sixth building.  Second was the quality of the light being reflected off the white building.  I wanted to position that building so that it was the focal point of the shot.  The other buildings serve to draw the eye to that building.

John