BACK TO MACRO

In reviewing the kinds of photography I have been doing lately, I have noted that macro has not been a major part of it.  Instead, I have been shooting primarily art and architecture and some landscape.  I'm not sure why I have been neglecting macro, though patience (or lack thereof) may have something to do with it.  Macro in the "wild" is difficult unless the conditions are very good, which means proper lighting and little to no wind.  This is not a problem at the Mitchell Domes, so that has been where I have been doing most macro work.  Unfortunately, I have been there so often that I have a difficult time finding new possibilities.  Even so, I returned to the Domes earlier this week, determined to capture something new. And I guess I did.

A lot of the visitors to the Domes are there with their cameras doing the same thing as me, although I am generally the only one armed with a tripod.  In part, that is because macro often demands very narrow apertures, requiring long exposure times, and in part it is because I simply don't have a very steady hand.  Most of the other camera-carrying visitors are attracted primarily to the floral displays.  And I too found some, as in the following.

This was a real surprise, actually.  I had observed that this plant had abundant light leaves with pink margins, and then I noticed the very bright yellow blossom, which seemed so out of character with the leaves.  There was quite a bit of "junk" in the background and this was about the best I could do with the arrangement that I had to deal with.

Here is another "flower."

This erstwhile bud was actually quite small, perhaps 1/2 inch across, but I was attracted to the bit of water that the flower was holding.  I also liked that the background was relatively uncluttered and dark, helping to highlight the subject.  This was shot with an aperture of f/36 with an exposure of 2.5 seconds.

I was attracted to the following flower, not because of its intrinsic beauty but because it was set in a bed of plants that appear to have no botanical relation to it but that formed an interesting contrasting background.

And I think the following is a flower, though this is not really a macro shot, as the flower is quite large and was perhaps 5-6 feet from the camera.

I did like how the portion hanging to the left was being backlit by the sun streaming through the tropical dome.

The floral displays cry out the loudest for photography, but because of my penchant for abstracts, I am usually more attracted to leaf patterns.  These first two I confess to having shot before, but there they still were.

The following I think is new.  What caught my eye was the strong contrast between the various colors that the leaf featured.

The plant that has come to be my favorite is, I found out, called the peacock plant.  The leaves on this plant are actually quite large, perhaps 10 inches long and 5 inches wide.  That makes the photography easier, I suppose.  But the downside is that the plant is very low to the ground and the leaves seem to get "beaten up" easily.

Again, I have shot this plant a number of times in the past, but I still love it.

The following aren't macro shots, but I liked the overall compositions, particularly of the elephant ear leaves in the first photo.  These leaves truly were elephantine at 2-3 feet across.

I was attracted by the following leaf not so much by the its pattern as by the rips that had occurred.  This was actually a dead leaf that had fallen off a large overhead plant, and I took the opportunity to move it to a more convenient position for photographing, making sure I placed the tears over a dark spot to accentuate them more.

Finally, here is a shot of a vine that was hanging in an open area, making it fairly easy to eliminate background distractions.

Hopefully my next stop will be some macro in the "wild."

John

SENTINEL

Mequon, Wisconsin, the city where we live, is the fourth largest city in Wisconsin by geographical area but has a population of only about 20,000 people.  Our immediate neighborhood is fairly densely populated, but just a couple of miles north of our place it is basically all woods and farm fields.  One of the fields that I routinely pass consists basically of perhaps 40 acres of open land, save one mature and stately oak sitting basically in the center of the field.  There is a line of trees and shrubs at the far west edge of the land, perhaps a quarter mile from the road and a few hundred feet behind the oak.  I have been eyeing the oak for some time as a potential subject for a photo, but I have thought that the line of trees behind it would detract from the shot.  Although the land is fairly flat, there is some undulation, and I thought that if I positioned my camera on an upslope and low to the ground, I could eliminate the line of trees behind the oak, in effect treating it as a lone sentinel.

The other morning was a bit foggy and I felt that might aid my efforts.  So out I went, armed with my camera and tripod.  Here is one of the shots I got by placing the camera maybe 18 inches off the ground and on one of the upslopes leading to the tree.

Disappointing, really.  Here the tops of the trees in the background are still showing, detracting, I think, from the effect I was looking for.  Setting the aperture at a narrow f/16, I tried to bring the foreground plants into the composition.  But frankly, they just aren't very interesting and don't provide any sort of focal point.

Here is another shot I took, in portrait format, in which I succeeded in eliminating the background trees.

Again, I had attempted to bring the foreground plants into the shot as a point of interest, but there just wasn't anything there to work with.  As a consequence, the shot is just too simple.

So then I decided to step back and essentially accept the line of background trees, and frankly the results were quite a bit better, I thought.  Here are a couple of those shots, taken in portrait and landscape.

I had noticed some dark swales running through the foreground and felt that they might provide the point of interest that I was looking for.  To the extent these shots work I think it is because of those swales.  Although the modest amount of fog created a bit of separation between the oak and the trees in the background, more fog would have helped.

By the way, when I had initially arrived at the site, there were a number of turkeys cavorting in the field near the oak.  They all decamped as soon as I got out of my car.  And it turns out that the small brownish patch that appears under the right side of the oak's canopy in the above shots is actually a turkey blind, complete with decoys and chairs for the hunters.

So here perhaps is the lesson that I took away from this.  In composing landscape shots, foreground can be just as important, perhaps more important, than background, and even though the primary subject may be in the background, it is important to establish a point of focus in the foreground to provide context and depth.

MILWAUKEE ART MUSEUM: A BIT OF ART

The Milwaukee Art Museum is more than an architectural masterpiece; it is actually an art museum.  So when I took advantage of the monthly free admission day, I took some photos not just of the architectural detail (see my prior post) but also of the museum's art collection.  Here again, I tried to focus on atypical artwork (or parts of artwork).  So here goes.

First is a black & white of a sculpture that is either newish or that I had missed on prior visits.

She looks awfully young, and he looks like someone not to be trusted.  There is clearly only one thing on his mind.

And here is another sculpture of a reclining female.

Generally, I had to ramp up the ISO to get fairly steady shots for my handheld camera.  This was taken at an ISO of 400 for 1/60 second.

And here is another painting that I had not noticed before.

The painting itself was not very large, perhaps a foot square.  And I admit that I was attracted to it primarily because of its flashy purple frame, not the actual painting.  However, in post processing I noticed that the art itself was really quite interesting, as shown in the following detail.

I really like the stylized lines.  Observe, for example, the figure's hands.  Next time I will make a point of coming back to this.

I particularly liked the following representation of a young girl's face in one of the larger paintings.

A little more representational than the following folk art pieces.

Frankly, it looks like the artist of the above piece got one of the subject's eyes upside down.  But I  confess that I like it that way.

And then there was this.

Batman and Robin?  I really need to pay more attention to descriptions of what the artists were trying to portray.

Finally, in the main lobby of the Calatrava addition there was a neon sculpture.  I played around with the image in post processing, finally deciding to show it as underexposed to eliminate some of the distractions that would remain in a normally exposed image.

John

CALATRAVA: INTERIOR DETAIL

The Milwaukee Art Museum offers free admission on the first Thursday of each month, and I took advantage in June to take a few photos.  I have shot the museum a number of times, so this time I tried to concentrate on getting some more unusual shots of architectural detail.

I started in the underground parking garage, which carries Calatrava's distinctive architectural style over into structural details, as illustrated in the following shot.

And here is a shot of the garage wall that I liked for its clean lines and turned into a black & white.

I also took a shot of the stairway leading up from the garage to the museum's atrium.

Again, I liked the clean but interesting lines that the stairwell features.

In addition to its stunning atrium, the Calatrava addition features two long gallerias that also include distinctive architectural detail.  Here is a shot of the east galleria.

Because the surfaces are colored a light cream, capturing the lines of the support struts and recessed lighting is something of a challenge.  In the above shot I darkened the exposure and increased the contrast somewhat to bring out the complex curved lines.  It was evening and the lighting consisted of a mixture of natural evening light and interior artificial light, some incandescent and some florescent.  As a result, even though the surfaces were light cream, the appearance of the photo shows a variation of color from peach to light blue.

Here is another photo, this time from the west galleria, that shows the same color mixture.

And here is a third shot of a recessed lighting alcove that features the same coloration.

OK, so I have done this one before, but I do like the clean abstract lines.

The east galleria was somewhat cluttered with signs--and people--but the west galleria, which I visited toward the end of my visit, was pretty much empty, except for a series of decals of people that had been placed on the structural supports.

I liked that the light from the windows at the far end of the galleria was being reflected on the galleria floor.  I assume that the series of decals is a temporary feature.

In the following shot from the art gallery area I liked how the walls lead the eye to the group of small pieces of art on the far wall in the image.

And finally, purely for its interest as an abstract, here is a novelty shot of reflections in the glass of one of the museum's entrance doors.

If nothing else, at least I can say that this is not a typical collection of Calatrava shots.

John

BAHA'I HOUSE OF WORSHIP

The Baha'i House of Worship, located in Wilmette, Illinois, is absolutely spectacular.  It is included in the National Registry of Historic Places and has been named one of the Seven Wonders of Illinois, whatever that might mean.  I was last there some 45 years ago and decided to pay another visit this week, along with my wife, to take a few photos.

Completed in 1953 after more than 30 years of construction, the nine-sided structure is 135 feet high and 90 feet in diameter, but frankly it looks much larger from the outside.  It sits one street off of Lake Michigan on beautifully landscaped and impeccably maintained grounds.

Monday, June 3, was cool with brilliant sunshine, and we arrived at the temple a little before 10 am.  Here is a shot of the temple taken from the main entrance on the southeast side with the sun directly behind me.

The temple is constructed of concrete containing an aggregate of clear and white quartz chips of a uniform size.  Once the concrete components were created and in place, the exposed surfaces were "washed" with an acid solution to remove the smooth cement surface, revealing the rougher quartz aggregate texture underneath.  The effect is striking, creating a brilliant white appearance.  In fact, the temple actually appeared much brighter and whiter than this photograph indicates.  But when I tried to brighten things up, the temple began to look "washed out."  In the end, I left the exposure level more or less where it was to capture the exterior's rich textures and design.

Although the temple is spectacular, I wasn't sure how best to capture that spectacle from ground level.  (A lot of the more impressive photos of the temple are taken from elevated locations, primarily from the air.)  I finally decided the best I could do was to focus on some of the building's symmetries and detail.  Here are a few of those shots.

These shots provide some feel, I think, for the building's complex design and ornamentation.

Here is a close-up of one of the pillars appearing in the prior two shots.

Note the religious symbols, including the Christian cross and Jewish star of David.  Also note the swastika beneath the star of David.  Hmmm . . . .  A little research reveals that the swastika actually has a very old history, dating back over 4000 years.  It has had several meanings over the years, including "well-being" and "good luck."  It wasn't until 1920 that the symbol was adopted by the Nazi Party, forever transforming the symbol's emotional meaning.  The Nazi version has the arms bent the other way and set on the diagonal rather than vertically and horizontally.  The temple has a very Middle Eastern feel to it, and I am sure that there are other symbols imbedded in the temple's "lacing" that relate to others of the world's major religions.

As mentioned, the temple is surrounded by extremely well manicured landscaping, including a couple of reflecting pools.

Unfortunately, I did not have a lens with enough wide-angle capabilities to capture both the reflecting pool and the entire temple, but it looks nice nevertheless.

Even the railings on the circular pavilion surrounding the building have an interesting design, that was creating shadows on the pavilion itself.

Although photography is allowed anywhere on the exterior, as well as in a welcome center located underneath the temple, no photography is allowed in the interior of the dome, which is reserved for quiet meditation, religious services, and music (oral only, not instrumental).  We did visit the temple interior, but in all honesty, it did not have the same spectacular quality as the exterior.  It includes no statuary or other artwork and is limited to the same sort of abstract symbols as adorn the exterior.  The interior top of the dome does have a special arabic script, and though I was not able to get a photo of it, I was able to get a shot of a framed photo of it hanging in the welcome center.

Apparently, the script means "O Thou Glory of the All-Glorious."

Finally, here is one last shot of the temple, this time taken from the west side of the building.

Admission to the temple is free and, in fact, the Baha'i faith does not accept any donations from visitors.  Now that's refreshing.

John

MALL OF AMERICA

Last week my wife were in the Twin Cities to visit her dad.  During our time there we paid a visit to the Mall of America, the second largest retail mall in the US in terms of retail space and first in terms visitors annually.  We have visited the mall many times over the years and I had never paid much attention to the structure itself.  I had thought of it simply in terms of its function without considering any of its architectural detail.  That changed when I brought my camera and began thinking in terms of possible shots.  Suddenly my point of view changed and I began to notice aspects that I had pretty much been oblivious to previously.

The mall is truly huge.  It is roughly rectangular with three full floors of retail space around the perimeter (and with a fourth level on one side), leaving a very large central atrium that houses, among other things, an amusement park, complete with various carnival-type rides.  There is an anchor department store at each of the four corners.  To get things started, here is a shot down one of the mall's main corridors.

Pleasant, but this could have been shot anywhere, I suppose.

Attached to the mall but exterior to it is a new Radisson hotel and we looked around the hotel a bit as long as we were there.  The corridor walls connecting the hotel to the mall had some interesting features, including a series of rectangular windows that were seemingly placed randomly along the wall.

The wall behind the hotel's reception area had an interesting three-dimensional geometric quality that caught my attention.  In post processing I ramped up the contrast and color saturation to produce the following shot.

Unfortunately, I took this photo through a glass panel, and there are some unwanted reflections visible, particularly in the lower right of the image.  Even so, it makes an interesting abstract.

Although many of the hundreds of shops could have presented their own interesting photo opportunities (and I took quite a few shots along this line), the following, from the mall's amazing Lego store, is the only shot that I decided to include here.

I liked the combination of blue supporting structures set against the earth tones of the ceiling behind.  I do regret, though, that I did not include the full Lego sign that is only partially visible at the top of the image.

I found myself focusing attention on the ceilings.  Here are a few of those shots, beginning with one taken on the second floor.

Just OK.  Most of the "action" was on the top floor, including the following skylight shots.

I liked the symmetry of the first shot, but the second, oblique shot conveys more depth.

I turned the following skylight shot into a black & white abstract.

The corner ceilings were perhaps the most interesting.  In that regard, here is another skylight shot that came out well, I thought.

It shows a lot of depth, and I liked how the glass and glass dividers of the ceiling have been reflected in the circular features on the right side of the image.

And here is a black & white shot of a portion of that same skylight.

Just OK, I think, though it helps that the center of the skylight is placed off-center in the image.

Finally, here are a couple of shots from a corner ceiling on one of the lower floors.  I turned these into black & whites also and increased the contrast some to bring out the images' abstract quality.

For some reason I like this second shot a bit more, perhaps because of its added complexity.  Here is the same shot in color.

Perhaps the lesson I learned from this is that mindset can have a significant impact on one's perception.  Just by bringing my camera, I began to see things that had simply not registered in the past.

John