WISCONSIN STATE CAPITOL

It had been a very long time since I had been in Wisconsin's state capitol in Madison.  I have been in Madison many times over the years and the capitol building is hard to miss as it effectively dominates the city's skyline.  Here is a shot I took of the building's exterior.  Pretty standard fare, actually, for a state capitol, with a dome modeled after the nation's capitol in Washington.

The building, actually Wisconsin's third capitol building, was completed in 1917 as a cruciform-shaped structure with four branches extending from a central dome.  The building has undergone extensive restoration work over the years.  The most recent work involved restoration of the central rotunda and dome in 1998, at a cost of $9 million.

My recollection (from nearly 30 years ago) had been of a dark and somewhat dingy space.  Nevertheless, I decided to make the 1-1/2 hour trip from Milwaukee on Tuesday, January 29th, a day of record warmth--and rain--in southern Wisconsin.  As soon as I walked into the building, I knew I was on to something really good.  Here is the first interior shot that I took, in one of the wings leading to the rotunda.

Nice.  And here is another early shot that I liked for its strong diagonal lines.

The interior's lines begged for symmetrical shots, and I had learned from experience that it is critically important to position the camera very carefully along the lines of symmetry.  It is also a good idea to make sure the camera is horizontal, as any deviation from level can require significant cropping.  But if the camera isn't positioned properly along the axis of symmetry, then no amount of cropping can wholly rectify the situation.

When there is an interesting ceiling, one of my routines is to shoot the ceiling by placing the camera on the floor pointed straight up.  Here is the shot that I took at the capitol.

Not a great shot, really, as I do not have true wide-angle capabilities with my current equipment.  Here is another shot of the dome that I thought worked better.

To me this is the more intriguing image.  The lack of symmetry creates some interesting tension.  Moreover, only showing a portion of the dome allows the viewer to fill in the rest of the picture by extrapolation.

Here is the shot featuring perhaps the longest perspective.

My eyes aren't perfect, and I thought perhaps the animal featured in this shot sitting atop the pediment was a frog, though that didn't really make sense.  But on further review, it is clear that this animal is actually Bucky Badger, Wisconsin's state animal.  Of course.

Intricate details abound in the building, as the stairways and lighting fixtures attest.

The above shot took some patience as the stairway was quite dark, taxing the camera's autofocus system.  Moreover the shot required a fairly long exposure, 13 seconds in the case of the above shot.

This was another 13-second exposure.  Note that the light at the top of the stairs is reflected in the marble wall to the right of the stairs.

I particularly liked the simplicity of this last shot, a five-second exposure that I took with the camera about halfway up the stairs.

The interior also featured plenty of color, as in the following shots.

Although most of the shots I took were symmetrical, these were two of the shots that I chose to take from an oblique angle.  Here are a couple of other, symmetrical shots that feature the strong colors.

And here is another "long-range" shot.

This was an HDR shot, one of several I took during the shoot.  I was not impressed with most of the HDR shots--they didn't seem to add much to the already high-contrast images.  But this shot did seem to offer more in the way of high contrast.

Below are two of my favorite shots.  In addition to the multiple arch lines, they include some interesting under-lighting.

I am especially pleased with this last shot.

I have been trying to analyze why I am so drawn to these very ornate architectural opportunities. The ample opportunities for creating abstracts, I think contribute to that appeal.  It is also the case that the building is not going anywhere and I can generally take my time to set up and capture the shot.

This, as well as St. Josephat's Basilica and the Milwaukee Public Library are similar in their style and degree of ornateness and all were created around the same time.  There are other examples of this style, including the Grain Exchange in Milwaukee's Mitchell Building, but those venues are not generally available for amateur photography.  What is especially striking for me is the incredible amount of craftsmanship and skilled labor, both in terms of design and in terms of implementation, that went into these structures, something that would be prohibitively expensive today.

Overall, I spent 2-1/2 hours taking about 120 shots.  Even so, I did not get shots of any of the major chambers.  I could easily spend another couple of hours next time.

MILWAUKEE PUBLIC LIBRARY REVISITED

I have photographed Milwaukee's Public Library before.  But since the weather is cold and I am too much of a wimp to look for outdoor venues, I decided to return to the library.  The library building was completed in 1898 and originally housed both Milwaukee's Public Museum and its Public Library. The museum got its own building in the 1960s, but I recall that when we first moved to Milwaukee in the 1970s the library building still housed a hands-on children's science museum, which eventually moved out sometime in the 1990s.

The building was designed in a neo-renaissance style that includes robust pillars in front and a central dome above an entrance atrium.  Incidentally, Frank Lloyd Wright was one of the architects who bid on the project and lost.  The building would undoubtedly have had a very different design had Wright won the bid.

I spent virtually all of my time photographing the interior of the very ornate entrance atrium; that is, after being questioned by library personnel who wanted reassurance that I would not take pictures of people and would not use the photos for commercial purposes.  Not a problem.

Deciding what to photograph made me think about what I should do to capture the building's architecture.  Of course, one of the first things I did was to shoot the central dome simply by putting the camera on the floor pointing up.

I could have cropped this as a square and included just the circular dome.  However, I did want to show as much of the side walls as my lack of a true wide=angle lens will allow.  The widest I can do is 24mm, which is fairly "wide."  However, my camera has a "crop" sensor, which makes the field of view equivalent to 36mm, not really wide-angle.

Since I could not get a shot of the ceiling as well as all of the side walls, I decided to shoot what I could, as in the following.

I think this shot actually gives a better sense of the atrium space. and some of the architectural detail.  In trying to capture the architecture, I felt there were two components.  One was the richly textured detail in the hallways and granite stairways, as in the following.

The stonework is gorgeous, but I'm not sure my photos have done justice to it.

The other component consists of the symmetrical designs of the upper walls leading to and including the dome.  I found myself compelled to try to capture those symmetries in effect as abstracts.  One thing I had learned was that to shoot those symmetries, it was important to get the camera lined up accurately.  If the camera is off center by even an inch or so, the imbalance is noticeable in the image and just cannot be fully corrected in post processing.

In this shot I liked that I was able to include both the patterns in the background as well as the arch in the foreground (although a close inspection reveals a lack of symmetry).

Here is an HDR shot that I attempted.

And a wider shot . . .

that I also turned into a B&W.

Finally, here are a couple of wider angled shots.

In the end, I am still wondering how best to shoot architecture.  Am I just creating abstracts out of the symmetrical detail or am I reflecting the character of the architectural design.

MILWAUKEE CITY HALL RE-REVISITED

I was not entirely happy with my last visit to City Hall, earlier this month.  First of all, there were Christmas decorations all over the place, including evergreen boughs on the railings of each of the balconies.  Second, there was a very large Christmas tree positioned in the center of the atrium.  As a result, it prevented me from taking certain shots, including one straight up from the floor of the atrium.  And, third, in looking over my last set of photos, I realized that what most got my attention were the curved railings at either end of the atrium and that wider views of the balconies were too busy.

So . . . Here is my ceiling shot.

And here is a shot of the curved railings.

The other thing I did was to experiment with some high dynamic range (HDR) shots.  As a reminder, these involve taking multiple shots of the exact same scene that are different only in terms of their exposure.  These differences are in terms of the length of the exposure; the aperture remains constant so that the depth of field does not change.  Then the images are blended using post processing software.  In these shots I blended three images, one at a normal exposure, one exposed for four times as long (overexposed), and one exposed for one-fourth as long (underexposed).  I really didn't know what to expect.  Here is one of the shots.  First, as a comparison, is the single, normal exposure.

And here is the HDR shot.

I was expecting a significant increase in contrast in the HDR shot, but I didn't really see much difference.  What I did see was an increase in color, particularly in the upper floors.

Here is another shot that illustrates that result even more strongly.  First is the normal shot.

And this is the HDR version.

Here the colors are ranging from yellow at the bottom to a pink hue at the top.  I kind of like it.

TIGERS

On my recent visit to the Milwaukee County Zoo, with only a couple of exceptions, I was a little disappointed with the opportunities I had to get good shots of the animals (or at least my ability to take advantage of the opportunities I had).  One of those exceptions was the tigers.  They were inside for the winter--or at least for the day--which means they were behind glass, and that can present its own problems of glare and smudges, but it can also mean that the animals are a lot closer.  The enclosure included three cats, one of which was sleeping and not really in a position to be photographed.  A second cat was lying toward the rear of the enclosure but very photogenic.

But the real star was a third cat lounging about six feet behind the glass and looking totally bored.

But at times he or she was also looking directly at my camera.

Here is an essentially uncropped close-up.

And here's the cat just showing off.

Pretty nice, eh?

MANDARIN DUCK

Last week I took advantage of the unseasonably warm weather to pay a visit to the Milwaukee County Zoo--with my camera, of course.  Even though I took quite a few photos, I was happy with the shots of only a couple of animals.  

The first of these was the mandarin duck.  I am sure I have seen these before, but this time their brilliant colors blew me away.  Plus, in the zoo's aviary they let me get within about six feet.  They must be very accustomed to human contact.  Here are some of the shots I took.