08.23.10
This is a follow-up to a recent post covering my trip to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati. My original post was a test to confirm the settings and possible issues concerning 360° panoramics. The image above is a panoramic image in it’s “flattened” state.
Here’s the entire gallery. Enjoy!
08.23.10
Over the 4th of July weekend we camped with some friends in Saint Paul, Indiana. Saint Paul is a typical small Indiana town about half way between Cincinnati and Indianapolis. As usual, I decided to go “hunting” for some shots. Being the heathen that I am, while the others went into Greenfield for church, I decided to run around the county and look for some shots. I found 2 covered bridges, both built from the same family owned bridge building company. The A. M. Kennedy Builders. The family built 58 covered bridges with only 13 still standing to date. The hallmark of the Kennedy bridges is their ornamentation, which I’ve captured in a few of the shots. I also ran across a previously unknown to me Mail Pouch barn on Indian Route 1. Unfortunately I couldn’t stop to shoot it though because Route 1 is a small 2-lane with no place to pull over with my camper! It’s close enough to home though that I can run over sometime soon and grab some shots.
Here’s the entire gallery. Enjoy!
07.02.10
A few weeks back I drove up to Mount Vernon, Ohio to visit the mission trip team from First Christian Church in Fort Thomas. My son, two sisters, three nephews and a niece were on the trip so I thought I’d go up and help put on a picnic for them after a hard days work at a Habitat for Humanity house they were working on.
I decided that I’d take the “long way” and see if I could find some stuff to shoot. Good choice as I found a few Mail Pouch Barns, a covered bridge, an Ohio Bicentennial Barn, and a very cool old church at Bethany College. At one point I drove a half an hour off my route to shoot a Mail Pouch Barn, only to discover it had been “taken” by hurricane Ike. That would be the photo that looks like a pile of lumber!
All in all, it was a great day. Got to visit my hard working and dedicated family members and the rest of the mission team, as well as adding to my Mail Pouch collection.
Here’s the entire gallery. Enjoy!
05.12.10
On a recent trip to Louisville, Kentucky I spent a couple of hours walking along Main and Market streets looking for old signs. I’m not sure what draws me to old signs painted on brick walls but I sure do enjoy studying them. Like old abandoned buildings they make my mind wonder. Who painted them? Is the business still around? For that matter is the sign company still around? I do know enough about the sign industry to safely say, sign painters who created these old signs, like the signs themselves are a rarity.
This was one of my first trips with my new 22 megapixel Canon 5D Mark II so one of my goals was to shoot some panoramics to see how my trusty Macintosh tower was going to deal with stitching such large images. A few of these images are panoramics compiled from 12-16 vertical images. At full resolution one of them comes in at 820 megabyte! Those of you that are technically challenged… that’s huge! I could wallpaper a 70 foot hallway with 12 foot ceilings with this image. Not sure what I’m going to do with all those pixels, but man is it great to have them!
Here’s the entire gallery. Enjoy! (By the way, there’s some new signs as well)
02.23.10
Last Saturday I had to run over to Cincinnati’s west end to drop off something to a supplier and figured I’d shoot some stuff while I was out. I’ve had a list of shots I’ve wanted to get in that part of town for a while. Most importantly I wanted to sneak into an abandoned church next to my supplier’s shop. The First German Reformed Church along Freeman Avenue has been on my list for quite a while so I was excited over the prospect of shooting it. There’s only one way to “get in” to the abandoned church. A 24″ pathway between 2 buildings. I was a bit paranoid as I worked my way down the path, but as I got closer to the one opening I started to feel a bit cocky. I was actually getting ready to trespass to shoot an abandoned church. I was about 4 feet from the opening when I noticed fresh footprints in the snow right in front of me. I mean very fresh! If you know anything about Freeman Avenue in Cincinnati, you know it’s not a great place to be with a few grand in camera gear, in an abandoned building, where there MAY be someone with you! Well so much for the church. I chickened out and hit the road. I will however make my way back. I’ve just got to!
Not to be deterred by my willingness to stay alive I decided to hit some of the other spots I’ve been wanting to shoot. I’ve recently become interested in old signs and the west end of Cincinnati is filled with them. From an old brewery, a wide variety of churches and pawn shops to recent signs of “Hope”, the west end is filled with visual eye candy. Depending on your taste of eye candy of course!
02.08.10
Super Bowl Sunday I ventured off to Green County, Ohio to capture 5 covered bridges. Thinking Green County is only about 50 minutes away, I figured I could get up the drive around the county, grab some nice snowy covered bridges and get back in time for kickoff. Wrong! For the first time, my favorite website for locating bridges and barns sent me off in the wrong direction. 40 miles to be exact. I followed my trusty iPod GPS only to find myself in the middle of no where. I’ve been in the middle of no where before, and actually found what I was looking for, but not this time. No bridge. And not even a creek or river to put a bridge over!
I eventually found the bridge I was searching out, but the 80 mile round trip to the empty field didn’t help my schedule. All said and done, I ended up shooting the 5 bridges I went to shoot. My timing was way off though. I was out for seven and a half hours from my front door to Green County and back. I missed the first quarter of the game, but I figure there will be another Super Bowl next year, and who knows how long these bridges will be around.
Click here to see the Green County covered bridges and more. Enjoy!
02.01.10
The man I met while shooting the Elmwood Motel in Ulysses, Kentucky told me about this abandoned house on Route 23 outside of Louisa. Apparently it has quite a history as there are multiple websites referring to it’s past resident, Dr. Francis Elam Burgess. Born 1914. Physician, surgeon, poet and songwriter. I’m glad I ran across it when I did, in it’s “abandoned” state as it has recently been purchased and soon to be rennovated by Martin County entrepreneur Jim Booth.
I plan on keeping updated on the progress of the rennovation and would like to return someday to shoot the second life of this beautiful estate.
01.24.10
This place was awesome! I ran across this little motel on Route 23 in Ulysses, Kentucky. I pulled up the hill to shoot and noticed some people unloading a house next door. Usually if I see someone close by I’ll ask if I can shoot so I walked over to introduce myself and ask permission to take some photos. As it turns out this man’s family owns the property and his parents ran the place until the mid 70s. As much as I enjoy the mystery of shooting old abandoned places I do often think I would like to know their history. Which is what made this such a great find. I chatted with this man for quite a while. As a matter of fact I think he enjoyed telling me his stories as much as I enjoyed hearing them. He actually had the original signs in his barn, which he gladly shared and posed for photos (look for him and his dog in the gallery). I think it’s great that this man is so proud of his family being a part of so many families vacations thoughout the years. Tuns out the reason they are moving stuff out of the house is that his mother is very sick in the hospital. He said she has forever refused to leave the house, but unfortunately it seems she’ll be moving into a home, never to return to the Elmwood.
Here’s the rest of gallery. Enjoy!
