When we explored this abandoned school, I walked up and down these stairs numerous times. It wasn’t until we were about to leave that I actually looked at them. The sun shining in through the windows, the colors of the walls, etc… It was just pretty. Do you agree?
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One of the things I love about abandoned buildings is the great works of art that individuals have left behind. Most people don’t think of graffiti as art. But it is!! I don’t always like the location of graffiti…..for example I don’t like to see graffiti on buildings that are in use or on public structures like bridges. And I don’t always like “tags” or junk graffiti, just like I don’t like stick figure drawings. But a well-done graffiti painting can be amazing and is art. Make no mistake…..it’s art!
So the next time you’re thinking about going to a gallery or museum to see some art, concern an abandoned building instead. Believe me when I say, you’ll find art in these places.
By the way, I took this photo inside the abandoned Fisher Body Plant in Detroit Michigan.
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Fisher Body Plant
I don’t know what his career will look like down the road, but his rookie year started off very good and I was impressed. I enjoyed watching him play against the Steelers and wish he were on my Lions’ team. They haven’t had a good running back since Barry.
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Here is another photo from last week’s trip to Washington D.C. When you have limited time in an area, you have to make the best of what you get…. I didn’t get the best weather as you can see. Regardless, I sat in the middle of Pennsylvania Ave to capture this photo.
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Pennsylvania Ave.
It is cold and rainy today…..and if feels a little like a cold fall football weekend, even though it’s spring. So I’m sharing a Big Ben photo. I took this of Ben last fall during the Patriots game. Ben wasn’t playing for some injury I’ve already forgotten about. But he was pretending to be helpful.
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Ben Roethlisberger
Prior to my travels, I always scout the location in advance to create my “shot list”. I’d rather do my research in advance looking for great locations, photo ops, and opportunities vs. waiting until I arrive and hope I capture some good stuff. So when I was scouting Washington DC before my latest trip to our nation’s capital, I found out about this spot. The Blind Whino is a former church (Friendship Baptist Church), which has been converted into an Arts Club. They have lots of space dedicated to community-based arts programming. They also have multiple rooms to host events and activities. They even do some organic, urban farming on site.
It isn’t exactly what you expect to find in Washington DC just a few miles from the Capital building. It’s unique, unusual and artsy. Of course, I loved it.
You can see more about it on there website: https://www.swartsclub.org/home
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Front
Side View
Side and back view
I’ve traveled to Washington DC many times….maybe 15 times… maybe even over 20 times in my life (MJ and I will be back in DC again later this year). But I’ve never explored the Capital building or the area around it. So last night, I spent a few hours walking around this great facility. This probably isn’t the best photographic version of the building, but I like what I captured. It was extremely windy last night… something like 20 mile an hour wind. So it was difficult to capture a photo at night and not get trees to be blurry. But there wasn’t anything I could do about the wind. So you got blurry trees.
Regardless, it’s a great, impressive, powerful looking building. The photo doesn’t do it justice. I’m telling you…its impressive in person.
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U.S. Capital Building
A few of the guys and I went out to capture some urbex photography today. The weather was perfect and we hit up a couple nice spots. I captured this image at our first stop. This creepy chair was the only reason we even went to this location…and guess what, it was worth it. What do you think?
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Nursing office at an abandoned school
During our last visit to NYC, MJ and I walked all over Manhattan. Honestly, we covered a lot of ground and hit up some great spots. The Flatiron Building is one of my favorite buildings in the city. I’ve captured it from numerous angles and have visited it a couple of different times. I don’t think it gets enough credit among the world’s greatest buildings.
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Flatiron Building
This Croatia city is beautiful. The ancient walled city within Dubrovnik is a wonderful location….well worth the trip. I took this photo standing on top of the ancient wall looking down at the marina. You can see some of the wall on the left side of the photo. I want to go back right now…..
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Marina
I took this photo last May during our Europe trip. Towards the end of the trip, we spent some time in Marseille France, which is a lovely city. While in Marseille, we went to the Notre-Dame da le Garde, which is the Catholic basilica in this part of France. It opened in June 1864 and is the most visited site in Marseille. Maybe in a future post, I’ll share a photo of the outside, which is just as great.
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Sorry I’ve been off the grid recently. We spent a few days in Florida with family hanging out, catching up, and just relaxing. I took this photo last night of the family homestead after a nice sunset. As you can tell, this was a very tough spot to hang out. We were completely roughing it!!
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Blair and I were walking in the downtown Pittsburgh area after having dinner and we came upon this alley. I loved it immediately and setup my tripod for this perspective. I like the detail of the buildings in the foreground along with the office building at the end of the alley.
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This photo is a little moody, a little dark. But that’s the way this bar was designed….to set the mood. This is on the 5th deck at the stern of the Carnival Vista. It’s a great spot to relax and have a cocktail on an otherwise loud and busy ship.
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On Carnival Vista
When MJ and I were in Charlotte, we had some free time to walk around the downtown area. We found this mural and it called to me. I don’t know who Rasul Ullah is. Did he paint the mural or is that his quote? I don’t know, but I liked the mural.
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Two nights ago, Blair and I spent some time in Pittsburgh capturing some photos. Today’s post is from that photo walk. This is the Rachel Carson Bridge about 30 minutes prior to sunset. Pittsburgh has a number of beautiful bridges. At least I think so. What about you?
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Like normal, I'm standing in the middle of the street.
Here is a picture from last night. Blair and I planned to go out earlier in the week and we didn’t because I kept changing my mind. So we didn’t end up going out until last night. The weather was nice, but the sky didn’t turn out very pretty. I think we missed a few beautiful skies early in the week. Oh well……..
I scouted this spot before we left and it didn’t disappoint. It was fairly easy to get to and the view was great.
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Pittsburgh's Liberty Bridge
During our trip to Peru, we got a demonstration on how the local women make thread by hand from Llama and Alpaca. Honestly, it was very interesting and they make all kinds of cool things with the colorful thread. After the demonstration, I captured this photo of some thread they completed.
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Last post, I share some information about a new very simple and cheap photo editor called Photolemur. As part of that post, I shared a before and after portrait photo I processed with this software. Tonight I am sharing a landscape photo from Mexico that I also processed using the new software. I am sharing the original photo right out of the camera, the Photolumer processed photo and a screen shot of the software user interface.
Note about the location: I took this photo in Puerto Morelos Mexico when we stayed at the Ocean Coral Resort. It is a pre-sunrise photo with the resort pool in the foreground.
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Processed with Photolumer
Original photo out of the camera
Photolumer User Interface
A couple of weeks ago, I was contacted by a new company that created a very simple new photo editing software. They call it Photolemur. Don’t ask me why, but I thought the name was different. They asked me to test the software and share my experience on my blog, which I’m doing now.
This new photo editor is an Artificial Intelligence based system that enhances the photo itself. It’s faster and smarter than the normal manual photo editor. There is both a Mac and Windows version.
It’s very easy to use. You drag or open the photo (it works with both jpg and raw file types) with Photolemur and it does its thing. At that point you have two steps. Step One is to adjust the one and only one adjustment slider to get the final photo look you want. Step Two is to export (save) your photo wherever you want to keep it.
I’m sharing a series of photos below of Pittsburgh Steelers’ Ryan Shazier. They are:
· The original photo right out of the camera
· The same photo run through Photolemur
· A screen shot of the Photolemur software. As you can see in this photo, the software has a slider bar you can move back and forth to see the before/after version of the photo.
I’ve tested Photolemur on a few different types of photos (landscapes, architecture, portrait, etc…) and it seems to work great on all of them. The software is in pre-order phase right now. It won’t be available for full release until April 18th. In the meantime, you can check out their website and the software here: https://photolemur.com
Now a little about this specific photo, which I took of Ryan Shazier before a Pittsburgh Steelers game last season. It was freezing outside that day. We didn’t have any snow on the ground, but believe me when I say it was very, very cold. So why he would “warm” up prior to the game without a shirt, sweatshirt or coat, I have no idea. But he did this a few times last season. I assume he think it makes him tough. I think it means he isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. Nothing like getting hyperthermia and draining your energy before a game that you’re being paid millions of dollars to play and you count on for your livelihood…..not the smartest idea.
In my next blog post, I’ll share a landscape photo I processed with Photolemur. Until then, have a great day.
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Photolemur edited version
Original Photo
This is what the beta version of Photolemur's user interface looks like. Version 2 for release on April 18th looks a little different.
