Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Roseland, NE, Nikon D7000, Tokina 12-24 f/4 @ 12mm, f/11, 1/250 sec, ISO 400

Those who know me probably see the irony of this series I’ve tentatively started.  I’m not in the least bit religious, yet here I am beginning a series  featuring churches from small towns.  Fact is, I appreciate the architecture, especially classic architecture when it comes to these buildings.  Churches built nowadays,  office buildings as well, are generic, characterless glass structures demonstrating a lack of imagination.  Or maybe its simply the economics of it.

At any rate, I’m amazed at some of the grand churches I see in diminutive villages throughout the country.  This image, for instance, from the town of Roseland, Nebraska, population 240.  The Sacred Heart Catholic Church seems inordinately large for the size of the town it’s in.

This is a series I’ve thought about doing for a while, along with the County Seat series (which I kicked off with the photo from “A Winter Blast” a few weeks ago.  I figure I ‘ll see where it takes me in the next year or so.

So many series, so little time!

Thanks for reading,

John

Books, Nikon D7000, Nikkor 70-300 f/4-5.6 @ 190mm, f/13, ISO 200, 1/1000 sec

Just a quick note this evening.  This is probably my favorite shot from Saturday’s outing at the Colorado Railroad Museum, even though it could have been taken anywhere.  The peeling paint could be from a wall on a deserted house, for all the photo shows and not the side of a boxcar. A couple of the volumes in the window have at least partially legible titles – one is “Rocky Mountain News” our now defunct daily newspaper, the other “April, May, June, 1899″.  Not sure what it’s referring to, but possibly issues of the Rocky from those months in 1899.  I would have loved to get in that car and investigate.

Thanks for reading!

John

Engine683, Nikon D7000, Tokina 12-24mm f/4 @ f/11, ISO 200, 1/500sec, Single Shot HDR

Until the last couple of weeks, I’d never heard of “Meetup.com”, which is basically  a variety of social networking groups that share common interests and occasionally ‘meetup’ to talk, trade secrets and just socialize with like minded individuals.  I was introduced to the group by Charles Gilliam, a fellow photographer whom I met commuting on the light rail one day.  I overheard Charles telling another rider that he liked to photograph abandoned buildings and such.  That perked my ears up and I had to interrupt to ask him if he’d ever shot the deserted Gates Rubber plant. He replied he’d tried four separate times to get permission, but with no luck.  We chatted on for a while and I gave him my business card and he told me what his website address was.  I looked it up and dropped him an email – when he responded he told me about the Southwest Denver Photo Team meetup. I liked what I saw there, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Train1, Nikon D7000, Tokina 12-24mm f/4 @ f/11, ISO 400, 1/25sec, Single Shot HDR

What I enjoy about the group is the informal nature of it.  The organizer is Bob Strle and the idea is simply to learn from each other on these group excursions. There’s no requirement to attend of course, it’s purely sign, show and go (though some of the workshops have limited availability).

I quickly joined the group and just as quickly signed up for the meetup held yesterday at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado.  The weather was chilly, but the photographers I talked to were warm and friendly.  I got about half way through, maybe a bit more, and called it a day making a mental promise to myself to come back when it’s a little warmer and drier.  The place is pretty amazing if you love trains – I’ve never been much of a train guy myself, but found myself drawn in.

If you’re ever in the metro area this is definitely a place that should be on your short list to visit – especially if you have kids.

If you’re interested in visiting Charles Gilliam’s website, I strongly encourage you to do so, he has some marvelous shots including some from Alcatraz.  The address is:  http://chasphotof8.smugmug.com/.

Just don’t linger too long in the Boudoir gallery!

Thanks for reading,

John

Ford, Nikon D7000, Tokina 12-24 f/4 @ f/11, ISO 400, 1/50 sec, Topaz Adjust, NO TRIPOD

This is turning out (already) to be a busy week!  I have a photo club meeting tomorrow evening, followed by an exhibition invitation on Wednesday to be followed by a trip to the Colorado Railroad Museum on Saturday morning.  To top that off I still haven’t finished the entry I’ve been planning and working on sporadically the last couple of weeks.  I won’t go into the subject now, other than to say I’ve found it more difficult to justify my position than I thought it would.  Because I may be wrong, you ask?  No, because I think I’m so right that it should be self-evident! And yet, the opposite is what I hear all the time in the photographic world.  I’ll post it soon.

On another subject, I made a print on 13″x19″ paper yesterday and because I don’t have a paper cutter large enough to handle prints greater than 11″x14″ I had to take it to my neighborhood Kinko’s to trim it.  They had a new cutter there, one that had a very tight-fitting strip of amber colored plastic to hold the paper steady while being cut.  Somehow, ink from a previous cutting job was on the inside of this strip and as a result the ink ended up on the white border around the print.  The white border that would be very obvious framed.

Needless to say, I was, well, miffed, especially at the apathetic response from the woman working there.  We couldn’t get really angry about it; after all, the service is free. But a lesson has been learned, and I’m now in the market for a decent rotary paper cutter.  If anyone has any recommendations, I’d appreciate it.  At the moment I’m looking at the Dahle 552 Professional Rolling Trimmer.  Seems like it might do the job nicely, though I wish it wasn’t quite as costly as it is.   Anyone using this cutter?

Well, that’s about it for this post.  The photo you see here is one I took last summer (oh, how I miss summer right now!) when we visited Victor, Colorado.

Thanks for reading,

John

Visit my website at:

http://jstrongphotos.com

Hall County Court House, Grand Island, NE, Nikon D7000, Tokina 12-24 f/4 @ f/9, ISO 200, 1/250 sec

This past Friday and Saturday gave us a reminder that winter is nowhere nearly over, dropping some 26-28″ of the white stuff in the metro area.  I should have been out shooting the resulting winter wonderland, but honestly, after digging out twice in one day and again on Saturday, I didn’t feel up to the challenge.  Thus, I spent most of the weekend indoors, warm, dry and working on various projects that required staying warm, dry and indoors. As beautiful as snow can be, I’ve discovered the older I get the less I want to deal personally with it, choosing instead to admire photos by others of winter scenes.

Much of the time I used to sort through the photos from my previous week’s trip to Nebraska.  As you recall, I  complained about my techniques used in  “Lazy Photography”.  That post raised quite a few protests from those who choose not to use tripods and complements on the results of my “lazy photography”.  I think I learned an important lesson and that’s to simply be more aware of pitfalls when making blanket statements.  While I was out shooting I kept thinking of the tripod lying in the back seat of my car, and of my feeling that I was rushing myself to obtain photos.  For example, I didn’t take the time to ensure that some of the shots had the entire subject in it, which just isn’t my usual style, since I tend to crop most of the time and normally leave a bit more room to work with.  I think allowing myself to feel rushed probably was the root cause of the overall inaccurate title to my last post.   In truth, there have been numerous outings in which I’ve decided to leave the tripod encased in it’s nylon cocoon.  One other truth – when I use a tripod it forces me to be more deliberate in my compositions; had I used it on the trip, I may have overcome the rushed feeling and settled in to a more relaxed tempo.

The photo here is another from last week’s visit.  I won’t say much about it now, but it’s serving to trigger yet another project idea.  More later on this later.

Thanks for all the constructive and encouraging comments I’ve been receiving lately – I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate it!

Thanks for reading,

John