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The Arcade

camera settings, F-stops, my favorites No Responses »

Mar 152011

The caption beneath the clock read ‘standard time,’ and was built in an era when minutes and hours moved at a more leisurely pace. Kodachrome film ruled the day and would reign for 130 years. It’s hard to imagine what Photoshop will look like in a hundred or even ten years from now.

Today, though, I had to be careful not to linger in nostalgia, crowds were slowly entering the mall and would soon wander in front of all the historic storefronts and ruin my images.

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The site is the Cleveland Arcade, a Victorian-era structure of two nine-story buildings, coupled by a five-story iron and glass annex. This architectural treasure, constructed in 1890 and financed by the likes of John D. Rockefeller and friends, opened on Memorial Day that year, and was the first indoor shopping mall in the United States.

I snapped a few shots at f 16 and different exposures and then blended the varied images in Photoshop to get just the right color and tone. Guess the digital era isn’t so bad

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Next up – Windows shopping at the Grand Arcade in black and white

Happy Holidays

camera settings, F-stops, my favorites, night photography No Responses »

Dec 212010

A little late but there’s still a few days left in the season to see the holiday lights. These gems were found at the Lake MetroParks FarmPark annual country lights festival.

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I always like night shots and even though there was quite a crowd, not too many people felt like standing in the middle of a snow bank to sample the freezing air.

Took a sturdy tripod, set my camera to mirror lock-up, and turned the image stabilization off, so that I would avoid any vibrations that could blur the shot. I used a high f-stop, around f18 or so, to get great sharpness and depth of field. Some of the images took 20 seconds or more to capture.