Des Moines @ Night

Re-post June 2011

I drove into Des Moines tonight for a meeting and thought I would capture some pictures.  Des Moines is one of my favorite cities.  Since graduating in 2005 from Des Moines University there has been a significant amount of renovation to the downtown area.  I love the architecture and it’s always a great place to take pictures.

Iowa’s State Capitol sits on the east side of downtown (immediately behind me in this picture).  There is a lot of sidewalks and landscape to its west.  It also sits up high in comparison to the remaining downtown which allows for some great cityscapes.  Also, I love how Locust street ends in front of the capitol thus allowing for a unique perspective.

This shot was taken at dusk using my Leica M9 and 90mm summarit-m.  As Leica owners know, summarit is considered their “affordable” lens (most would disagree).  Anyway, I’ve been very happy with its sharpness and have taken many great pictures with it.

 

The Abandoned School

Re-post from July 2011

A few days ago I decided to travel the local country side to look for interesting structures to take pictures of.  It was in the middle of the afternoon and is typically the worst time to take pictures because the sun light causes very harsh shadows and typically the camera cannot compensate for the amount of exposure.  Besides HDR photography there are other ways to fix this problem.  One way is to use a neutral density filter.

Neutral density filters are either colorless or grey and reduce and/or modify the intensity of light without harming color rendition.  This allows photographers to shoot in situations that typically wouldn’t allow them.  These filters come in different intensities, which allow for different shooting techniques.

I recently purchased B+W ND 3.0 at B & H Photo for my Leica 21mm Elmarit lens.  It allows me to shoot in very bright light, thus allowing proper exposure.  It can also be used to create a time lapse picture which shows the motion of clouds or objects in front of it.  As I was driving around I came across this old school (built in 1896) that appeared to be on its last leg.  You can see in the pic, the motion of the clouds in this 4 second exposure.

A night at the drive-In

My wife and I have always been big movie people, going to the movies at least a couple of times a month.  Obviously, we don’t get to go much anymore because of our baby girl (that’s not a bad thing).  Last summer we were anxious to see the last Harry Potter movie.  We hopped in the truck and drove to the drive-in.  I caught this picture when I was walking back to the truck.

ISO 800 1/30 f/1.4 50mm

Old Grey Barn

Re-post August 2011

Keeping it short today.  Couple weeks ago when I was driving around Bluffton, Indiana I came across this old grey barn.  Again, it was in the middle of the day which does not make for good shooting but I put my 3.0 ND filter on my 21mm lens and shot 7 exposures to create an HDR pic.  I think it turned out well?   I really like the movement of the clouds.

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