Canon 60D

State College in Black and White (Post 7)

 
Black and white. A person wearing a messenger bag and riding a bicycle. In the frame, they're riding from right to left, beneath a ONE WAY sign pointing in the same direction.

One Way
September 20, 2022
South Allen Street and West Calder Way
Ricoh GR II

From behind a floor-to-ceiling plate glass window at the end of a hallway. A person below at a sidewalk intersection on a college campus. Dappled light through the trees on the hallway floor.

Framed from Burrowes
September 20, 2022
From the Burrowes Building, facing the library mall
Ricoh GR II

Black and white. A closed storefront on the first floor of a brick building. Paper covers the large glass windows. Hand-painted on the paper are the words "Thank You State College."

Thank You State College
January 5, 2022
Saint's Cafe
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4

Wide angle, high contrast black and white image. Roofs of buildings and a parking garage. A large apartment building in the distance. Thick clouds overhead.

Cloudy Sky
September 22, 2022
From atop one of the downtown parking garages.
Ricoh GR II

Black and white. An old wooden door in a brick wall. Thin, short vines trail down over the top third of the door.

Door
October 10, 2022
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4

Click here for all photos in this project thus far.

Fall 2022

 
Bell tower of a central college campus building appears between trees with bright orange and red leaves.

Old Main
October 18, 2022
Penn State, University Park
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

Sackett Building
October 18, 2022
Penn State, University Park
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

October 24, 2022
Penn State, University Park
Ricoh GR II

Birch tree with golden and green leaves. Background: partly cloudy sky. To the right: Maple tree branches with green leaves.

October 16, 2022
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

A campus mall, tree-lined. Fallen leaves on green grass, and golden and green leaves in the trees above.

October 18, 2022
Penn State, University Park
iPhone 12 Mini

Tree with golden and yellow leaves, framed by the window opening of a parking deck.

Framing Fall
October 26, 2022
Nittany Parking Deck
Penn State, University Park
Canon 60D, Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM

Blue and Yellow
October 26, 2022
Penn State, University Park
iPhone 12 Mini

April 19 to June 9, 2022: Spring, Self-Portraits, and a Chair in the Stairwell

While social media platforms have their uses, I don't love the notion of them being the only repository for those odds and ends photos that I take and feel the impulse to share. So, here's a compilation of my Facebook/Instagram/Twitter photo posts from April through June, on my own little corner of the open web.

Close-up of blooming magenta azaleas. Snow falling in the background.

Hello, Spring.
April 19, 2022
iPhone 12 mini

Black and white, college campus. A blossoming tree on the left, brightly lit by the sun. A sidewalk on the right.

Springtime
April 29, 2022
Penn State University Park

Photo of double doors. Left door: reflection of left half of photographer facing glass. Right door: large window decal of a lion’s face.

Self portrait (50% actual, 50% aspirational)
May 4, 2022
State College, PA
iPhone 12 mini

Busy casual restaurant dining room in black and white. Back of a patron to the left, full tables and family at center.

Tarrytown, NY
May 7, 2022
iPhone 12 mini

Headshot photo of 38-year-old Asian male. Brown eyes and black hair with gray streaks. Blue blazer and blue shirt.

Took a portrait for this particularly fussy and meddlesome client.
May 10, 2022
Burrowes Building, Penn State University Park
Canon 60D | Canon 85 mm F/1.8 USM

Headshot photo I took of myself for work. If in early May you spotted someone outside the Burrowes Building setting up a camera, hitting the timer, jumping in front of it, then frowning at the results and doing it over and over again for about forty minutes, that was me.

Interior of a train dining car. Green countertop, bright orange seat. Light from platform passing through the car's venetian blinds. Platform and another train outside.

Throwback Thursday: May 10, 2013
Parade of Trains, Grand Central Terminal
New York City
Canon 60D | Sigma 30 mm F/1.4

black and white photo taken through a window. Row of city homes, framed by windowpane frame lines.

Windowpane Frame
March 19, 2022
From the Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, PA
Canon 60D | Sigma 30mm F/1.4

Back of a film camera. A slot in the back contains a cut out side of a film carton for Ilford Delta 400 film.

May 29, 2022
iPhone 12 Mini

Looking forward to seeing how this roll comes out. I’ve shot with HP5 before, and it came out a little grainier than I’d like, so I thought I’d try this. Also mis-cut this box end.

Black and white. Small park building (restrooms) on a sunny day. Three surrounding trees cast harsh shadows on the pavement.

May 30, 2022
Tudek Memorial Park
State College, PA | iPhone 12 Mini

Stairwell, trimmed with metal, glass, and wood. Bank of windows to the left. Wooden commemorative chair at center on the stair landing.

June 9, 2022
The Chair
Burrowes Building, Penn State University Park
iPhone 12 Mini

I do have more blog posts and social media series in the pipeline. These include, among others, various sets of COVID-19 signage, a collection of photos of control panels and buttons that I'm pretty excited about, and photos from our France 2018 trip that I'm still slowly editing.

What keeps this held up is that I've made a concerted effort to keep up with editing the photos that I take. This includes iPhone photos, so that means that every night or two I'm churning through a batch of new pics, and there's precious little time to put together other content into a form that's worth sharing.

Still, I want to eventually get to sharing these other projects, it may just be a few weeks or months until I get there.

Christmas Miscellany

Since the photo sale shipping deadlines for a "by Christmas" arrival have all passed, I thought I might switch gears for a few days to share some seasonally appropriate photos (I'll get back to the photo sale posts towards the end of the month, since that code will expire on 12/31).

Sculpture of coiled snake in outdoor arboretum, pink ribbon wrapped around its neck.

December 19, 2021. Canon EOS 60D, ISO 640, Sigma 30mm 1.4, ƒ/2, 1/125s

Penn State's arboretum has some beautiful lights up right now, and it's certainly worth a look. Having gone two weekends in a row with family, it does feel like dusk (around 4 p.m.) is probably ideal—it's light enough that you can still see the rest of the garden, but dark enough that the lights have some pop. We were delighted to see that all the animal sculptures in the Children's Garden had been given some sort of festive flair.

Christmas lights tightly wound around a tree trunk.

December 5, 2015. Canon EOS 60D, ISO 100, Sigma 30mm 1.4, f/1.4, 1/500s

This shot’s from December of 2015, in New York City. This looks well-suited for one of those "can you believe it?" comparison statistics, like, if you took the light strands from all the trees in front of this building, and laid them end by end, they'd reach from the AC units to the sub-basement or something like that.

Santa Claus driving a pedicab through Times Square on a rainy night.

December 17, 2016. Ricoh GR II, ISO 140, f/2.8, 1/60s.

I think I've posted this at least twice in the past few years, but I do not care, because Santa Claus driving a pedicab through Times Square on a rainy night never gets old.

A crowded, ornate hallway filled with persons in formalwear. Tall fronds to L and R wrapped in Christmas lights.

December 1, 2018, Ricoh GR II, ISO 1600, f/5, 1/160s.

From New Orleans on December 1, 2018. As I scroll through my photo library, I realize that I don't have a ton of Christmas decor photos that aren't from NYC. Which is fine, but for a series of posts, I thought I may as well try and diversify a bit!

Black and white. Wire sculpture of an angel holding a trumpet.

December 20, 2010, Canon PowerShot S90, ISO 400, f/2, 1/60s.

Merry Christmas!

From December 20, 2010, Rockefeller Center.

Canon AE-1 Program (1981) + Ilford HP5 (2021)

These are the rest of the keepers from a roll of Ilford HP5+ 400 that I shot last year (the others are in this Bellefonte in Black and White post). This is the only roll of HP5 that I’ve shot, so my thoughts are based on a very limited experience, but I’d say that I would be happy to shoot with this film again. Relative to other black and white films, it’s pretty affordable, and I was happy with most of the photos I got out of this roll.

Black and white. Six sheep behind a fence, looking through at a dog in the lower right.

These sheepies came over to investigate Ginny Mcflooferson, whose nose is in the lower right.
November 4, 2020 | Canon AE-1 Program, 50mm f/1.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/11 1/500s

One funny thing I found, though, is that this film really puts to the test one’s willingness to accept the imperfections of film media, specifically in terms of film grain. Some film photographers love grain, for others, grain is something to avoid. For my part, I’m happy to embrace the particulars of the medium, but I will say that when I got these shots back I was surprised by the amount of grain I saw (and maybe I should'n’t have been). There is a rough look to these shots that’s a bit different from what you’d see in higher-end black and white films, like Kodak TMax.

So now that I have it in front of me, I have to confess that I’m less enthusiastic about film grain than I would have expected, however, on the plus side, I think this makes me a bit more accepting of noise in my digital photos. Now digital noise and film grain are not the same thing, but, I do think that this gives me a bit of perspective on my practices of zooming in to a digital image and adjusting noise reduction to make it as “clean” as possible. Some folks will notice it, but I figure, if I’m happy enough with how these came out, I should be able to let myself be ok with not obsessing over smoothing out those digital rough patches all the time.

Black and white, looking down a row of Christmas trees growing on a farm. Bbare trees, mountains, and some haze in the distance.

Tannenbaum Farms
November 7, 2020 | Canon AE-1 Program, 50mm f/1.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/8 1/125s

Black and white. Pedestrian tunnel, w/ path on left separated by a wall from stream on right. Path and stream divide ahead, with brush and trees in between.

Slab Cabin Run, underpass below College Avenue
State College, PA | Canon AE-1 Program, 50mm f/1.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/4, 1/125s

House and Rocks
Canon AE-1 Program | 50mm f/1.8 | Ilford HP5+ 400 | f/8, 1/125s

I haven’t done many film versus digital comparisons, but when I was taking photos of my sink late on election night 2020 (yeah, these are a lot of glasses, but hey, that was a long night, right?), I figured that was as good a time as any to do a side by side.

Can you guess which shot was taken on film and which shot was taken on a digital camera?

Looking at these now, this is a kind of easy one—the top one has that grain I mentioned above, and it has that rough, documentary feel that as of now I associate with this film stock.

I do think I prefer the former, as that higher contrast, grainy look feels well-suited to this composition. It’s a messy sink, from a long and fraught evening, and I feel that’s better captured in the first image.

Grant Swift, Live at 3 Dots Downtown, State College PA. October 19, 2021.

 
Black & white. Musician playing guitar on stage. Intersection w/ receding streetlights in background.

Shots of Grant Swift's show last Tuesday night at 3 Dots Downtown in State College, PA. Grant is an old friend who’s touring right now to promote his new album First Elephant (available for purchase or streaming here). It was a treat to be able to catch up and see him play again, and I encourage you to check his schedule of upcoming shows in case he’ll be in a town or city near you. Upcoming stops include Baltimore, Austin, Nashville, and more.

Night. Wide angle photo of a terrace. Guitarist is playing and singing. Bistro lights and apartments in the background.
Close shot, from musician's left, of musician playing guitar and singing.
Black and white. Close shot of musician playing guitar and singing into the mic.
Black and white. The back of a station wagon, filled with amps and PA equipment.

Touring life.

Throwback Thursday: September 23, 2011 at Vanderbilt Avenue and 43rd Street

 
Black and white. A person in glasses holds a takeout order under their plastic poncho in the rain.

These two photos are from four years into my ten-year stint as a an office manager. At that time, I frequently ate lunch while standing in the old taxi stand outside of Grand Central Terminal at Vanderbilt Avenue and 43rd street. This was largely a matter of efficiency: in addition to my full-time job, I was usually working on some sort of theater, film, or writing project, so my typical lunch break included running to the deli across the street, grabbing a premade sandwich, and then eating it in the taxi stand as quickly as possible before jetting over to the FedEx née Kinkos to get some work done.

A Manhattan street in the rain. A person holding an umbrella walks across the crosswalk, from left to right in the frame.

It feels kind of surreal to now have a photo archive deep enough that, for a Throwback Thursday post, I can throw back to a decade ago. (Though I’m sure to more seasoned photographers this sounds like the realization of a total newbie.)

More surreal, perhaps, is looking at a photo that feels to me like it was taken yesterday, but simultaneously knowing that this particular bit of urban landscape has since gone through a good bit of change. In the above scene, for instance, we’re looking across a street into a crosswalk, and on the left, there’s an office building with a T.G.I.Friday’s on the ground floor. But both street and office building no longer exist. The street (the one perpendicular to what appears in this photo) has been converted into a pedestrian plaza. The office building was torn down and replaced with the massive One Vanderbilt office tower.

Sometimes all the years spent post-college feel like they’re one large temporal mass that makes up “the present,” but I too easily forget how much has changed within that span of time, in terms of various historic events and cataclysms, as well as the more gradual changes that creep their way in over the passing of time.

Greenwich Village

It's neat to have something like a parade, or Christmas, to make a nice and easy target for photos and a blog post. But part of my deliberate effort to work harder on photography means shooting even when there isn't an obvious subject to shoot. So on a Saturday morning I decided to shoot what I could find in Greenwich Village. I liked the look of how the Veterans Day parade shots came out, so I put my 85 mm telephoto lens on my camera and headed down.

Window Smoking

Seven and a Half

The main reason I add titles to the photos is because if I don't, Flickr automatically display the filename as the photo's title, and I always thought that looks a bit careless. Adding a written title makes the photo seem purposefully done, rather than an image that just happened to be one of a long camera roll of shots.

Of course, I'm also lazy with titles and I don't like the idea of trying to impart some other additional meaning onto a photo by using some whimsical or wordy title.

However, Seven and a Half rolls off the tongue a bit better than 2016-01-09-11-17-32.jpg, so here we are.

Car-Freshner

 Stay Puft

It's the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Freedom Tower

Biking

I believe this expression says "Is that guy taking my picture?".

Sometimes I have a bit of an internal back and forth when it comes to street photography. On the one hand, there's something inherently creepy about taking photos of people without their consent. On the other, street photography is an established art form that's been around for many many years, and is able to capture candid moments that you'd never get otherwise.

But I confess that I do find myself choosing easy subjects on the street, and bicyclists are high on that list, because they're hurriedly going somewhere else, and I assume they do not want to stop to confront someone who might be taking their photo as they whiz on by.

I might someday be proven wrong on this point, and am hoping I don't someday find myself on the business end of confrontational cyclist wrath.

Joy

I think subliminally "joy" was in my head from seeing these posters everywhere.

Waverly Restaurant

Tower

78

40 5th Ave

Balloons

Birds

These were really fun to watch. Tons of birds were perched on the Washington Square Arch. They'd then all swoop off, travel in a bit of a circle, and then perch back onto the arch again.

Let Us Raise a Standard

Out for a Walk

Windows

Low Overhead Clearance

Sentinel

I hope a steampunk enthusiast lives here.