The P T Barnum Museum in Bridgeport

I shot this on Saturday in downtown Bridgeport, Connecticut--it's the P T Barnum Museum on Main Street. I don't believe I've ever been in the museum, but drive by it a lot. I was actually downtown to shoot another old building and when I finished there, I took a little cruise around town to see if there was anything else worth shooting. As I came up Main Street I saw the Barnum building glowing in the late-afternoon sun. I've shot a lot of these reddish-colored buildings in various cities and they just seem to glow from within when that late light hits them. I think this building was built in the late 1800s, so this red stone must have been a big thing then. The building, sadly, suffered quite a lot of damage from a tornado on June 24, 2010 and is closed for extensive repairs. Hopefully some organization with very deep pockets will pony up some much-needed money and keep this small corner of Bridgeport's history alive (did you know that P T Barnum was once the mayor of Bridgeport?)

My radio partner Ken Brown and I came up with an idea to rename the city of Bridgeport "Barnumopolis"and I still think it's a great idea. So, if you happen to know the current mayor, just put in a good word for the new name. Barnumopolis! Doesn't that sound better than Bridgeport? Let's start a movement!

Tragically, even without the help of tornadoes, most cities are doing away with all of their best architecture and destroying their own architectural heritage. But you know what Barnum is credited with saying (though I'm told he never said it): "There's a sucker born every minute." If we let them tear down our architectural past, we're the suckers, no doubt.

Photo notes:  Shot with a Nikon D90 and an 18-70mm Nikkor zoom. Exposure was (I think) 1/500 at f/10 on a tripod. I shot the image in RAW and it was processed using the Adobe DNG converter and Photoshop.

Questions: If you have any photo questions, I'm happy to try and answer them. If I don't get back to you immediately, write and remind me: thejoyofdigital AT optonline DOT net. 

My new book: My new book Exposure Photo Workshop was recently released and it's been called (by Shutterbug Magazine) "...possibly the best book ever written on the subject." If you're looking for an interesting read with hundreds of my photos, I hope you'll give it a look. Thanks!

Architecture: Break Some Rules to Add Drama

Ask any architectural photographer and they'll tell you never to get too close to a tall building with a wide-angle lens because your photos will show an effect called "keystoning" that causes the buildings to lean back in space. But ask them if they ever do exactly that to create drama and the answer will be, "Of course." In most cases (especially if you're shooting photos for the architect) you want to get architecturally-correct views which means either backing away a sufficient distance or, if you're well-heeled equipment-wise, using what's called a perspective-control lens (a lens with a shifting front element that corrects keystoning) to keep the lines of the building square and parallel. But when it comes to creating dramatic photos of buildings, very often it comes down to abandoning technical rules and going with what looks most interesting.

I photographed this view of the Iowa State Capitol, for example, using an 18-70mm zoom at its widest setting (equivalent to about 28mm in 35mm format) from right next to the building. Obviously the building doesn't lean back like this and the columns don't converge, but again, the combination of the wide lens and the close vantage point creates a shot that is technically "wrong" but also quite dramatic. I also shot a number of images with a longer lens from a distance so that the building would look architecturally correct, but they were also complete yawners! The last thing you want people to do when they look at your photos of buildings is to get bored. Next time you find an interesting building, shoot some "straight" images if you have to get it out of your system, but then break some rules and see if you don't like those photos more.

Photographing Architecture: Let Extreme Angles Work for You

One of the problems of photographing buildings, especially tall buildings, is that very often the only place to shoot them from is standing right in front of them. Being so close means that you're only left with one angle: looking straight up. But looking up at a tall building with a camera creates something called the keystone effect that causes the building to look like it's falling over backwards, or at least leaning pretty severely. You can even get the same effect by laying on the ground and shooting up at a tall person with a wide-angle lens.

In most photo books (including the ones I've written) you're told that the solution is either to back father away from the building (the simplest solution) or to drop several hundred dollars on what's called a perspective control or "PC" lens (the more exotic solution). If you happen to love photographing tall buildings, a PC lens is actually not that bad of an investment (that is, if you own a DSLR), but it's really a specialty item and only a handful of pros that I know actually own one.

But there is another very creative way to handle tall buildings and that's just to go with the flow--exploit the wildness of the extreme angle and exaggerate the lean. In the shot of the old New England clock tower shown here, I made the lean even more extreme by letting the tower run diagonally through the frame. Instead of looking like a mistake, the shot now looks more like a dramatic magazine cover (or maybe a still frame from Hitchcock's Vertigo). The great thing about working with buildings like this is that you can do it with even the simplest of point-and-shoot cameras. The closer you get and the more extreme the angle, the more dynamic your composition will be.

Also, set your camera to the aperture-priority exposure mode if you can so that you can select a small f/stop (large number) and get maximum depth of field to keep the entire tower or building in sharp focus.

Intensify Reflections

I love to photograph reflections, whether it's a neon sign in a puddle at night or a landscape reflecting in a pond or river. The problem that you run into with reflections, however, is that they are usually somewhat darker than the scene and don't look as vibrant as the main subject does. Sometimes that's fine, you want the reflection to be a bit subdued compared to the actual subject or scene. But sometimes it's nice to pump up the reflection a bit, just to add some snap to the scene.

One really quick and easy way to build up or intensify a reflection in editing (I work in Photoshop, but this will work in almost any editing program) is to "select" the reflection area and then increase either the saturation or the contrast and brightness until it more closely matches the subject. That's exactly what I did with this photo of the beautiful Chateau de Chenonceau in the Loire Valley of France, which is built over a river and so always has a nice reflection. But while the reflection was pretty, it just didn't have the vibrance of the building in the late-afternoon sun.

So, to pump things up a bit, I simply used the polygonal lasso tool to select the reflection area of the scene. I just started at the left edge of the frame then worked the tool through the "horizon" of the reflection (where the building met the water) from left to right, then followed along the bottom half of the image (just tracing the edge of the frame)--rejoining the selection where I began. Then I used the hue/saturation tool to saturate the yellows and reds (I selected each color separately) to increase the color. I then used the curves tool in the selected area to enhance the contrast until it more closely matched the top half of the frame. It's totally simple to do and it's harder to describe than to do. By the way, you can fudge the selection edges (at the point of reflection) by using the "feather selection" tool (select>modify>feather) to feather the edge by a few pixels--which I also did here. Then I closed the selection.

As a last step I used the color balance tool to make the entire image a bit warmer (yellow) and also used the contrast tool to increase the contrast very slightly. The image is very similar to what I "saw" in my mind's eye in reality, I just gave it some help in Photoshop.

Keep It Simple

In my last post I talked about using silhouettes to keep things simple and that got me thinking about the concept of simplicity in general.

There is a tendency in all photographers to try and include everything we see in one frame. It's as if the more we show at one time, the more we'll get our ideas across. Exactly the opposite is true, however: the simpler that you keep your compositions, the clearer your vision becomes. Keeping things simple though requires a thoughtful process of elimination and forces you to look at the image on your LCD and ask one simple question: What don't I need here?

I am particularly susceptible to overloading the frame when I'm traveling in a new place and I'm very excited by the surrounds. While traveling in Iowa recently (perhaps it was the simple surroundings) I decided to force myself to keep my compositions as simple as possible--often just showing a single object in the frame. It was a lot of fun to see how far down I could strip a landscape and still come up with an interesting shot. When I first saw this barn (outside of Des Moines, Iowa), for example, I was thinking of including it in a much wider farm scene. But as I began to eliminate other things like the fields, a small pond, the farmhouse, I began to see that what had really caught my eye was just this wonderful old barn.

When you're photographing any scene, see how many elements you can strip away and still have a strong photo. My guess is that the more you take away and the simpler you make things, the stronger your images will become.

Discover Architectural Details

Whenever I teach a class in photography the first assignment I give students is to photograph a piece of architecture. The practical reason I have for doing that is that everyone can find a building easily, while not everyone can find a great sunset or a pretty farm scene at will. Also, buildings don't run away from you the way your pets or other people might. Once you spot an interesting building you're pretty much free to explore it from as many angles as you can think of and in all kinds of different lighting and weather.

While overall views of buildings can be interesting, the real beauty of architecture is in the details. Whether it's the sign that says "Spike" over the doghouse door or the ornate embellishments of a cathedral, buildings are rife with photogenic detail. For example, I spent an entire afternoon photographing just some of the thousands of tiny details on the facade of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. The shot of the figure here is just one of several hundred exposures I made. A zoom lens is a great tool for shooting details because the wide settings will let you photograph things like arches and doorways while the telephoto zoom settings will let you snatch more inaccessible details. No matter what the subject, grand or simple, spend some time with your building and watch as its personality and aura change as the light changes in direction, color and intensity.