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!

9-11: In Memory of Peter Hanson

Today's posting is one that I posted originally on 9-11-2010 and tonight I was rereading some of my 9-11 postings (I've run a few) and looking at some related photos and I came across this and decided it deserves re-publishing. One thing you will notice that's different comes up in the final paragraph. Also, I mention another 9-11 photo toward the end of this entry and I will publish that photo again on Sunday. Please take a moment to follow the link to a letter from Peter Hanson's mother below. And by the way, if you're never been to the Statue of Liberty in person (though I'd see her dozens of times, I didn't go out to Liberty Island until a few years ago), make plans to do it this fall--you will never think of America or liberty or 9-11 in the same way again:

As far as I know I didn't know any of the people who died on the airplanes that day, but one was a regular listener to the noncommercial FM radio station where I have done radio for many years (WPKN). Here is the story of that day and a link to a memorial page about him:

I had been up all night writing the previous night and was sleeping (what else is new?) when the planes hit the WTC and my friend Lynne called around 10:30 a.m. and woke me and asked: "Are you watching the news?" And then she told me: "The World Trade Center is gone, the Pentagon has been bombed and there are other planes still in the air that they believe have been hijacked."

I thought she was joking, but I flipped on the local Connecticut TV station and the first thing I heard was the reporter saying he'd just spoken to a person that paid a cab several hundred dollars to drive a car full of people out of the city. Everyone thought the entire city was under attack and they just wanted to get back home.

I was scheduled to do my radio show at 2 p.m. and so I just got up and went to the station. We had no idea what to do but we just kept doing "rip and reads" from the AP and relaying things we heard online on CNN, ABC, etc. We're a small noncommercial station, so we had no reporters anywhere on such short notice. Instead, we just opened the phone lines and let people talk or give us bits of news.

A friend of mine, a good reporter named Ken Best, came and joined me on the air and together we took a lot of calls. Most of the calls were either updating us on what other stations were saying--remember, this was happening live and we were on the air live, there was no delay--and people were calling to sympathize, rant or whatever.

About four that afternoon a regular listener (a guy we call the "Trailer Guy" because he lives in a trailer in the woods and calls whenever I'm on the air) called and told us that his best friend, and a guy that was a regular listener to the station when he was in Connecticut (he grew up here but moved to Massachusetts), was on United Flight 175. His name was Peter Hanson. We took Trailer Guy's call on the air (again, live, no delay) and he told us that he had just received a call from Peter's distraught father. Peter had called his father from the air and said he knew what was happening, knew what had happened to the first plane (United 175 was the second plane that flew into the WTC--the South Tower) and that he was just calling to say, "I love you Dad, goodbye."(I learned later that his parents actually watched live on TV as the plane hit the tower.)

There was utter silence at our end. Suddenly the whole thing became a personal, hometown tragedy and it was right in the room with us. Ken and I were devastated. Or should I say, more devastated.

Peter had his wife and daughter with him and he was taking them on a business trip and then to Disneyland. He was 32. His daughter Christine was two-and-a-half years old and was the youngest victim of 9-11. His daughter was very excited to be going to see Mickey and Pluto. Peter and his wife and daughter died, no doubt, curled in each others arms.

You can read a letter and a memorial from Peter's mother here.

One other odd thing about that day, that has never left me, was that because so many of our neighbors in southern Connecticut commute to New York every day, there were literally hundreds of cars in train stations that were not returned to that night. The police set up security at all the train stations to be sure the cars were left alone. Families went to the train stations and waited for husbands and wives and children, many of whom never came home.

Even today in Manhattan, you will see fading little signs with the photos and names of victims, signs that were posted in the days after the attack. People looking for their loved ones, their friends.

In yesterday's posting I ran a photo of a memorial to 9-11 in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the Hudson from where the towers stood. It is made of a beam of the WTC and is decorated with things that people have left: flags, angels, etc. When you come across this memorial in person, and then look up and see the gap in the skyline, it just about takes you to your knees.

And yet Bin Laden still walks this earth. Let's hope not for long--there is a place in hell waiting for him.

On the Neon Prowl Again...

I've been out on the prowl looking for neon signs again, hopefully to be used in a new book. It's not that easy to find great old neon where I live in Connecticut, but I've always liked this sign in a car dealer's window. I shot it while waiting for Mexican take-out food--the car place is just around the corner from the restaurant. Glad I had the camera with me. I didn't bother to unload a tripod (afraid a cop might ask why I was carrying a big tripod at night in a closed car dealership--you'd be surprised how much suspicion that draws for some crazy reason), but leaned on a handy sawhorse. I shot it with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom (non-image-stabilized version--wish I could afford one!), but there was plenty of light: shot at IS0 640 1/160 second at f/10. There's an entire tutorial on photographing neon signs on my main site.

By the way, if you're in Connecticut or passing through, the little hole-in-the-wall restaurant is called Milford Pizza and is, oddly enough, a great Mexican restaurant--staffed by a really friendly group of Mexican cooks. It's in a small plaza a block in from the Post Road that you enter from Naugatuck Avenue (yes, by the little Devon Post Office). So that's my restaurant plug.

Here's my new book plug: My new book on Exposure, Exposure Photo Workshop is out and if you're interested in learning more about exposure, I think you'll like the book. It's got more than 300 of my photos and it will help you solve a ton of exposure problems. For under $20 it's a bargain on Amazon, too--it's nearly 350 pages and crammed with info.

New Exposure Book on the Amazon Bestseller Lists

Thanks in large part to the publisher (Wiley) doing an email blast about it, my new book Exposure Photo Workshop has made it to bestseller lists on Amazon just a week after it was released. Today it reached the #20 spot among photo books in its print edition and the #4 spot among photo books in its Kindle edition. (Remember, if you have an iPad or some other device, you can read the e-version in full color.) The book is in the top 10,000 books among *all* books on Amazon--and that's something like eight or ten million books. It's really nice to have a book sell this well so soon. Wiley did an amazing job with the design and reproduction and at nearly 350 pages it's quite a nice book. Thanks to my friends Derek Doeffinger, Jennica Reis and Gavin Zau for contributing such great photography to the book. In the coming weeks I'll run some photos from the book here and talk about how they were taken.

And please, if you don't see the book in your local library or bookstore, ask them to order it.

Boyd Norton's New Serengeti Book

Yesterday I had a wonderful long conversation with my photographer friend Boyd Norton and, as always, it was a very fun talk and I came away knowing much more about the natural world in general and Africa in particular. Boyd is one of the world's foremost wildlife and travel photographers and he has been leading safaris to Africa for more than 27 years. He has a brand new book coming out this fall called Serengeti: The Eternal Beginning and I'm sure it will be a landmark book on the subject. You can watch a trailer for the book here.

The Serengeti is a region of more than 12,000 square miles and is home to the largest animal migration on our planet. As many of you probably know, there is a plan being considered to run a highway right through this primal wonderland and it would spell ruin for the Earth's greatest wilderness. It would also no doubt mean the beginning of the end of tourism in Tanzania which would be a devastating financial blow that would far exceed any gains made by the highway. It's a complicated issue, but you can read more about it on the Serengeti Watch page (where you can also make donations to help stop the Serengeti highway). As it says on that page: "If we can't save the Serengeti, what can we save?"

I'll write more about Boyd's book (and hopefully run a few photos from it) as the publication date gets closer. In the meantime, this is probably the greatest ecological/wildlife issue of our lives, so I hope you'll take time to read more about it.

My New Book on Exposure Released

My latest book Exposure Photo Workshop (2nd edition) has been released (a week early!) and is now available on Amazon and at Barnes & Noble and is probably in most major bookstores already. This book is a total revision of the previous edition and features more than 100 new photos and virtually every page of text in the book has been updated. The book also features more than a dozen photos by my good friend and world-renowned photographer Derek Doeffinger, as well as photos by two of my former students, Gavin Zau and Jennica Reis. It's a very handsome book and the publisher, Wiley Publishing, did a superb job with reproduction.

There are also several new topics that weren't covered (or were only lightly touched upon) in the original, including High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI), an expanded RAW section, details of the latest mirrorless (MILC) digital cameras and much more. I spent nearly four months updating this book and I think it covers the subject of exposure better than any other book on the market. Shutterbug magazine said of the original: "...possibly the best book ever written on the subject." The book is also available as a Kindle edition and, on the first day that it was available, reached the top 100 Kindle photo reference books in the world (just click on the image to go to the Kindle page).

While the book covers the entire topic of exposure, there's nothing in it that will scare off or confuse any photographer--and yet I think it's complete enough to satisfy any advanced shooter. I worked very hard to break the entire subject down into easily understood pieces and every concept and technique is well illustrated. The book is also quite a bit longer than the original and is almost 350 pages long--a bargain for the price these days!

And, as always, if you have any questions about exposure or photography in general, I answer every email so feel free to write. And if I could figure out a safe way to put my email address right here I would--but you can find a contact form on my main site.

Favorite Photos & Places: United House Wrecking

If you're in the Connecticut area and you've never been to United House Wrecking in Stamford, it's worth taking a ride over. I'm a sucker for all things strange and outlandish and that's exactly what this place features--in great quantity. It's a kind of combination of architectural salvage house and antiques gallery and while these days it seems to feature a lot more repro stuff (and less salvage) than it did when I first went there (probably 30 years ago), it's still got a ton of fascinating stuff.

There are, according to their website, more than 2.5 acres of displays (indoors and out) and it's very easy to spend an entire afternoon there just wandering around and you'll find yourself smiling a lot! You'll also find yourself poking your companions and saying, "Wow, look at that, how cool!" Of course, most of the stuff is on the pricey side (how about a pair of Chinese Foo dogs for $40,000?), but there is affordable stuff, too. And these days who cares if you can afford to buy--the place is free to explore and the staff is friendly and what could be more fun on a nice summer day than to wander through acres of weird stuff? Definitely bring your camera, I spent more than two hours on my last visit just shooting snaps in the outdoor display area. Oh, and if you happen to buy those Foo dogs, give me a call, it would be the highlight of my summer to see someone drop forty grand on a garden decoration. I'll put them in my van and help you get them home.

My latest book The NEW Joy of Digital Photography (Lark Photography Book) is full of great tips and hundreds of pretty photos and I hope you'll check it out the next time your in Barnes & Noble. And tell your friends about this blog!