62. Stairs - August 17-22, 2014
Jerry-
Here be my stairs photo. It's in an old part of the U of M medical school, last time I was there it was to photograph docs and cadavers in an anatomy lab. So its sort of creepy. These are the Jackson Hall stairs and my first shot had no human subject in it and I felt something was missing. Since there are regulations regarding the use of cadavers, I abandoned that idea. I was about to add one of the passing professors but she wasn't keen on the idea. So my red pocket t-shirt came in handy!
Properties: D5200 with 16-85mm at 16, f 11 at 1/4, iso 400. Used a tripod and a little Nikon remote. Amazing how sharp photos get with a tripod. The original file is really nice and crisp.
Here be my stairs photo. It's in an old part of the U of M medical school, last time I was there it was to photograph docs and cadavers in an anatomy lab. So its sort of creepy. These are the Jackson Hall stairs and my first shot had no human subject in it and I felt something was missing. Since there are regulations regarding the use of cadavers, I abandoned that idea. I was about to add one of the passing professors but she wasn't keen on the idea. So my red pocket t-shirt came in handy!
Properties: D5200 with 16-85mm at 16, f 11 at 1/4, iso 400. Used a tripod and a little Nikon remote. Amazing how sharp photos get with a tripod. The original file is really nice and crisp.
Byron-
This staircase is in the old Munsingwear Building it is now International Market Square. It is the largest double helix stairway in the United States. The photo was taken looking straight up.
This staircase is in the old Munsingwear Building it is now International Market Square. It is the largest double helix stairway in the United States. The photo was taken looking straight up.
Deron-
I went super simple on my submission; the gasoline storage tanks in Rialto, CA.
I went super simple on my submission; the gasoline storage tanks in Rialto, CA.
Paul-
I was out with my daughter earlier this week shooting what I hoped would be a decent picture for her high school yearbook. It’s her senior year so it has to be something special—something she won’t hold over my head 30 years from now as her reason for placing me in a third-rate nursing home. Anyway, I spotted this shot as we were getting ready to head to another location. To my mind, the figure looks like a forest nymph (Dryades in mythology), because of the lithe figure and arboreal setting, but maybe the sculpture had something else in mind. Either way, I like how an unremarkable set of stairs lead to something beautiful and enigmatic.
We ascend a set of steps, literally or figuratively, every day of our life. It’s nice to think that occasionally there’s something worthwhile waiting the top.
Our story so far… Most locals say calling Suzie Derkins—an eleven-year old Girl Scout living in Topeka—an “entrepreneur with initiative” was both an understatement and the horrible result of having two affluent parents who pushed their daughter to be at the top of the cookie-selling chart each year. In 2012, regional Girl Scout officials chose to turn a blind eye when little Suzie sold $79,725 worth of cookies by renting out a hall at her father’s country club, flying in a professional stripper from Reno, and promising a bottle of Laphroaig Islay Single Malt for every 500 boxes purchased. And they did so again in 2013 when Ms. Derkin’s cookie tally brought in a staggering $193,300: her sales effort aided by (it is now alleged) an offer to withhold sending the Topeka Capital-Journal “sensitive” photos of a local school board member, a pastor, and Teamsters official taken at an afterhours gentleman’s club in exchange for “a cookie donation.” But the Girl Scout Board had had enough this year when the ambitious troop member—seeking to raise over $300,000—was caught at a local Target store augmenting her stock of Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties with: two crates of Kalashnikov rifles; a half kilo of “China White;” eight of her mother’s Coach purses; a Jaguar XKE (reported stolen by its owner in 1977), and what doctors identified as a human liver iced down in a Coleman picnic cooler. A picture of father Leonard Derkins, mother Delores Derkins, and Suzie Derkins entering the Shawnee County Courthouse was caught (page 7) by Capital-Journal photographer Lisa Ganderthrush using an Olympus E-500 with a 14-45mm zoom lens (shot at 45mm); set at 1/80 sec. and f10. The ISO was 400. 10:00am light.
I was out with my daughter earlier this week shooting what I hoped would be a decent picture for her high school yearbook. It’s her senior year so it has to be something special—something she won’t hold over my head 30 years from now as her reason for placing me in a third-rate nursing home. Anyway, I spotted this shot as we were getting ready to head to another location. To my mind, the figure looks like a forest nymph (Dryades in mythology), because of the lithe figure and arboreal setting, but maybe the sculpture had something else in mind. Either way, I like how an unremarkable set of stairs lead to something beautiful and enigmatic.
We ascend a set of steps, literally or figuratively, every day of our life. It’s nice to think that occasionally there’s something worthwhile waiting the top.
Our story so far… Most locals say calling Suzie Derkins—an eleven-year old Girl Scout living in Topeka—an “entrepreneur with initiative” was both an understatement and the horrible result of having two affluent parents who pushed their daughter to be at the top of the cookie-selling chart each year. In 2012, regional Girl Scout officials chose to turn a blind eye when little Suzie sold $79,725 worth of cookies by renting out a hall at her father’s country club, flying in a professional stripper from Reno, and promising a bottle of Laphroaig Islay Single Malt for every 500 boxes purchased. And they did so again in 2013 when Ms. Derkin’s cookie tally brought in a staggering $193,300: her sales effort aided by (it is now alleged) an offer to withhold sending the Topeka Capital-Journal “sensitive” photos of a local school board member, a pastor, and Teamsters official taken at an afterhours gentleman’s club in exchange for “a cookie donation.” But the Girl Scout Board had had enough this year when the ambitious troop member—seeking to raise over $300,000—was caught at a local Target store augmenting her stock of Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Patties with: two crates of Kalashnikov rifles; a half kilo of “China White;” eight of her mother’s Coach purses; a Jaguar XKE (reported stolen by its owner in 1977), and what doctors identified as a human liver iced down in a Coleman picnic cooler. A picture of father Leonard Derkins, mother Delores Derkins, and Suzie Derkins entering the Shawnee County Courthouse was caught (page 7) by Capital-Journal photographer Lisa Ganderthrush using an Olympus E-500 with a 14-45mm zoom lens (shot at 45mm); set at 1/80 sec. and f10. The ISO was 400. 10:00am light.
Kevin-
This week's WPOTM theme was a little challenging for me, simply as I didn’t see a lot of way to interpret Stairs, as opposed to Steps for example. At first I became interested in researching particularly long stairways and found (surprise) a web site dedicated to that... http://www.publicstairs.com/.
There were a number of interesting and long stairways in Minnesota, but having just been to the North Shore of Lake Superior I didn’t, for example, want to make another drive up to that area to capture a long stairway at Minnesota’s Judge CR Magney State Park.
But there was a listing for a place in St. Paul that really intrigued me. Raspberry Island. What? Where? It was hard to even learn much about the place, but it looked like it had some pretty intriguing stairways. Raspberry Island is in the middle of the Mississippi River, in downtown St. Paul, beneath Wabasha Street which crosses the river there.
Finally, with what little information I had, I drove to that area, parked and walked across a small bridge to the island. There are four stairways leading from the public park on the island to to Wabasha Street. Everywhere I looked and every angle I looked from was an intriguing image waiting to be captured.
Besides the stairs, Raspberry Island is a park. There’s a bandshell, and the Minnesota Yacht Club is located there as well. From different points on the stairs you can see views of downtown Saint Paul, trains hauling freight, barges being pushed down the river, yachts moored at the docks, and a lift bridge that raises to allow passage of such.
The image I’m actually going with shows a portion of one of the stairways (with other portions visible through the railings) and Raspberry Park, its bandshell and some yachts below. Nikon D4s, hand-held, Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens set to 14mm. f/11 at 1/100 of a second. ISO 100...
This week's WPOTM theme was a little challenging for me, simply as I didn’t see a lot of way to interpret Stairs, as opposed to Steps for example. At first I became interested in researching particularly long stairways and found (surprise) a web site dedicated to that... http://www.publicstairs.com/.
There were a number of interesting and long stairways in Minnesota, but having just been to the North Shore of Lake Superior I didn’t, for example, want to make another drive up to that area to capture a long stairway at Minnesota’s Judge CR Magney State Park.
But there was a listing for a place in St. Paul that really intrigued me. Raspberry Island. What? Where? It was hard to even learn much about the place, but it looked like it had some pretty intriguing stairways. Raspberry Island is in the middle of the Mississippi River, in downtown St. Paul, beneath Wabasha Street which crosses the river there.
Finally, with what little information I had, I drove to that area, parked and walked across a small bridge to the island. There are four stairways leading from the public park on the island to to Wabasha Street. Everywhere I looked and every angle I looked from was an intriguing image waiting to be captured.
Besides the stairs, Raspberry Island is a park. There’s a bandshell, and the Minnesota Yacht Club is located there as well. From different points on the stairs you can see views of downtown Saint Paul, trains hauling freight, barges being pushed down the river, yachts moored at the docks, and a lift bridge that raises to allow passage of such.
The image I’m actually going with shows a portion of one of the stairways (with other portions visible through the railings) and Raspberry Park, its bandshell and some yachts below. Nikon D4s, hand-held, Nikkor 14-24mm f/2.8 lens set to 14mm. f/11 at 1/100 of a second. ISO 100...