Monday, May 30, 2011

Reykjavik in the evening

When most people hear that Iceland has periods of almost completely dark days (at the shortest, daylight is only 2 hours long in the winter) they imagine what their city would be like if it were dark so much, which is indeed normally a depressing thought. But Iceland has "grown up" this way, so all the architecture works with the periods of dark. Tons of windows, with light pouring out everywhere. I really love it, and while I thought I would mind the short days, it's not really something I notice much.

Fortunately/unfortunately, the X100 turns twilight into daytime with it's superb high ISO performance, so you don't really get the full feeling of the dark yet light evening, but these were a few that caught my eye.

I love this spiral staircase within a glass cylinder.

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Windows, lights, and rooftop balconies.

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I really just love most buildings in Reykjavik.

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Thursday, May 26, 2011

missed one

This was my favorite image from the trip, so I'm not sure how Lightroom missed exporting it.

A water treatment plant in DC

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Detroit, Anne Arbor, and DC

This is the food restaurant at the flybus station. You get on the bus here in the downtown and it takes you the 45 minutes to the airport. I like the red and white, and of course the Svið logo (the sheep head, it's an icelandic dish) that says "Kjamm inn".

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Something about airports, their are so many shapes, colors, details, and while they are familiar, I think we don't look enough. We see an airplane or a runway or an airport vehicle and our eyes gloss over and the details don't pop out. I wanted to try to take a few more that focused on these aspects. On this one I love the blue of the plane and the walkway, with the yellow hose below it, and the red plane-mover in front.

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This is a stained glass window in the Reykjavik Airport. I love the details, but they are hard to focus on with how high it is at the airport.

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I also like the energy and changes in mood that happen at gates. When there is no one there, flight time is far away, everyone is just lounging and trying to pass the time, but as soon as an employee walks up, everyone starts getting antsy, many go up to talk to the worker, people stand close in order not to miss early boarding, etc.

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I liked the rhythm of these empty baggage carts.

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Look at all the vehicles and stuff going on here, so much detail.

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I love aerial shots of neighborhoods, the patterns are so interesting, and you can have a lot of fun trying to imagine the scale of stuff when you see cars or other things of known size.

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The door to the train system at Washington Dulles airport. Loved the blue glow.

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Something about convenience stores, all the details, neon signs, colors, and then the dirty textured concrete from cars driving all the time. I love the combo.

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There were so many interesting buildings in Detroit. I loved this brick building with windmill right in the middle of a bunch of office parks.

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Loved the purple on this one.

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And a front view.

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It was hard lining up symmetry while in a moving car, but got close with this one.

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So many cool buildings. I loved the white of this one.

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And the red with green trees plus mirror windows on this one.

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This conservatory was my number one place I wanted to see and photograph. Missed the opening hours so my viewpoints were limited.

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This was my second most wanting to photograph building, a beautiful mansion fully restored. This first is a 3 photo stitch with judicious perspective correction.

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From the side.

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And this is the garage for the house, hah!

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One of the many skyscrapers. I liked more the two colors of the tree in front.

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The Detroit museum had this great lit fountain out front.

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From the front I liked the statue up front against the arches.

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Across the street I liked the rhythm of the arched windows and trees out front.

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The brick color, and window structure and colors of both were really appealing.

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As you can tell, these ones are from Anne Arbor, a more maintained city near Detroit.

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To me this one feels like a render, it has such a flawless surface and nice bright yet textured surface. Plus the windows and sky matching has a nice feel.

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Both of these I knew would end up in B&W. I love the texture to it.

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The vines, vertical drain pipes, plus the tunnel out into the light all make this one of my favorite shots of the trip. So much texture without being a flat plane.

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I'm a sucker for grit added to rigid structures.

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Two image stitch, I just loved how covered in vines and leaves this facade was.

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I liked the delicate pink trees against the rough hard wall behind them.

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Something about this tree just made me happy. Maybe it's the lack of proper trees here in Iceland. Trees are the number one thing I miss about the US.

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I love all the framing elements for this. Dark core with bright surroundings.

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I liked the radial imposing composition of this building.

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The geometric sharp lines are what drew me to this, plus the deep shadow and angular sunlight.

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So many scenes drew me because they felt so clean and perfect, almost like architectural renderings.

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Others I like just for the repeating patterns.

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Another scene that felt like a render to me. Love that vibrant green tree. It's definitely colors that are unique to the X100 from the way my 5D renders bright saturated colors.

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The dark, light, dark pattern with green trees and central lamp post made me like this scene.

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I would have liked this scene even without the choir boys, but they give it such a sense of scale that it made it even better.

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Deep scene, clean lines, and a person for scale. Love it.

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My host on the trip. Love the shirt and sign colors together, plus the actual words.

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Back to the airport. Love the geometric solids with plenty of detail, and the deep turquoise is a great color scheme.

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Got stuck in DC because of the Grimsvotn volcano delaying air traffic to Iceland, and got to hang out with two good friends. I took this photo because it's such a classic DC neighborhood scene.

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As soon as I glanced out of this window and saw the air traffic control tower I immediately lifted the camera up. I love the sense of scale.

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Classic airport scene, lovers saying goodbye.

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