Winter wood

Log pile and barn at Peck Farm Park in Geneva, Illinois.

Foreclosed

There are a lot of empty houses around, and if what I hear on the news is true, there will be a great many more in the months ahead. I recently was hired by a real estate company in Chicago to photographically document a number of properties they represent.



I was told to be very trigger happy when it came to capturing the condition of the properties. An old two-story structure with a full basement garnered about 250 frames to record the effects of age, use and abuse.

What started as a "just the facts" approach changed about midway through this particular home. As I framed up shot after shot of wear and decay, I began to see stories in the details of the old house.



Perhaps I've found a muse to keep me occupied over the winter months ahead.

And there's no lack of subject matter.

Against the storm

The lighthouse at Wind Point, north of Racine Wisconsin, set against a backdrop of turbulent skies.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Down Michigan Avenue

The view from about 24 stories above the streets of Chicago. Michigan Avenue, looking south from the Intercontinental Hotel. Taken during a break in a photo shoot there earlier this month.

Tribune Tower is at the left edge of the frame, Merchandise Mart is just past the Radisson. Sears Willis Tower is just peeking at the upper right.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

The first and last

I spent the better part of the day yesterday photographing landmarks in Elgin, illinois as part of the Elgin 1440 photography event. Sponsored by the city's Cultural Arts Commision and a local newspaper, the event is designed to capture a day in the life of a city through the eyes and cameras of its inhabitants. The numeral 1440 refers to the number of minutes in a day.

I started the day at about 5:00 a.m. intending to catch the sunrise from the downtown area. While en route by car to downtown, the sky lit up with a sun pillar, a phenomenon where the first rays of sunlight beam straight upward in a pillar of light. Being in a moving car and not able to easily switch from the wide angle lens to a telephoto, I did not get a clear shot of the pillar. Ah, well. I hope someone else did.

I'm posting one of the first photographs of the day and one of the last. The photo above is the Elgin skyline at sunrise, featuring the Elgin Tower Building. The photo below is of the newly built Sherman Hospital at dusk with its geothermal lake in the foreground. In between were about 200 assorted pictures of places and people doing their thing on a pleasant spring Sunday in Elgin.



At midday, I met a reporter from the local paper who chatted with me for a bit about the 1440 Event and my part in it. The result of that conversation is a mention in the lead of a story in today's paper and a couple of quotes from me. Nothing terribly profound, I'm afraid, but at least they spelled my name right.

News story on Elgin 1440.

Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Rochelle, Illinois

Wandering through my photo archives yesterday in search of a photo and came across this forgotten gem taken last August. An electric generating facility and water tower in Rochelle, Illinois at twilight. The last light of the day cast rose colored hues as the sky darkened into a deep blue. The moon doesn't hurt things, either.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

But when it's nice enough out to fix that leak, it ain't rainin'

An old barn sits within the confines of the Goose Lake Prairie State Natural Area near Morris, Illinois. I like old barns. I had a camera with me. You know the rest.



It's a real fixer-upper, which, unless there's some historic significance to this structure, will never get done. For now, the gaps, wood rot, rust and decay make for good photo fodder.



Photographs © 2010 James Jordan.

Gone fishing

Good photo for a Friday. Norman General Store, Norman, Wisconsin.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Framed

A long time ago, when I was a fledgling graphic designer and commercial illustrator, I landed a gig creating renderings of home designs for a local builder. Looking over the first set of rough drawings, the client said the houses looked good enough, but "you need to find a way to frame the subject to keep the viewer's eye from wandering off the page." We eventually settled on adding strategically placed tree limbs and other landscaping here and there to do the trick.

Taking a long walk on a long pier to get close to the Sturgeon Bay Canal lighthouse, I noticed the meandering overhead catwalk wrapped itself around the edges of the frame in an M.C. Escher-like configuration. Looked good to me. Plus, the Red Rule was calling.

I nestled the lighthouse just right of center -- I often try to imagine diagonal lines crossing the frame from the corners. I'll either place the subject along one of those diagonals, or put them in one of the four "V's" formed by the crossing lines. It's kind of a mashup of the rule of thirds and the golden mean. Weird but it works.

I finished it up with some High-pass post processing, which simultaneously increases and decreases contrast. Weird but it works, too. I'll explain it further sometime when I fully figure it out.

Until then , have a great weekend.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

A light on the veranda

Some architectural detail from the Ellwood Mansion in Dekalb, Illinois.

Isaac Ellwood was a barbed wire baron in the late 1800s/early 1900s. He made his fortune the old fashioned way -- he took someone else's idea, bought a share of it and proceeded to buy out all his competitors.

Ellwood did improve the process of manufacturing barbed wire and his company successfully sold millions of pounds of the stuff to western ranchers who were initially skeptical that two pieces of wire with a little bitty barb wound in could hold back a Texas longhorn. It did very well, thank you and so did Ellwood and his partners.

I love the styling of the lamps hanging from the porch that wraps around the Ellwood mansion. You'd expect a barbed wire man to have pointy things around his house.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

Little mansion on the prairie

Isaac Ellwood was one of the first men to successfully mass produce and market barbed wire back in the 1800s. He made a fortune from his home base in Dekalb, Illinois. Today, his home is a museum that pays homage to his twisted passions.

Photograph © 2010 James Jordan.

12 significant photos #2

A barn that time forgot. Made on February 14, 2009.

Continuing the retrospective on significant photos taken in 2009.

I photographed this barn while on the way to a photo session. I live on the edge of the Chicago metroplex and it's not uncommon for the occasional barn to intermingle with shopping centers and subdivisions. This barn sits behind a CVS pharmacy south of Crystal Lake, Illinois.

Normally, the barn would have been mostly hidden among the trees and brush, but a dusting of snow the night before painted the roof white and covered the foreground grass. It looked interesting, so I pulled into the pharmacy parking lot, walked over to the edge of the barn property and shot a few frames. I was finished in less than five minutes.

I didn't even bother to post the photo anywhere for a few days, but when I did, the reaction to the picture was instantaneous and deep. Views and comments poured in on Flickr and for a time, the photo appeared in the rotation of featured photos on one of the site's main pages, which generated more views and comments.

I'm still not exactly sure what the fuss was about, or what drew people to this particular image. I was definitely thinking "Red Rule" when I made the picture. The doors hanging askew adds some quirkiness to the barn and quirkiness is good in a picture. The doors perhaps add to the feeling of neglect and abandonment. And maybe I should have known about the fuss, seeing as how another picture of a barn after a winter snowfall is one of my most viewed online photos -- it's received nearly 30,000 views and after two years, still gets 70-90 views every day.

Hey, it's snowing today. Maybe I should go look for some barns.

NOTE: Fixed the link. Sorry.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Cape Neddick lighthouse

Every once in a while, I have a reason to dig into my archive of negatives and slides to hunt for a picture. I received an e-mail from a gentleman in Iowa looking to purchase prints of lighthouses. He supplied a list of the specific ones he is looking for and I happen to have photos of five of the lighthouses on his list.

The one I had to work hardest to find was this one. It's the lighthouse at Cape Neddick in York, Maine. This shot was taken in August of 2001 during a trip through several New England states. I was still learning the intricacies of exposing film properly, and had the courage (or foolishness) to shoot the entire trip on slide film, which leaves little room for error.

After examining the scanned hi-res file, it looks like the rookie did OK. This shot was a tad overexposed, but it works. Actually, the photo above is a black and white conversion from the color transparency. The color version can be seen here.

Back then, I was about three years into following something inside me that made me want to learn everything I could about photography. I have to say that nearly nine years later, the fire is still there, continuing to push me onward. It's nice to go back every once in a while and take a look at some of the mile markers that have been passed along the way.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

In storage

An old truck (just barely) protected from the elements. Seen near Viola, Tennessee. Black and white conversion of a color photograph. Created a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer in Photoshop to adjust gray tones.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Keeping watch

I admire those who don't flinch when things get tough.

The lighthouse tower at Wind Point, north of Racine, Wisconsin. I had gone there hoping to catch the harvest moon rising over Lake Michigan. This works, too.

Five-image HDR from a single RAW file. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

The covered bridges of Ozaukee County

Okay, make that bridge, singular. Ozaukee County, Wisconsin is home to exactly one covered bridge -- the last one still standing in Wisconsin. So, in one fell swoop, I managed to photograph every covered bridge in the state. Whew.

The bridge is a neat piece of engineering, it is held together with wooden pins -- no nails.



So why did they cover bridges? Local folklore holds that teams of oxen got skittish when crossing a bridge with a view of the flowing waters in the creek below. This bridge is situated on Cedar Creek near the town of Cedarburg, itself a place filled with the history of the German immigrants who settled there in the early 1800s.

UPDATE: A little Googling has revealed that there are in fact more than 40 covered bridges in the state. What the heck? Even though the majority of the bridges are less than 30 years old, this discovery makes me suspicious of the Wisconsin towns that claim the invention of the ice cream sundae, Flag Day and the Republican party.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

Under cloudy skies

The city of Chicago, as viewed from the waterfront of Evanston, Illinois to the north.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Tennessee barn

I saw a lot of these in rural central Tennessee -- high gabled barns with one or two "wings" to the side, quite different from the boxy barns located farther north.

This photo was taken in Northcutts Cove, one of the valleys adjacent to the Cumberland Plateau in central Tennessee, on a gray, foggy morning as the sun was steadily making headway into burning off the fog. Lots of low clouds drifting by.

I spotted the barn going by as my wife drove our car through the cove and asked her to stop and back up so I could get a couple of shots. The open gate, path to the entrance of the barn, tranquility on the ground and drama in the sky caught my attention (and oh yeah, the Red Rule), so I caught it right back.

HDR image from a single RAW file processed into five images at 1-stop intervals. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Little house under the starry sky

Went to Tennessee last week to deliver some stuff to my newly married daughter that wouldn't fit into their getaway car, see some family, relax a bit and hopefully get a look at the Perseid meteor shower -- something I've wanted to do for many years, but couldn't, either due to schedule, weather or location -- suburban Chicago is not the best place to gaze at the night sky unless you want to see the orangy glow of city lights that stretches for dozens of miles in all directions. I hoped that a location atop the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, nearly 1,000 feet higher than the surrounding area and far away from big city lights would make meteor viewing that much better.

The weather nearly added another year to the futility list. The week started off cloudy. The night of peak meteor activity was foggy. Not foggy enough to completely obliterate the starry sky, but foggy enough so that only the brightest meteors could be seen. But I did see them. They ranged from the briefest blips of light to long trails that cut across nearly half of the sky. The fog wreaked havoc with my digital camera, though. None of the photos I took that night were worth keeping.

The next night started off clear, and I hoped to finally capture some streaking meteors. No such luck. The shower was pretty much spent, and while a few meteors showed up, none were bright enough to register on my camera. And fog started to roll in after about an hour of sky watching.

So I settled for this shot -- a little house high atop the Cumberland Plateau, sitting underneath a starry sky. The house itself was lit by a mercury vapor light located a half mile down the road. The glow on the horizon is from the lights of McMinville, Tennessee, about 30 miles away. The points of light in the sky are much farther away.

Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.

Red barn at morning

Another quick post in a whirlwind week. Youngest daughter gets married tomorrow. Dad's taking pictures at the reception.

Have a good weekend.

Photo: Barn on the Timothy Garfield farm, Geneva, Illinois. Single image HDR. Photograph © 2009 James Jordan.