Two Train Stations

Miles City and Missoula Montana

Train Station - 23 November 2009 - Miles City, Montana - The only common architectual feature between this train station and the one in Missoula are the chains holding up the cover for the passenger platform and the yin-yang accents. The city is thinking about turning the station into office space. They had better pick up the pace - every opening admits countless birds to the interior - which can't be any good.

Northern Pacific Railroad Depot -Missoula, Montana. 31 July 2006. Nikon FE2 w/35-70 Sigma.

Lotus Elan S4SE

Boulder, Colorado

Lotus Elan S4SE - Boulder, Colorado - September 1973. This harvest gold example hung around the sports car dealership my entire senior year. In retrospect - I first saw it the year before. It would still be there when I graduated the following June. I REALLY wanted want one of these cars when I was younger. From high-school until my late twenties - the desire was always there. Pentax Spotmatic 35mm F:2.0 Super Takumar w/Tri-X.

Supermarine Spitfire LF16E

London, Ohio Supermarine Spitfire LF16E- London, Ohio - July 1970. Nearly forty years after taking this photograph I found myself appreciating the abstract quality of it and decided to take a second look... This will happen to you if you go over your older images. Only the passage of time might enable you to appreciate why you even took the shot. A case, I suppose, for negatives over digital. Pentax Spotmatic w/24mm F:3.5 Super Takumar on Tri-X.

HGTV Nightmare Bathroom

Carlsbad, New Mexico

HGTV Nightmare Bathroom - Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico - August 2003.
Nikon FE2 w/24mm F:3.5 Auto Nikkor.

Pool Break

Dayton, Ohio

Pool Break - Dayton, Ohio - January 1971. Home for winter break - I was just fooling around in the basement. I used the overhead lamp to light the pool table/balls. I side lighted myself with my dads' Bausch & Lomb slide projector. I set the camera on self timer and waited to make the shot. This was my favorite of the series. Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic w/35mm F:2.0 Super Takumar w/Tri-X.

Steam Tractor Covention

Heuston Woods, Ohio

Steam Tractor Convention - Heuston Woods Ohio - June 1970. The people who make the tractors go are at least as interesting as the tractors. I don't remember much about this event. There was, however, a flea market associated with this event. I bought a 1946 Martin fly reel for $26.00. I still have the reel and it has served me well through the years. Honeywell Pentax Spotmatic w/35mm F:2.0 Super Takumar on Tri-X.

Life in the Lower Brackett

University of Colorado

Kincaide

Blake

John Millard and Kincaide

John Geyer

Life in the Lower Brackett - University of Colorado - October 1972. Four of us just hanging out one evening. I know where Kincaide is today. I have an idea where my roomate, Blake is located. Geyer and Millard are a mystery. Leica M2 w/50mm F:1.5 Summarit on Kodak 2475 B&W Film.

Fishing

Oregon Inlet, North Carolina

Putting Out

Day's Catch

Fishing - Oregon Inlet, North Carolina - May 1989. One of the favorite things about a week on the Outer Banks of North Carolina was to charter a boat and spend the day catching fish out on the open ocean. No matter how much fish you caught - it was always (strictly speaking) the most expensive fish on the planet. Nikon FE2 w/35-70 Sigma

Impending Tragedy!!!

Circleville, Ohio

Impending Tragedy!!! - Circleville, Ohio - October 2007. Onlookers were transfixed as the hanging chair ride spun up to velocity nobody had ever witnessed. The disk made a turbine sound with the overriding high pitched keening sound of small children screaming.

First to exit the disk were small items like stuffed animals, handbags, glasses, shoes and socks. There was an occasional vapor trail of vomit.

The speed increased . . . until two chairs broke free. One traced a ballistic arc through the air - crashing through the windshield of a Ford Escort three blocks. The other chair and occupants impacted a building at it's third story, striking with such force that it left a Warner-Brothers Cartoon style hole in the bick wall. Two upstairs rooms were completely destroyed.

With a loud crack - the central axle failed and the disk went skittering through the Pumpkin Festival crowd leaving a path of unspeakable carnage. Twenty seven people were killed instantly, another 62 severely injured.

Nikon FE2 w/35-70 Sigma + 4X Neutral Density Filter on 50 ASA Color Negative Film

Swainson's Hawk

Walden, Colorado

Swainson's Hawk - Walden, Colorado - May 1987. The last good shot of the day as I recall. This hawk was very obliging as I fumbled around getting the longest lens I had available on the camera. I had this enlarged to poster sized - something I ought to do that with some other images. Nikon FE2 w/300mm F:4.0 Auto Nikkor

Firebush

Stoutsville, Ohio

Firebush - Stoutsville, Ohio - 27 October 2009. As I post this - less than four days later - the bushes are bare. That's the nature of autumn in Ohio. If the light is good and you're thinking about shooting some pictures - do it - otherwise tomorrow the weather will be horrid and all the leaves will be on the ground. Leica IIIc w/15mm F:4.5 Voigtlander and 200 ASA Kodak Gold.

Smokestack

Sudbury, Ontario

Smokestack - Sudbury, Ontario - June 1976. When I took this image, I believe this was the tallest freestanding chminey in the world. You can see it for miles. Pentax SP w/24mm F:3.5 Super Takumar

289 AC Cobra

Dayton, Ohio

AC Cobra 289 - Dayton, Ohio - Spring 1975. Looking back, I realize this is the only 289-cubic inch Cobra I have ever seen. All the others are the more hulkish 427 version. I like the moe delicate lines of this version. I undestand they were also more fun to drive than their more brutish successors. Pentax Spotmatic 35mm F:2.0 Super Takumar

A Vanished Place

New Burlington, Ohio

A Vanished Place - New Burlington, Ohio - July 1970. This particular place vanished beneath the rising waters of a recreational resevoir in the early 1970's. A friend of mine, Dan Patterson, did a lot of the photography for a book that described the town in its' final years.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Burlington-Death-American-Village/dp/0393320200

Zeiss Ikonta A w/Plus-X Film.

Globe Swift

Hamilton, Ohio

Globe Swift - Hamilton, Ohio - November 1987. On an unusually warm fall day two of these aircraft showed up at the same time. One pilot looked old enough that he could have been one of the Tuskeegee Airmen from WW2 - still enjoying - if only in his memories - piloting a P-51 Mustang through the skies. I Googled this particular aircraft and it turned up still flying out of Madison, Indiana. Nikon FE2 w/35-50mm Sigma

Truss Bridge - Yellowstone River

Fallon, Montana

Truss Bridge - 24 October 2009. Drove over to Glendive from Miles City, MT – doubling back once to shoot a truss bridge over the Yellowstone River just east of Fallon, MT. I have since Googled the bridge and discovered that some other folks are as impressed with it as myself – trying to get it listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

http://www.his.state.mt.us/shpo/register/YlwstnRvrBridge.pdf

“The Yellowstone River Bridge near the community of Fallon is a 2-span riveted continuous steel Warren through truss. The bridge is 1,142-feet in length and 29.9-feet wide and rests on three concrete piers. Built between 1943 and 1944, the bridge was one of only a very few major bridge projects undertaken by the Montana Highway Department during World War II. The bridge is a component of US Highway 10, a highway deemed strategically important to the nation’s defense during the war. It is the most massive continuous span through truss built by the highway department and one of the last truss bridges built by it. The bridge is distinguished by its long, massive spans rising above the eastern Montana prairie.”

Leica IIIc w/15mm F:4.5 Voigtlander – 1/200th sec at F:16. Double click on the image.

Barney

The Purple Velociraptor

Robin was driving her children to the new day care center in town. The children were addicted to the large purple velociraptor like a bird overtaken by the pheromones of his mate. They demanded that they be allowed to attend, they had to, they were born to. The name on the sign seemed rather odd but there were children out playing on the jungle gym's and swingsets in the side yard. The sun shined brightly yet seemed to cast eery shadows over the parking lot and building. Once parked, the children scrambled from their car seats, flinging open the sliding door on the "soccer mom" van. They scampered off into the building ahead of their mother. Screams of delight instantly turned to screams of terror upon entering the new facility. Seemed it lived up to it's name. In the back corner of the room was a solid concrete wall with shackles and chains, 2 children were there, bound in the chains, crying for their mommy's when all of a sudden, the lights dimmed and the scream of a hellish beast could be heard....all the teachers were chanting in a foreign tongue, and then ................it appeared!!!!!!! - by John Westenhaver

I never trusted that damned purple thing from the moment we brought it home from a garage sale. It always seemed to be leering at the outher stuffed toys. I begged my older brother to keep them seperated. Then one afternoon we came home and were confronted with this scene of carnage in our garage. It is true: "In the End there can be only One. . . "

TWA Convair 880

Dayton, Ohio

Shot from te observation deck at Cox International Airport. Try doing this today.

Very graceful airliner - daparting the gate.

Same airplane - being dismantled at a TWA facility in Kansas City, November 1979.

Convair 880 - Dayton, Ohio - August 1970. Back in the day one could go up to an outside observation deck and watch the comings and goings at Dayton. Somewhere in my collection of pictures are some taken at night. The first two images were taken on a sultry late August evening as the sun was just touching the horizon with thin clouds - hence no demonstrable shadow and the fuel truck that looks like it is storming around the parked airliner.

Only 65 Convair 880s were ever produced. Fewer of the 990 version were made. The vast majority are now gone. However - if you absolutely MUST see a Convair 880 - visit (of all places) Graceland. Elvis bought one and named it after his daughter. . . Both the B&W images were with a Zeiss Super Ikonta B.

Boeing B-47 Stratojets

Dayton, Ohio / Tucson, Arizona

Probably the most graceful of Boeings' jet designs.

The tiny out-rigger wheel is shown here to good advantage.

Boeing B-47 Stratojets - Fairborn, Ohio - July 1970 / Tucson, Arizona - July 2007. As a matter of fact, when the black & white images were made, the B-47 had already been out of squadron service for five years. I've got some slides of these birds actually flying around at Armed Forces Day airshows at Wright Patterson AFB. I've always thought they were very graceful aircraft. Zeiss Ikonta Super B and Nikon FE2.

Daughter on a Swing

Cincinnati, Ohio

Daughter on a Swing - Cincinnati, Ohio - October 1988. Maricela and I visited the newly opened Riverfront Park - and she got to swing on a big swing. I have regular photos of her on a swing having a good time. The shadow treatment seemed more graphic. Nikon FE2 w/35-70mm Sigma on Ektachrome.

Vanished Warrior

Dayton, Ohio

Curtiss C-46 Commando - August 1967 - Dayton, Ohio. My older brother and I would occasionally roam around the civilian aviation side of the airport looking for aircraft of interest. This was my first encounter with a C-46. It looked like a DC-3 (C-47) on steroids. Most of them saw service in the Pacific or China-Burma Theatres of operation. I did a search on the Internet to determine if this old bird still existed somewhere. The result was not encouraging. . .

78553 (c/n 22376) to N1535V Ortiner Air Service, ufo (withdrawn from
use, stored) Sunnyside Ent, Reg. Cancelled 5/2001.

Another C-46 operated by Ortiner Air Service went to a Confederate Air Force chapter in California. Maybe this bird became a hangar queen?