Reginald F. Lewis Museum

The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture is one of those places that I've just got to get to one of these days. It's less than two blocks from where I work, so I really don't have any excuse for not at least stopping by on a lunch break.

Reading Mr. Lewis' biography just a little while ago might just inspire me to go. Reginald Lewis grew up in a tough part of Baltimore, and by dint of hard work and perseverence, worked his way through college and eventually Harvard Law School. He founded the first African-American-led law firm on Wall Street, and in the '80s, became a CEO several times in leveraged buy-outs that saved and turned around several companies.

Mr. Lewis was also a great philanthropist, endowing foundations, scholarships, and other worthy causes with over 10 million dollars before his untimely death at age 50 in 1993.

The museum is a postmodern building that just shouts out to be photographed, as you can see.

Spider Man

I don't know how much they pay these fellows, but it can't be enough. This guy was about five stories up on the Candler Building, where I work, in downtown Baltimore.

Bromo Tower at Dusk

Sometimes it pays to work late.

I was heading back to the Light Rail stop about 9 PM tonight, and the sky was geting darker, but not yet black. Looking up just about a half-block away from my stop, I noticed how the nicely-lit the Bromo Tower contrasted with the dark blue sky.

I didn't bring one of my small digicam tripods with me today, but there was a handy, flat-topped traffic barrel in just about the right spot to rest Ben's flat-sided Canon A630. I took about 25 exposures at the longest tele setting (equivalent to 135mm on 35mm) from ISO 80 to 400. This was the best of the lot at ISO 100.

The Power Of Critique

My friend Warren at Friendly Photo Forummade a suggestion to crop out the "OAT RENTALS" at the top of the photo. I was just a bit skeptical - I had rather liked the bold, white-on-black lettering, but tried it.

Well, now I'm with Warren - the composition looks cleaner and more balanced to me now.

Here's some more feedback from Dolph on the same forum: "When I read about this art form, they always come back to 'keep it simple.' I like the second composition better. The original was attempting to tell two stories. This has one, and gives me the feeling of being at the docks ready to go fishing."

Well put - I think that makes sense.

What do you think?

Thanks, Warren!

Oat Rentals

The thing that first attracted me to this scene was the neon sign, slightly crooked, within the black and white frame of the window. But then the attendent, who had been out of my view on the other end of the dock, walked into my viewfinder, his shift almost over, and made a phone call. I thought his dark skin and white clothing complemented the non-color scheme of the rental shed in the background.

I held down the shutter button to shoot a lot of pictures with him sitting right there, but in this one, his body English and facial expression was the best of the lot.

Back at home on the computer, I noticed that the red life vests could make a nice design element, a triangle right into the left lower edge of the frame.

But only if I cropped the image to "OAT RENTALS."

Bromo Tower and ... Beatles

On one overseas business trip in 1978, I got to spend a weekend in Florence, Italy. At one point during a stroll around that beautiful city, I looked up and suddenly saw a familiar sight - the Bromo Tower of Baltimore!

Actually, it was the Palazzo Vecchio, but architect Joseph Evans Sperry used the tower of this 14th-century structure as inspiration for the 1911 Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower. Sperry's client was Captain Isaac Emerson, a sea captain and inventor of Bromo Seltzer.

The 15-story tower was originally topped by a 51-foot revolving replica of the deep-blue Bromo Seltzer bottle. Brightly illuminated at night, ships sailing up the Chesapeake to Baltimore would navigate by it. Until the Baltimore Trust Company Building claimed the title in 1924, the Bromo Tower was the tallest structure in Baltimore.

Since 1936, the Bromo Tower has been bottle-less, and by the sixties, the building itself had deteriorated.

The Baltimore Office of Promotion and Arts did a great job renovating the Bromo Tower just a few years ago. The former office building is now leased out as studios for artists.

In the photo above, the curved shape is the revolving rooftop restaurant of the Holiday Inn. Well, it doesn't revolve anymore, and the restaurant, Circle One closed in 1974, but there it is. It's only claim to fame is that the Beatles, on September 13, 1964, played a concert at Baltimore's Civic Center, just across the street, and then stayed overnight in the then-brand-new hotel. By the way, they did get to dine in the revolving rooftoop restaurant, and back then, it did revolve.

One West Pratt

Here's a closeup view the newer, western section of the Baltimore Convention Center. The repeated triangular truss design elements make it a very strong-looking building. Another exception to Baltimore's unfortunate dearth of fine examples of modern and post-modern architecture.

Taken with Ben's Canon A630 digicam. This is from this morning's walk to work from the Light Rail. My stop is right across the street from this part of the Convention Center. It was a dull morning, so I bumped up the saturation, which also bumped up the noise in the sky. So even though this is an 8MP sensor and the exposure used ISO 80, noise can still be a problem in these little cameras.

I pretty much cropped in-camera for this one, but then I cropped just a little more to get the little blue (sky) triangle as negative space at upper left. See all the positive and negative space triangles in this image? Do you think it worked here?