It’s been difficult to separate the new World Trade Center building from that terrible day in 2001, but we now have the benefit of just enough time that we can begin to discuss the tower, as a piece of architecture and as part of the skyline, on its own terms.

It’s generally simpler to capture tall skyscrapers like this from a distant vantage point; the classic photos of WTC are usually shot from Brooklyn or New Jersey. But here I wanted to show it as it’s seen in the neighborhood. The foreground buildings look taller in the frame, but the (much taller) One WTC tower still stands out, given its uncrowded position in the skyline, as if its neighbors maintain a respectful distance.

This was captured with the Rodenstock 70mm/5.6 HR Digaron-W lens. A large image circle allows room for considerable movements, used here to swing to selectively focus on the WTC tower. A polarizer darkened the clear sky a bit, as well as taming some of the highlights reflected off the glass wall of the tower.

The shape of the new One WTC makes the light catch it differently throughout the day and in different weather. I made several exposures at different times before settling on this one.

@[email protected] sadly, it was more like, “don’t plant any vegetables or go in any fenced off areas. Good luck”.

@crawshaw So isolated though.

@quinn The Bay Area has a remarkable density of former WWII-era military bases that turned out to be radioactive.

By now many, though not all, of the structures from the island’s military era have been demolished (including the bowling alley in the photo). Environmental remediation is proceeding slowly.

A small community of mostly low-income families live in the island’s housing, and some of the larger buildings are used as sound stages for film production and related industries.

San Francisco’s Treasure Island is a weird place. An artificial island built adjacent to Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the Bay Bridge, it initially hosted the 1939 World’s fair, with plans to then use it for the city’s main airport. At the start of WW II, the US government appropriated it for use as a Naval station. After the Cold War, the government returned the island to the city. It was extensively contaminated by radioactive waste from decontamination training conducted on the island.

This was captured with a BetterLight scanning digital back and Nikkor 90mm lens on a Sinar P 4x5 camera.

This now-demolished bowling alley was part of the Treasure Island Naval Station, closed about 15 years earlier and then just starting to be redeveloped (a process that’s been slowed by serious environmental contamination).

The composition emphasizes the simple lines of the structure and the isolated, rather desolate setting.

Tree mating season, with pollen in the air everywhere, is an especially precarious time to change lenses outdoors.

Some cameras have an auto vibrate function that shakes dust off the sensor when you power the camera on or off. My main camera doesn’t have that, but I’d definitely enable it if it did.

Anyway, these habits are simple enough, and have saved me a lot of post-processing and sensor cleaning hassle.

The first is a HEPA-filter equipped blower bulb. I use the Orbit bulb, which I got from B&H for about $25. Any time the sensor is exposed or I change lenses, the last thing I do before closing up the camera is blow off every surface. It’s become an automatic habit.

The second is a small, thin, waterproof ultralight picnic blanket/ground cloth, which I put down to give me a clean surface on which to set lenses, etc. Weighs almost nothing. I have the “Odoland” brand from Amazon, about $10.

@[email protected] Any day now.

@[email protected] All the colors are equally represented!

Perhaps if I were better at photography I’d be able to take less blurry pictures.

This motion study was captured with a Zeiss 40mm lens on a Pentax 645Z camera and 10 stops of neutral density. The 13 second exposure was timed so the train was passing in front for roughly half the exposure. The regular corrugated surface of the commuter train worked well to allow the station building to retain detail while still clearly showing the train streaking by in front. A freight train (which passed by earlier) worked comparatively poorly for this.

@CStamp It’s one of the better examples, at least.

The Washington Hilton, completed 1965, was designed by architect William Tabler. It’s notable not only for its distinctive exterior, but also for the prominent events hosted there. The hotel is or has been home to the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, the National Prayer Breakfast, the Shmoocon conference, and the 1981 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, among many other things.

It has extensive back-of-house facilities and security features to accommodate high profile VIPs.

The result here is about 170MP in 16x9 format, which is sufficient for very large prints that retain a great deal of detail (I’ve printed this at 6 feet wide).

Mid-Century Modernist architecture, and Brutalism in particular, is easy to dismiss as being superficially lifeless and uninteresting, but at its best (and with the right eye) these buildings can be seen as sculptures in the landscape. I don’t always appreciate them, but they’re often more interesting than they first seem.

This is a fairly conventional architectural composition, emphasizing the curved facade. To get a high resolution capture of the wide structure, this was made as a stitched composite of two captures with the Rodenstock 32mm/4.0 HR Digaron-W lens. The Phase One back was shifted left and right by about 12mm.

By using shift movements at a fixed perspective, the two captures can be stitched directly together into a panorama without needing to transform the frame geometry (as you would with panning).