One of the better captures from the Seattle Lake Union fireworks display this year. The pano mount helps to concentrate on the most pleasing part of the image. Approximately 40 foot stereo base.
Independence Day fireworks over Seattle’s Lake union, July 2023
Cusco is a fascinating town in Peru located near Machu Picchu, and is often where travelers acclimate to the high altitudes before heading off to the famous ruins. There are many old buildings built by the conquistadors, often using stones originally cut out by the Incan, scattered throughout the town. One of the more ornate and beautiful buildings is the Cathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Virgin, or Cusco Cathedral for short. While we were out walking one evening, I wanted to stop and get an interesting shot of the church lit up. While walking up the steps to the church, I noticed that there were two Quechuan women sitting on the steps. This was taken on my Sputnik, when it was still working properly, on Fuji Provia 100f.
Ages ago, I shot this view of the (then) new UVA Hospital with a Hasselblad, maybe two of them on a bar – in any case this is a cha-cha to obtain the necessary stereobase, which was probably around a foot, judging from the parallax in the image. I imagine the exposure was around 30 seconds. Extra credit for the astronomers in the group that can identify the stars in the sky:
UVA Hospital, Charlottesville, VA
My “day job” is technical illustration. My clients are engineers at the University of Virginia, mostly. One day I went to visit a lab, and discovered this gigantic machine. Impossibly complex in its construction, for all I knew it could have been a time machine. So I started calling it the “time machine,” whenever I mentioned to my engineer client, and that I’d like to come in some day to photograph it. The title of the image that I finally made says about the same thing. For real, this is a Directed Vapor Deposition machine. A big electron gun hits one material, vaporizes it, and the vapors are deposited onto another material. Believe it or not, it is not a custom made machine. You buy these things retail. Cost? about $1M:
Temporal Continuum Distortion Analyzer (Posterior Aspect)
In or around 2012, I had the opportunity to photograph inside a retired coal-fired power plant not far from where I live. This plant, in Bremo Bluff, VA, was the first “automatic” coal fired power plant built in USA. “Automatic” meant in those days that most of the valves, flaps, conveyor belts, and other machinery was centrally controlled. Which means, there was a central control room, where through the use of electrical switches, one could remotely actuate any of the hundreds of valves in the plant – as these were electrically actuated. I’m sure there was a measure of fear or distrust in the system early on, as plant operators were instead used to shouting control commands at a team of plant workers, on whom one could surely better rely to get the job done than the new-fangled electric motors.
I worked on three separate days in the plant to make photographs, using with great pleasure John Thurston’s custom TL-120-55 for the wide angle views. I am forever indebted to John for his generous loan of the camera to me that year. In this view we have my old friend Chuck Holzner up there on another level (see the white hard-hat?) taking some of his own pictures. Along the left side of the view, rising up through the various levels, is one of the four burners in the plant. These are 100 foot tall furnaces (not counting the smokestack outside the building!), that included Ash removal apparatus at the very bottom, a furnace chamber 1/3 of the way up including hundreds of pipes for heat exchange (i.e. for boiling water, making steam), and at the top a variety of filters to capture particulates in the exhaust. I’ll guess this was a three seconds exposure:
Bremo B 418 Main Room
Elsewhere in the plant, I captured this view of just a tiny fraction of the pipes and plumbing that, along with grated floors and vast spaces, characterized the place. Probably a thirty seconds exposure in this dark spot:
Bremo C 515 “Pipefitter’s Nightmare”
I’ll close with an image obtained in or around 2014 at the United States Botanical Garden in Washington, DC, where I fell in love with the “Jungle” greenhouse that is central to the place. In this three-stories tall greenhouse, one can commune with a variety of lush tropical plants, even in the deep of winter, and witness the slow motion battle between the built environment and the imprisoned flora. This picture was taken with a Sputnik, a good bit after sunset – I like the interplay of just a little natural light in the background, with artificial lights in the foreground. I imagine about a ten or twenty second exposure.
USBG-1302
This was another part of Oaxaca that I wanted to shoot at night. The market was very nearby, and the nightlife carried out into the streets. I really wanted to capture a Beetle while I was there as well, since they are such a part of Mexican culture and are common throughout. Needless to say, I was happy to see one pull up and park near where I standing while taking a different photo down the street. So happy that my ‘other’ Sputnik has sharp matching lenses, it really helps to get the shot right! Shot on Fuji Provia 100f film.
I wanted to get a shot of the zocalo (or center of town) at night. There was a lot of activity in Oaxaca at nighttime, and it is such a large part of the overall culture of Mexico. It felt very safe to walk around with a tripod and camera. Not many people paid any attention to me, which was exactly what I wanted. The wind was doing me a favor in making this image a bit more interesting. Shot on my Sputnik, with Fuji Provia 100f film.
End of the fireworks show where the pyrotechs pull out all the stops
4 From Bob Venezia
Timing was very unfortunate this year. I blame the Coronavirus. I received 2 folios within days of my state being identified as one of the world’s hotspots. The problem was compounded when several of my coworkers were ordered home because of potential exposures to the virus. For a while I was doing the work of 5 people. Even though by now there are 4 of us doing the work of 5, I’ve still been working long hours and not getting enough rest.
Sorry to have held onto the folio for so long. I’ll try to add some context to the photos in the coming days.
Skydiver is among my all-time favorite carnival ride shots. It’s the only time I captured the intermittent movement of this ride while it was loading. (My other captures of the ride show a more boring seamless disk when the ride was in full motion.
Photographers Playground is a slight hyperstereo shot at Bryce Canyon. At the time I was cursing these people who were messing up my nature shot. But clearly I ‘m an idiot, as you can see that they make the shot. Shot with Hasselblads at about 18 inches separation.
Fireworks (Sorry, I’ve already sent off the folio and don’t remember the exact title) is another of my hyper shots with forty feet separation.
And Edison Advances is shot with twin Hasselblads in a macrobox with a beamsplitter.
They say that ‘Guilin is the best scenery in Guangxi, and the best of Guilin is Yangshuo.’ There is no doubt that Yangshuo is a beautiful location in the world with it’s limestone Karst mountains and gorgeous waterways. I would highly recommend a visit. An added bonus is it’s little walkways and side streets such as this one at night. Mostly catered to tourists ( as most of this area is, for good reason), it’s an interesting area to visit. I enjoyed being able to safely take night shots throughout the town, and this shot being one of my favorites. Shot with my Sputnik MF3D camera on Fujifilm Provia 100f film.
Here’s another shot of Lijiang at night, of the famous waterwheels located in the south entrance of town. The water wheels were supposedly built roughly 800 years ago, around the time of the town’s origin. I wanted to capture the wheels in motion, so a nightshot it was to be! I enjoyed Lijiang immensely, despite the amount of tourists at any given time. The town has so much to see that it’s no wonder that it was so popular. Not to mention that I was there in the perfect time frame for weather. Shot on my Sputnik MF3D camera and shot on Fujifilm Provia 100f fim.
Lijiang is a beautiful city located in the Yunnan province of southwest China. A town full of cobblestones, old houses converted into hotels and storefronts, waterways and bridges galore. It’s no wonder that this town was overrun by tourists, mostly from China, and filled the streets day and night. I wanted to capture it’s beauty and it’s craziness at the same time. I figured a long exposure night shot would do the trick. This was shot with my Sputnik MF3D camera with Fujifilm Provia 100f film.
Shangri La is located near the province of Tibet in southwest China, in the Sichuan province. Not many tourists seemed to be there, despite the amount of local tourists in other parts of China. Maybe it was because there wasn’t much to see in the town except one of the largest prayer wheels in the world and a spectacular night time lighting of the local monastery. The town had been devastated by a large fire, destroying most of the original buildings only years prior to my visit. Needless to say, we did not stay in Shangri La very long, only 2 nights, before heading south to the more interesting provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi. Shot on my Sputnik MF3D camera with Fujifilm Provia 100f film.
Independence Day fireworks above Seattle’s Lake Union, July 2017
This year (2018) I aimed my cameras high based on the height of the fireworks from last year. That turned out to be sub-optimal, as they put on a “low show,” and I didn’t get nearly as many shots as I might have. I’m thinking next year I may try to go wide and capture the whole scene, with the barge and city background.
This was from the first year I successfully shot hyper firewords bursts from my twin-rig setup. I only got a couple of shots that year, but the results were good enough to keep me trying. I used a formula I got from Don Lopp to calculate the stereo base, and I came up with 22 feet. After Don looked at the shots he said, “You know, since you don’t have anything *behind* the fireworks you could double the base. Ive been shooting with a 40 foot base ever since. Shot with twin Hasselblads fitted with 150mm lenses.
Just a few houses down from us is an intersection that I’ve always judged to be hazardous. Melbourne Avenue intersects with Kenwood Lane in a “T” in such a way as to invite sleepy or otherwise impaired motorists onto your property. Melbourne goes over a little rise right before meeting Kenwood on a little steep downhill. The rise prevents a motorist from seeing the stop sign until about the last hundred feet before the intersection. If you don’t know the roads, and you’re going too fast, chances are you’d not be able to stop – especially because coming over the rise your car would be “lifting,” and your traction would be reduced.
To make matters worse, DIRECTLY in the path of Melbourne, i.e. exactly opposite Melbourne, is a house, 1321. When I first saw this arrangement, I immediately thought: I would not want to live in that house; but if I was forced into it, I’d always park some kind of large, heavy, junk car in front of the house. Well, of course the current owners never do that (and amazingly, STILL don’t do it).
So, coming home at night last winter, we noticed a lot of flashing lights just down the road from us. Jet is totally into emergency vehicles, so we went to have a look. I had a peculiar suspicion. Sure enough, an automobile was lodged in the living room of the house opposite Melbourne Ave. Upon coming closer, though, I noticed that it was not 1321 – the house right opposite the intersection – but 1323, the house next to it. The car had come over the rise much too fast and could not stop. The driver had tried to make a left turn, but came nowhere near completing the turn. They jumped the curb, plowed through some bushes, and ended up as you see in the picture, entering the house at a diagonal angle.
To their great fortune, the family was not at home. I ran back to our house and grabbed the Spud and a tripod. With a policeman’s permission I set up at the corner of the property. I shot a roll exposing between 15 and 30 seconds onto RXP (fuji 400ASA). Local TV and newspaper reporters were there too. In the aftermath the story circulated: this driver had been running from the police, all the way from interstate, outside the city. They had come into town at high speed, taking random turns, ending up at this very unsuitable intersection.
The house has just been repaired, some nine months later. I guess it took a while to get the insurance money straightened out. I’ve not yet talked to the homeowners about the event – I might give them a stereoview sometime as a conversation starter. But I have talked to the neighbors at 1321, where I always thought such a mishap would be the most likely: they were surprised by the event, but remain otherwise not much more concerned than before, still not parking their car in front of their house.
For the past year or so there’s been a hotel going up across the street from my studio. Though I swore some years ago that I was “done” with “clear buildings,” the proximity and thus convenience of this building stimulated me to make one last one. It’s the reason I bought a Sigma (DP-1 Merrill) camera: this last Clear Building will be shot with some decent resolution, so that I can make truly large prints.
That work has been digital and is ongoing. But on a recent early morning, I found the building looking quite attractive, complex and mysterious. I shot it with a Sputnik, shooting cha-cha to obtain a larger baseline – maybe 12 inches – to give it more depth and interest. I did not record exposures but I think I shot thirty seconds at f-11 onto Kodak E-200.