This is another shot from the M.A.P.S. Air Museum, the F-105B Thunderchief, “The Thud” waiting for its turn in the restoration hanger, as I am getting cleared for Takeoff.

Looking forward to a nice little trip in the near future, out of Ohio and hopefully I will be bringing back a lot of new material from a place I have never managed to get to in my almost 48 years of existence, so I am looking forward to the trip. A shout out to my photog buds for the great recommendations and to my special Empress for holding down the Fort, and managing two spoiled Siberian Husky hairball’s while I will be gone.

Keep an eye out for a new game of HDR Tennis that should start in the next day or so, and Bob Lussier should be posting the next round of the HDR Collaboration brackets some time this week as well, so until next time Cheers! I hope Alcatraz doesn’t keep me!

Have a great Day, thanks for stopping!

500px | google+ | Facebook

©Michael Criswell Photography

Happy Wednesday!
This was a shot I took a little over a week ago. The clouds and sky looked interesting early that Tuesday morning so I grabbed the camera as I headed out the door for work. Since I get to work before it is light outside I had to keep an eye on the developing sunrise out the shop windows. I snuck out shortly before 7:30. This is the Walborn Reservoir in little old Marlboro Ohio where my plant is located, a small little place that does not even have a traffic light, blink and ya miss it.

The cool part about Walborn Reservoir is that every year it becomes home to one of Ohio’s Bald Eagle Families. We visited the nest several times through the spring and summer, really beautiful birds to watch. I know some states have Eagles flying around in great numbers like we have Robins in Ohio. At one time even mentioning you saw an Eagle in Ohio people would think you were crazy, it’s nice to see they are thriving again in Ohio and we will look for them again in the spring. The actual nest is located in a tall pine tree that is located almost in the middle of the frame in the tree line in the background.

I was never at the reservoir early during the sunrise. I was testing a new camera body I recently purchased for a spare, I have a couple of actual shoots that are being scheduled and I got to thinking what if my 7D for some odd reason would stop working what would I do? So I broke down and purchased an older 40D body as a spare, fully compatible with my promote and a nice second rig to have. I would hate to think of being on vacation somewhere and not being able to shoot for some reason.

This was a hand held 3 exposure series captured with the 40D processed in Photomatix.

Have a great Wednesday, thanks for stopping!

500px | google+ | Facebook

Beechcraft SNB-5 Expeditor

With no good football to watch last Sunday we decided to head out to a great little museum close to home. The M.A.P.S. air Museum (Military Aircraft Preservation Society). This place is great, unfortunately not many people are even aware it exists.

I have shot a few in this place before but not with the new 7D and trusty Promote Control. We got there early and were greeted by some very nice volunteers. They proceeded to tour us around the facility giving us first hand information on some of the displays. They have several veterans that volunteer their time at the museum and share their knowledge and stories with visitors. There was a 91 year old WW2 veteran there that morning eagerly sharing his own accounts and favorite displays at the museum.

As it was still very cold outside, especially being at the airport where the landscape is so flat and barren. I left the Empress inside to enjoy a cup of coffee in the heated museum area and I met up with a great Vietnam Vet that was more than happy to brave the frigid temperature and high winds to take me outside the hangar where several planes were parked in various state of restoration. I captured this shot as I exited the main Hangar that houses the museum and several other aircraft on display. The shiny Beechcraft against the cloudy winter sky made a nice scene for me as I exited the building so I let the Promote start firing. The outside area was off-limits unless you had a guide with you, he was very nice and very patient as I shot several aircraft, had to stop when I couldn’t feel my fingers.

Turned out to be a great day of shooting with my Empress and some great volunteers at the museum.

Thank’s MAPS and thank’s for stopping!

500px | google+ | Facebook

Welcome back to the next round of our collaboration Group, it’s always a pleasure to be a part of this talented group of artists. Joining me this round, Jim Denham, Mark Garbowski, Jacques Gudé, Rob Hanson, Bob Lussier, Mark “Silent G” Gvazdinskas and Scott Frederick.

The set of brackets I chose came from the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston West Virginia, formerly named the Weston State Hospital. They offer photographic tours that take you into places the normal public tours cannot enter, very nice people who let you rip as many brackets as you can. Allot of bad things happened in this place in its last years, overcrowding, sanitation issues, things we probably could not imagine.

This set of brackets is one of those spots off the normal tour route, another building on the property off-limits to normal tours, obviously due to the decay of the structures and safety issues, but I will say, if you get the chance its worth the trip. As the sign indicates this was apparently a fallout shelter for the Hospital, so I present the groups efforts on The Fallout Shelter-

Theaterwiz-
These old places, regardless of the history and bad mishaps that may have taken place during the buildings existence, have to be the greatest places to explore and appreciate due to the fact that they are still standing, and that people have a chance to capture images to preserve some history inside of these great places. This was originally shot in the day and there was some strong light coming through the Window on the left. I wanted this to be a darker scene and really highlight the shelter so I used several filters in both NIK and OnOne to get the nighttime effect I wanted. I then added a little light shining down from the stairwell to illuminate the stairs leading to the shelter door. I finished it off by removing the rays on the floor from the window followed by using several Topaz filters to give me the effect coming from the shelter doorway, in the end I was happy with it.

~

~
Jim Denham-
Another fantastic set of brackets supplied my The Wiz – great stuff bud and appreciate the hosting this round! For some reason, when I saw the tone mapped image of these stairs, I could not stop thinking of the movie The Stand where Stu was making his way out of the Center For Disease Control in New Hampshire. They weren’t this eat up by a far margin, but it’s what hot me, so I went with it. The whole scene seemed to have a blue cast to it and he also had dreams regarding it, so I used both the blue cast and blue to adda dreamy effect. Added texture booster and detail in Perfect Effects, color and sharpening in Aperture, and the focus blur in Focal Point. Once again, great stuff Mike and thanks for sharing and hosting this round!

~

~
Mark Garbowski-
I’m going to break with protocol a bit on this one, and let my version more or less speak for itself. I think it’s reasonably clear to see what I did and  the why or the inspiration should be more fun to guess than just read. Technically, if anyone is interested, I used one of the many Graduated Filters in Nik’s Color Efex Pro to create the effect I wanted. It think it was “Bi-color User Defined,” but I’m not completely certain.
Once again, we’ve been treated with an engaging scene that was a blast to work with. Thanks, Mike.

~

~
Jacques Gudé-
(Jacques was traveling and unable to provide text this round)

~

~
Rob Hanson-
My version seen here was the second of two radically different outcomes from processing. I took a path with the first version that, now that I look back on it, was not the best possible choice.

It was tricky to discern what the best subject was in this frame, as there are so many good elements throughout, whether it’s the staircase, the light coming through the window, the right-side doorway, or any of a number of interesting patches on the walls. I decided to try to highlight all of those elements — allowing the eye to travel around the frame — by punching up details and adding some interesting coloration. Since Susan and I also have decorative paint and plaster business, it was fun to work on certain sections of the wall, my favorites being the dripping rust at the top of the landing and the foreground wall on the right side. For me, the walls as-they-were seemed a little bland, so calling out some of the wall details made for a fun experiment.

The end result was a bit too sharp and detailed, though, so along with my usual processing tricks I touched in a slight blur and some darkness in the less important areas in order to give the eye a break.

Thanks for the brackets, Mike. This was certainly some grungy goodness

~

~
Bob Lussier-
This was such a fun image to work on. I love the stairs, the fallout shelter and the light from the window. My default tendency for scenes like this is to try to bring out the details, but I decided to go in the opposite direction with this. I thought the “fallout shelter” theme called for a softer, glowing feel. After running the brackets through Photomatix, I brought the image into onOne Software’s Perfect Photo Suite and explored the space. I did some tonal adjustment, added some glow, a subtle texture and a grungy vignette.

~

~
Mark “Silent G” Gvazdinskas
What a blast to work on, Mike! Thanks so much for sharing. This was another set I’d never have access to without being a part of this crew. Keep the urban stuff comin’, fellas!! Pretty simple processing, here. I did a decent amount of lens distortion, a hearty crop and vignette, several filters in onOne’s Perfect Effects and a little bit of blur in Focal Point.

Music: Just about every Thievery Corporation song with Lou Lou on vocals.

Thanks again for letting us get after such a fun set, Mike!

~

~
Scott Frederick

Mike, The Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is high up on my list of places to explore and I’m so glad you provided us with some brackets from your visit!

I ran this image through post processing about 4 times. The first attempt was a B&W conversion, but I wasn’t totally happy with it! The next 3 attempts were due to CS5 crashing on me. I wonder if these brackets were possessed because no other image has ever done that before!

I decided to do a Jacques Gude inspired edit on this one using the Midnight Filter within Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro 4. I really liked the way the image was coming along using this filter and finally got through it without pulling my hair out!

~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
~
Thanks to the group for such a great variety and take on the TALA brackets, really liked the results, so much that while I was creating this post and checking out all the versions I processed an outside shot I want to share as well, this is a shot I got right out of the car waiting for the tour guide outside the building real early. The fog had just broken and the sun started to peek through and shine on the famous Trans Allegheny Clock tower on that great Kirkbride structure, thanks again guys!

Thanks for stopping!

500px | google+ | Facebook

Welcome back to the penitentiary!

The beauty of Eastern State Penitentiary, this place has so many great photographic angles it’s hard to leave once you get in the place, and you really cannot take too many shots while your in there.

This set of brackets was taken at a low angle looking up at the fantastic architecture in one of the ceilings in a corridor leading to one of the wagon wheel cell blocks. I really liked the lighting and atmosphere in the shot.

This was an 11 exposure set of brackets shot with the 7D and processed with Photomatix.

Stay tuned during the next few days. There will be a new HDR Tennis match starting on Facebook and Google+ this week, featuring brackets from Rob Hanson, the new match should be going live this week, download the brackets and take a shot at processing the image yourself and post your version for the world to see.

The Collaboration group is back in action again as well, right now the group is working on a set of brackets from Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston West Virginia, cannot wait to see what the group does with my brackets, should be fun and they should all go live here on the blog early next week, so stay tuned.

Thanks for stopping!

500px | google+ | Facebook

I hope everyone had a great Holiday Season

I have been a bit behind getting back into the swing of things since 2012 has come upon us.  I thought I would start of 2012 with a simple skyline HDR of Pittsburgh taken right after dark back on Black Friday after Thanksgiving. This is a great area for shooting, one of my favorite views of the Pittsburgh skyline taken from Mount Washington area of Pittsburgh. You are bound to see a few tripods setup if you ever get up that way to shoot. This was the same area that I snapped this panorama of Pittsburgh during the day.

Check out the latest from our HDR Collaboration, that was hosted on Mark  ”Silent G”‘s blog Monday, great stuff!

I will be serving up the next set of brackets for the group to process, so stay tuned for a new blog post coming in the next few days. Now, on to catch up with everyone.

500px | google+ | Facebook

Happy Holidays!

That pretty much describes my last few days, had a major PC crash that I thought wiped out my entire library. Luckily I was able to save all my documents and RAW files thanks to our IS guy at work, although that took a few days of research and a bit of struggling.  I did have a backup but thought that might had been effected as well at first. I have not been able to process anything and will still be down for a few more days while I try to get everything loaded and back into order, you know how that can be.  Luckily I had some posts saved as drafts here on WordPress.

This is a shot of a cool staircase inside one of the buildings at  the Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston West Virginia.

I apologize top all my cyber contacts for being rather slack on commenting and visiting your blogs, most of my time has been trying to correct issues from the crash and reloading programs, but I did want to post one last pic before Christmas and wish Everyone a great Holiday Season!

Hopefully I will be up and running full steam in a few days, thanks for stopping

500px | google+ | Facebook

~

One of the cool things about living in Northeast Ohio is we are close to the Suffield Air Dock. This dock houses an icon, the Goodyear Blimp “The Spirit of Goodyear” This Airdock is about 20 minutes from where I work, and usually on most sunny days you can see the blimp floating though the air around the area. There are only three Goodyear blimps in the United States, the other two blimps are located in Southern California (The Spirit of America) and Florida (The Spirit of innovation).

To raise money for kids during the Holidays the US Marines and Goodyear team up for a Toys for Tots campaign. They open the air dock for 3 days to display the blimp and accept donations for the Toys for Tots campaign. They specified the event as “drive through only” so I did not know what to expect as far as trying to get a shot.  I went on the first day of the 3 day event and got lucky, it was not crowded and I had the chance to make my donation and  jump out of the car and grab some hand-held brackets of the beast without any Marines getting upset.  It was dark and I had to crank the ISO up a bit but I was happy with what I came back with. I tried to go back on the last day with a tripod, only to find about 300-400 cars lined up down the road waiting to drive through, so I aborted the second mission.

To give you an idea of the size, Santa Clause was actually hanging out of the gondola of the blimp greeting all the visitors.

The “Spirit of Goodyear” replaces the “The Spirit of Akron”, in 1999 the “The Spirit of Akron” crash landed in some trees near the air dock that ended the service of this blimp. The gondola of the “Spirit of Akron” is on display at a local museum. It was one of my first HDR’s, pictured below.

Thanks for Stopping! and I wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy “Goodyear”

500px | google+ | Facebook

~

This is a shot I initially tried to get early afternoon on black Friday, this place was beautiful, it was located directly across the street from where I shot the photo for my last post, a grand…view. Me and Julie tried to get into the church and thought we hit the jackpot when the front door opened, only to find a locked door leading into the chapel. The place looked beautiful inside, the stained glass was simply stunning. I tried to shoot through the glass window but no luck. No Shot.

: (

We went back up to Mt. Washington right before sunset, to get some night shots. I glanced over to the church and observed person at the back door, we ventured over and I remembered my HDR Mafia shoot with Pete and Dave, I looked over to Jule’s and told her it don’t hurt to ask, Pete’s famous photographer words of wisdom, So I did, I asked if I could photograph the place. The guy pointed  to a man inside the back of the church, he was not very talkative but accepted my request, “yea, be quick, as long as it is quick and not for commercial use”

I was in! I shot 3 sets of brackets, one from the front, one from the back, and a side view of the glass, the stained glass was incredible. I don’t know why, but most church shots are taken from the back of the church, looking to the altar. Walking in the back door of Saint Mary on the Mount gave me a different perspective, the stained glass window at the front of the church, facing the street, blew me away, and I felt like the preacher from this vantage point. Preachin to the Choir

For you doubters, lightning did not strike, I walked out safe with a smile

Thanks for Stopping by!

500px | google+ | Facebook

~

Click here for a 3X version, or click on the photo above and get lost in a full resolution version.

Julie and I made a quick trip to Pittsburgh on Black Friday, the weather was supposed to be nice so we decided it was a good day for a quick road trip. We wanted to check out the Mount Washington area and the weather did not dissapoint.

This is a Panorama taken on Grandview Ave. on Mt. Washington which has one of the most impressive views of the city. I can only imagine how many clicks of the shutter go off up there in a 24 hour period. I grabbed this early afternoon when I had some great cloud action. We actually were lucky enough to get invited in to St. Mary’s of the Mount, a beautiful historic structure on Grandview where I had the chance to grab several sets of brackets on the inside of the beautiful church.

We had some dinner at Jerome’s and then went back up for some night shots on Mt. Washington before heading back to Ohio, a nice day trip.

The Shot- I normally don’t fool around with Panorama shots, I usually don’t have the patience, both in the shooting and the processing, but they are fun, and its amazing the detail and overall scene you can capture. This was 9 shots, three sets of three brackets, +2, 0, -2, processed in Photomatix then merged into the pano then tweaked from there. I really did not take any time setting this up, I had the camera on a tripod and switched from my promote control to auto-bracketing with 2 second timer, then just clicked 3 shots off and swung the camera around a couple more times haphazardly and clicked 6 more. Usually when I do this it never works to my liking but I kinda liked this one. On each side of the frame you can see the observation decks that line Grandview Ave. crowded with people enjoying the view. You can also see Heinz Field, PNC Park, The Cathederal of Learning and many other Pittsburgh icons, including many of the bridges.

Thanks for Stopping by!

500px | google+ | Facebook