Mainstreet
This weekend marks the first public open house of a new hospital in the Detroit area, Henry Ford West Bloomfield. I must say this is no ordinary hospital. From the 1920′s themed town square at the main entrance, to interior health food stores, health-smart cooking lecture hall, exquisite Feng Shui inspired interior architecture and decor, to private patient rooms now renamed lodges, you immediately feel more comfortable than you would expect. Certainly that is the whole point, with additional amenities that are detailed to not only help the sick and their families feel more comfortable, but also aid the healthy and promotion of keeping them that way. This $360 million new construction is being closely watched by health care professionals around the country and I am very honored to have my work as part of it.
Newborns and Hepatica
Prints of my images, health care fine art if you will, from 12x18s to 24x36s, appear in many of the patient lodges, the maternity “suites”, and in various hallways and corridors throughout the building. I was kindly given the opportunity to go in and photograph the installs before the hospital opens on March 15, 2009. Photographing interiors is a bit new for me, a little different than being in the woods. But I tried to follow the same principles – look for interesting foregrounds! I had to be very quiet in the maternity area because I came across an early patient that seemed to be sleeping more soundly than any baby I have ever seen. 
In a place where people may have the best, and unfortunately some of the worst moments of their lives, I can certainly appreciate the attention to detail in helping create as soothing environment as possible. Looking to nature for relief and refuge is always a wise choice. I certainly find it there myself. The hospital has made deliberate investments in local artistry to help boost some of the ailing Michigan economy as well as give people visibility to the many artists in Michigan.
A room with a view
Curved walls, round flowing curves on floors and ceilings are plentiful. The patient lodges have an “up north” high end hotel feel to them – many of them overlooking a large indoor “park” filled with tropical plants and a “open-air” chapel surrounded by nature. Warm, inviting color palettes are throughout. Again, attention to detail is everywhere, right down to the leaf decorated hallway lamps, and stained glass above the patient room doors that illuminate with color. All of this isn’t intended to overshadow what I am sure is some pretty amazing medical technology which is in more detail at Henry Ford’s website and their blog.
A print in another lodge
The open house at Henry Ford West Bloomfield is Saturday, February 28 from 12-8 pm. I am not exactly sure how the public tours will be conducted or the access given, but certainly there will be tours of at least the patient lodges and the mainstreet area. I will be hanging around early in the day. If you have a chance to see this innovative addition to Michigan’s health care system – it is definitely worth the trip.
Colorful hallway
Mainstreet area of main entrance
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Radar 21Feb2009 7:00 AM
Winter Sunrise, Lake St. Clair, Michigan
Well, we have another storm front headed our way, should hit us later today I think. There was a glimmer of hope we were on the tail end. Everywhere I go it seems people are complaining about the long, hard winter this year – yearning for it to be over with. Yet it doesn’t have to be all doom and gloom for a photographer. I think winter provides some very unique opportunities provided you are ready to take advantage of them. That said, I haven’t followed that advice very much this year. Despite just being plain busy, I have been in a bit of a funk about wanting to get my butt out in the cold.
So when we see an opportunity knockin’ like this, perhaps it is a good idea to look back in the archives and remind ourselves that it can be worth it to embrace and endure. I should have known also that the light is killer the morning before a storm like this – and I didn’t get out early enough. Laziness can be a photographer’s worst enemy.
Anyway, speaking of winter blues – check out Ruthie Foster – she was in town here last night and put on a wonderful show with Robben Ford and Jorma Kaukonen. I’ll blame her for keeping me up too late.
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I have a bookshelf full of field guides, from birds to mushrooms to wetlands. Quite often I find myself plunging into them after having been in the field because I have photographed a bird or flower that I didn’t know up front exactly what it is. Although I am constantly surprised at what information I am able to retain, the ol’ hard drive in my head seems a bit full at times. The bookshelves are getting full as well. At times, I wish there was a way to carry all this around with me.
iBird Explorer
It seems that time is coming, starting with bird field guides. iBird Explorer is an App for the iPhone that is exactly that. Not only does it offer illustrations of the species (ala Peterson’s / Audubon, NatGeo, etc), but also bird song / call examples (which I can never seem to memorize!), region info, photographs, and short tidbits about the particular bird. Basically everything you would expect in a sophisticated birding software program, but one that fits in the palm of your hand, available to you anywhere. The layout is very well done, colorful, and easy to use.
It is such a natural fit for something to have on your phone, something you normally would want to have out in the field anyway if just for emergency purposes. The big screen of the iPhone of course makes it very easy to read. They have a few versions split by regions, but I opted for the iBird Explorer Plus version that has 891 species of North America. At $19.99 – it is one of the more expensive Apps for the iPhone, but I found well worth it after only playing with it for a few minutes. If you think about the costs of a standard book version guide, a bird song CD, or even bird software, it is actually quite a bargain.
Another nice feature of iBird is a search utility that allows you to select from various predefined bird shapes, habitats, colors and 10 other criteria to try to identify any particular species. Again, very well integrated into the application, and extremely easy to use.
Bird songs
There is a more in-depth review of this excellent App here with many more screen captures. (BTW, a nice tip for iPhone users – I learned you can do a screen capture by holding the home button, and then pressing the top sleep button. A screen capture is saved to your photo collection. )
I would have to imagine this is only a start for field guides for the iPhone. The number of applications for this device, and its potential uses seems to grow by leaps and bounds every day. I think there are something like 15,000 Apps available now – less than a year after opening. It also is a reminder of how Apple has us hook, line and sinker. As the number of Apps grow, the number you become dependent on grows – the more storage space you need, the need for newer and updated iPhones becomes greater, and you become invested into the entire product line. That actually seems a bit unnerving when you realize how well they got you. Of course, it is a really great marketing and business model, and one that a lot of other phone platforms have a lot of catching up to do if they think they are ever going to be players in this game.
iBird's wonderful search criteria
I am quite happy having discovered iBird Explorer and can easily recommend it to any birder, photographer, or naturalist who has (or who will soon have ) an iPhone, iPod Touch or similar device. They appear to have a Windows Mobile version also.
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As photographers, one might naturally assume that our eyes provide the necessary input to our brains in order to compose our images. But what if that input originated from somewhere else? Perhaps it seems like a odd concept to think about. How else would we photograph? The camera and one’s vision seem inseparable. Isn’t losing one’s vision a photographer’s worst nightmare? Perhaps not so odd, but inspiring, when learning about photographs made by the blind. I became intrigued by a book recommended in Andy Illachinski’s post about a photography teacher’s project who did just that – taught a photography class to the visually impaired. I was naturally attracted to it because I often question myself the way something is supposed to look because I often end up with the question – “According to whom and what?” If you can imagine yourself stepping outside your own existence, your own experiences – how can it change the way any particular scene is represented?
The book, appropriately named “Seeing Beyond Sight,” assembles photographs made by Tony Deifell‘s students from the Governor Morehead School for the Blind during his five year project. It describes the beginnings of the project, the skepticism of both the sighted and visually impaired towards it. The result is a shift in perceptions and interpretation of what a photograph is supposed to represent. Mr. Deifell admits his initial disappointment because he was evaluating the images based on his own experiences and teachings as a sighted photographer. The more he looked at the images, the deeper he was drawn in and learned about how his own vision had been shaped. He initially wasn’t seeing the way his students were.
“If I had found all the pictures from the project in my grandmother’s attic, I may have disregarded them.“
He describes a particular image of cracks in a sidewalk by one of his students. At first he was perplexed on how to interpret it, until given the explanation by the student. The pictures were sent with a letter to the school Superintendent stating “Since you are sighted, you may not notice these cracks. They are a big problem since my white cane gets stuck.“ It seemed to be one of the switches for Deifell. Once he knew this hidden meaning, he began looking at all the images as puzzle pieces to a larger story.
I see parallels in this revelation to our own judgement of images, even of the photographs made by the sighted. There is a reason why that person snapped the shutter at that particular moment. Perhaps it is not always immediately clear to the viewer, but we should not be so quick to dismiss its value of containing a message or story. Scenes are always experienced with more than just our eyes, so in a sense, a viewer of a photograph is already at a disadvantage to understanding it.
Mr. Deifull states “Each new piece I notice, whispers, in a still, small voice – pay attention to the cracks…“ That is something for all of us to remember – because at some time or another, we all can be just as blind to the details before us.
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I recently got to the bottom of a display issue on my blog. Apparently it has been happening for awhile, and I was never to reproduce it despite checking it on several PCs and also via my Mac – all the machines I checked it on looked fine. Occasionally I have issues with Safari vs. Firefox vs. IE, and this particular one caused issues in Firefox on a PC, but not in IE! Go Figure!
Messed Up Blog
The culprit: Windows has a display option of 120 DPI instead of 96 DPI in the advanced settings of display properties. Well, all of the Windows machines I checked the blog on were at the 96 DPI setting. Enough people contacted me about the issue that it was driving me nuts. I finally managed to reproduce it by setting a display to the 120 DPI which zooms in on content somewhat – and apparently some computers ship with this as the default instead of 96. After spending a lot of time changing fonts in my sidebar, I found out it wasn’t the sidebar at all, but a piece of CSS code for “overflow” that was missing from the navigation menu. Took me awhile to find that one.
It is quite frustrating actually – that all the different browsers, Macs and PCs – and now you have to worry about some burried setting deep in the display properties that most people don’t even worry about. Then trying to figure out the little piece of CSS code you are missing causing the issue. I can only imagine the frustration of someone who does web design for a living. So anyway, sorry to all you 120 DPI folks – I probably scared some of you away.
In my hunt for a solution here and how to check how a page displays on different computers, I found this neat site: Cross Browser Testing . It didn’t let me change the DPI of the screen, but it is nice for checking different browsers and systems. You get five minutes for free.
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