Henry Ford Detroit
Health care centers are increasingly looking to nature photography to help add some color, warmth, and serenity to normally visually cold, sterile, bland environments. This is one of the latest installations of my work at a hospital in Detroit in one of those environments. This is the radiology corridor at Henry Ford Hospital Detroit, where three 36×48 inch panels of landscape photographs from Michigan hang. There is certainly an interesting paradox going on between the display environment and the photographs.
While one could say that the environment and lighting doesn’t flatter the imagery, (as in most “gallery” situations), the flip side of this is that the imagery allows an escape from the environment. This hallway didn’t offer much for those that have to walk it everyday. For an often stressful environment like a hospital, this can only be a welcome addition. There has been an ongoing shift in health care facility design towards changing the old ways of looking at these places.
Nothing could be a better example of this than the newly designed Henry Ford West Bloomfield hospital that took advantage of evidence based design concepts in a new construction.
It was good to see the pieces finally up and many, many people walking past them. It seems like a high traffic corridor. As my wife Lisa wisely pointed out, “it looks like the hospital’s gift to the employees. All in all, it was a nice visit to Detroit, followed up with a great dinner at Small Plates in the Broadway district.
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Just a test of my WordPress iPhone app that allows me to make quick posts from my phone. I took this photo just 30 minutes ago and did all processing on my iPhone using the Best Camera app and Photoshop Mobile. Sometimes the best camera (and computer as well) IS the one you have with you.
EDIT; now that I have had the chance to look at this on a real computer, I saw I needed to shrink the image size a bit. While not up to the quality I am used to with my DSLRs, going through this type of exercise certainly can help spark some creative thoughts when it comes time to work with other images. It was just for fun and a test anyway.
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Wet beach rocks
I processed this image recently, although I actually made the exposure back in August 2008. I worked with it quite a bit to give it some depth and dimension. I wanted it to look like you could pick one of the rocks up off the page and put it in your pocket. It represents nature’s continuously changing patterns, continuously changing harmony, and continuously changing chaos.
We naturally want to find harmony in any visual stimuli. Harmony leads to less tension, and less visual stress so to speak. If it is something we find comfort in, we gravitate naturally towards it. So what is it about a pile of rocks that so many people can find something of interest in?
Shorelines with beach rocks are nature’s continuous random pattern generator. Two people can stare at the same pile of rocks, and the characteristics that stand out to one are likely to be completely different from the other. There is something there that appeals to both. That visual absorption and preference is an accumulation of all of our personal likes, dislikes and experiences. Come back minutes later, and there are new discoveries to be found. It is no wonder people can spend hours walking up and down rocky beaches just staring at the ground.
Nature has a way of creating something for everyone. Photography for me is one way to not let those gifts go unnoticed.
This photograph was created using a Nikon D2X and Nikon 24-85 f2.8-4.0 lens, on a Lake Superior shoreline in the Little Traverse Conservancy property in Michigan. Post processing using Adobe Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3 using Topaz Adjust, Layer blend modes, and luminosity masking on a Mac Pro. More beach rock pictures in my gallery.
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Textured hillside
There is one thing that kills an afternoon for me (in a good way?), and that is poking around for new music. My music tastes tend to be fairly diverse, which is probably reflected equally in my preferences for nature subjects. One of the things I tend to do is to go to the record labels of some artists I like, and poke around with who else they have signed. I have noticed that some of the indie record labels tend to have groups of artists that tend to appeal to me, even if they are from completely different genres of music.
So this afternoon I listened to a free preview of Peter Gabriel’s new album, and also ended up buying a new artist, The Imagined Village, from his RealWorldRecords label. Probably anyone that likes Peter Gabriel’s blending of world music into his work will end up liking some of the artists his label promotes. (more…)
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Winter landscapes
At a bit of loss for words lately folks, so just a photo to share… a bit different from the one I posted before. I am sure this landscape doesn’t even exist anymore, which is a pretty cool aspect of shooting these icescapes. It makes you appreciate the moment even more when the light is happening with some interesting subject matter in front of you.
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