Tag Archives: sculpture

Orlando Museum of Art

We went by the Orlando Museum of Art last Monday to see Clyde Butcher’s “Cathedrals of Florida Exhibit”. Here are a few photos from our visit.

Clyde Butcher's Cathedrals of Florida ExhibitClyde Butcher’s Cathedrals of Florida Exhibit, in the J. Hyde Crawford and Anthony Tortora Gallery

The large black and white prints were once again wonderful. He does a masterful job making the photo and then making the very large prints.

There are other things to see there too. For instance:

Sculpture and SkylightSculpture and Skylight. Dale Chichuly blown glass artwork

Spouted Fish VesselSpouted Fish Vessel, Nasca, 200 CE – 500 CE, South Coast, Peru, Ceramic

Soundsuit, 2011.Soundsuit, 2011, Nick Cave

And I didn’t make any photos of them, but Lynn and I both found Jimm Roberts’ portraits very interesting.

The Clyde Butcher exhibit continues through August 7. It’s well worth going, especially if you’ve never seen any of his prints in person.


Mother’s Day: I hope each and every one of you Moms out there have a wonderful day and enjoy spending time with your families. The world is so much better with all of you in it!


Blogaversary: Fifteen years ago on May 4, 2007, I published my first blog post. Since then it’s become a habit! Many thanks to all of you that stop by week after week to see what’s happening. I know I get a lot of enjoyment writing it and reading your comments. I hope all of you get at least some pleasure from it too.

Stay positive, be kind, take care of yourselves and each other. And if you can, visit a museum!

©2022, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Museum of Seminole County Displays Senator Sculptures

Big Tree Exhibit Panorama
Big Tree Exhibit Panorama

There’s an interesting exhibit at the Museum of Seminole County History through September 30, 2015.  It features over a hundred works of art made from the charred remains of The Senator – the 3,500 year-old cypress tree that burned in 2012.

Big Tree Exhibit - Mark Rice Senator Painting
Big Tree Exhibit – Mark Rice Senator Painting

I’ve written about The Senator before.  You can view those posts at this link.  This latest chapter in the story provides some beautiful artwork made from the ruins of a tragedy.

Big Tree Exhibit - Ted Page Seminole Indian Carving
Big Tree Exhibit – Ted Page Seminole Indian Carving

It’s well worth going over to see these in person.  It you’re there this Wednesday night (August 19th, 2015) between 5 and 7 pm, you can also meet the artists.  I have some other photos from the exhibit at this link.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2015, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Chicago, Ill. Sept. 2013

I’ve always wanted to see Chicago.  It’s my birthplace – but we moved away shortly after I was born.  For some reason, I never made it back until this year.  I spent a few days exploring at the end of September.  My daughter had a business trip there and some spare frequent flyer points, so she gave me a ticket.  Thanks, MK!!!

Chicago and Lake Michigan from the air
Chicago and Lake Michigan from the air – my first photo of the trip.  It was wonderfully clear as we approached the city.  You can really see how large Lake Michigan is.

Mary was busy, so I booked a hotel downtown and spent the first afternoon and evening wandering around by the lake shore.  Unfortunately, this turned out to be a bit of a problem.  I wasn’t used to all that walking and ended up with sore feet and blisters.  Which didn’t help me to walk around on the following days – but I still managed to get a few photos.

I did some research online and asked a few questions about places to photograph.  One of my Flickr contacts (Brian Koprowski) lives in the area and gave me several good hints.  Thanks to him, I ended up  at the Adler Planetarium on the first evening.  The sunset wasn’t that exciting, but I thought the city across the water at twilight was pretty.

City at twilight
City at twilight

I also liked this fisheye view of the Field Museum that I made on my way back to the hotel.  It reminded me of the movie “Night at the Museum“, although that wasn’t filmed here.

Night at the museum
Night at the museum – Field Museum

The next day I again walked the city (and made my feet worse).  My first stop was the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), where there’s a view from the glass balcony observation deck on the 103rd floor.  A wonderful place for a fisheye lens!

From the top of Chicago
From the top of Chicago – Another fisheye view.  This one is from the Willis Tower observation deck, 1353 feet above the city

There’s a lot to see around the city including a great deal of sculpture and artwork.  And glass on the buildings creates many compositional opportunities.  In this image, I waited for the photographer on the near right to get into place so I could finish my photo – I had hoped she’d move a bit more to the left, but oh well.

Flamingo
Flamingo – This artwork by Alexander Calder is in the Federal Plaza

Here’s another rather strange piece of street art. I couldn’t resist adding a little “digital makeup” in Photoshop.

Planter head
Planter head

Later that evening I ended up in Millennium Park where the Cloud Gate sculpture is located.  I liked the scene – with all the people contrasting with the buildings and sculpture.

Cloud Gate (AKA "the bean")
Cloud Gate (AKA “the bean”)

My son Mike drove down to meet us and we spent the next morning riding the “L” train, bicycling along the lake shore, and visiting Portillo’s Delli for a Chicago Dog.  When Mary joined us that afternoon we took a boat tour on the Chicago River and ate some very good Chicago deep dish pizza for dinner.  The final morning before our flight back to Orlando we toured the Museum of Science and Technology and drove by Mercy Hospital where I was born.  I was only a little disappointed that there was no “Welcome Back Ed!” banner above the hospital entrance.

I enjoyed my short visit and definitely felt a kinship with this wonderful city.  I want to go back again and see more.  It’s so diverse that no trip as short as this could possible do it justice.

You can see larger versions of these photos and some others from our Chicago trip in this set on Flickr.

Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Now – go make some photos!

©2013, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved

Have you ever taken your camera to a flower show?

Description

If not, why not?  Flower shows can be a great place for photography.  They have plants in the prime of bloom and are often set in very scenic locations.  Lynn and I have been to a couple of Orchid shows and a Rose show here in Orlando and enjoyed each of them.  The most recent was last weekend’s Greater Orlando Orchid Show and Sale held at the Albin Polasek museum in Winter Park.  The museum is an interesting place to visit on its own, and is set in a beautiful lot close to Rollins college. This photo is of Polasek’s bronze sculpture of Svantovit , located in the back garden behind the museum where the orchid show was being held.

Svantovit

Photo hints

The one problem with this type of photo op is that you have to be pro-active and search it out.  Lynn noticed an announcement for this show in our local paper.  The table in the Summary section below has a link for a Google search that may help you locate upcoming flower shows in Central Florida.
orchid

Etiquette:  The purpose of these shows is to sell flowers, not to be your personal photo studio.  I think it would be rude to drag your tripod, lighting gear, reflectors, etc. in to one of the booths selling orchids and set up a shot and interfere with the vendor’s business.  So be polite – and buy an orchid.  You’ll enjoy it and you can make many photos of it in your home studio!

orchid

Lenses:  Macro recommended.  If you don’t have one, bring whatever you do have that will focus as closely as possible.  A mid range zoom lens might also be good to bring for the other things that are around the venue where the show is taking place.
orchid

Tripod:  Not recommended – see above.  There can be a lot of people at these shows.  Most of them are there to look at and buy flowers, not photograph them or wait until you get out of the way.

Flash:  Might be very handy to fill in shadows, especially in the shade or under canopies.  You might even want to get fancy and try using an off camera flash triggered with your on camera pop up flash.

For people new to flower photography, there’s quite a lot of how-to information on the web. For more information, you might try browsing through the results from this Google blog search for “flower photography how to”.

Summary

My Gallery (27 total photos): https://edrosack.com/090530_Orchids/
Website: search google for Central Florida flower shows
Location: 633 Osceola Avenue, Winter Park, Florida 32789
Central Florida Photo Op Rating: Great intermittent potential

©2009, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

A walk from Ohio to Kentucky (and back)

Mary bought us two tickets to see Swell Season last Monday in Columbus and flew me up to Cincinnati for a nice long weekend which just happened to coincide with their version of Oktoberfest . We also worked on chores around her condo all weekend. All in all, it made for a very nice visit. Oktoberfest was very crowded on Saturday night, The lines for beer were 40 – 50 deep at some of the stands – Cincinnati is a thirsty place! If you go, Sunday is much less crowded. This is a photo I made of the crowd with my iPhone (you can click on each of these images for larger versions).

Oktoberfest crowds

One evening we went up on her roof and I made a couple of photos of churches that you can see from there. Here’s one of them:

A church from the roof

Mary had to work Monday morning, so I was on my own. I took my Canon G9 and set off for a nice stroll through downtown Cincinnati in search of photo ops.

Garfield Place has a little park with a statue of him.

Garfield statue

Fountain Square is interesting, but I had to struggle for something photogenic due to the lighting and crowds.

The fountain in Fountain Square

For $2 you can go to the observation deck at the top of the Carew Tower, which is Cincinnati’s tallest building. Mary and I did that Sunday evening and I made this panorama. You can see that the crowds are a lot thinner than they were on Saturday, although this was taken quite a bit earlier in the evening.

Downtown Cincinnati

The Roebling Suspension Bridge was built in the 1860s and spans the Ohio river between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky. When I saw that it has a pedestrian lane, I decided to walk across since it would make such a great title for a blog post and might even have a few photos hidden away somewhere. Here’s a two shot vertical panorama I made from the Kentucky side looking back toward Cincinnati.

Roebling Bridge

Quite a pleasant Monday morning. When Mary got back from work, she made me walk to lunch! The rest of my photos for this post are here.

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.

Return to the Alligator Farm

Mary was in town last weekend and Lynn and I took her to visit the St. Augustine Alligator Farm before our annual passes expire. The bird activity seem a bit slow now, compared with last year (at the end of April 2007). It was also overcast with light rain, but we still had a good time.

Alligator Farm Wooden Mask

My photos for this post are here.

©2008, Ed Rosack. All rights reserved.