In Charles City, Iowa during Ragbrai 2010 there was a big gaping space between our booth was and where the next booth was, so after the sun set these girls with Hula hoops came over with a stereo and started performing, drawing a decent sized crowd. I snapped some shots, and this one was by far my fav.

This is the abandoned train station that lives a block over from the downtown area of Storm Lake, Iowa. While at some point this was a stop for people traveling across the Iowa countryside, it’s now a creepy piece of middle American history. Complete with the spooky paintings of the awkward looking figures over the wood where windows once were, it really struck my eye so I made sure to grab the tripod and see what I could make of it.

Here’s a car outside of a cement company in western Mount Clemens. No fancy HDR or anything, just a train car on a hot summer night.

This is a picture of a raver at Movement 2010 (Formerly known as TechFest, DEMF, etc). I was looking to take a picture of the crowd as this guy walked in front of me and flashed me a look as he walked past.

The watercolor background effect was achieved with no photoshop whatsoever, this is the result of a 1/4 second exposure with a flash to illuminate the guy walking. It has an interesting water color effect.

Almost everything I shot over this weekend was candid instead of all these photographers from news outlets getting people to pose. You can see all the shots in the Misplaced Events section of the site.

Here’s my new vanity Europlate for my 1988 Jaguar XJ6, representing The Principality of Sealand, a small micronation off the coast of great britain.

These wheels were on a Grand Trunk Railroad passenger car, at the Thomas Edison Depot in Port Huron, MI under the Bluewater Bridge. Close-up and HDR goodness.

First day of shooting in over a month now, this is the St. Augustine Church in Richmond, MI. While I had anticipated a ride out in the country to yield something more agriculturally exciting, the dark sky and lack of foliage or crops made me return to architecture.

This shot is of Vain nightclub in Detroit, only from the side. It’s an HDR generated from a single raw image.

To get the black and white levels where they needed to be, the stepping ended up being -1, 0, 3. This was actually done while I was calibrating my shutter speed for the sky, but I liked it so much I decided to make something out of it, so here it is.

This is a sign for the All Good Girls go to Paris Crepes shop in Detroit. It’s in an ally a block from the John R / Woodward intersection.

This is an HDR generated with Photomatix and done using the Tone Compressor to keep the realism.

Here is what was left of the Lafayette building in mid-demolition, taken on Feb. 20 2010.

You can see the American Coney Island, as well as people going about their day outside.

The shot is black and white with duo-tone coloring. It’s vertical, so make sure you view the full size.

My admiration for religious architecture extends beyond Catholic steeples. This is the Islamic Cultural Center on Ford Road in Dearborn. It’s quite a wonder of a building, and the HDR processing with the shot was able to bring out the fabulous color despite the less than ideal outdoor conditions.

To learn more about what they do there, visit www.icd-center.org.

After seeing that the Mexicantown pedestrian bridge over i-96 was still not open, I made my way down to St. Anne’s Cathedral. This house of worship holds as a stable neighborhood anchor for East Mexicantown and is also one of the oldest and most beautiful.

During the last shot in this HDR series, a van from the International Bridge Company drove by. While the van is not seen in the shot, the light that the headlights gave off produced a very interesting result, lighting the right foreground as well as the left part of the sky. While Churches are some of my favorite things to photograph, I especially like the way this came out.

A couple of days before Feb 14th, all the area White Castle’s that I saw started advertising that they were taking Valentine’s Day reservations. I have no idea why, but it’s all kinds of awesome.

This is just proof that there ain’t no party like a Detroit party.

A couple of artists from Brooklyn decided that it would be fun to take an abandoned house from Detroit’s East Side and Cover it in Ice. It’s over at 3926, McClellen St just east of Gratiot Woods. The Detroit Ice House was quite a spectacle in person, it’s the kind of thing that you just don’t get to see a lot of.

The worst part of it all was of course, the high amount of terror I felt as I stood there, on the side of the road, with my obviously expensive camera, in a less than desirable neighborhood at night where cars kept slowing down right behind me, or just plain stopping. But, the risk was worth it, I’m very happy with the way the shot came out. So it’s all good, enjoy.

Learn more about the Ice House at The Detroit News website.

A dresser found in the Northville Psychiatric Facility, still marked after all these years with names, presumably of patients.

It was creepy enough without opening them and rummaging through whatever on earth might have been inside. More beautiful flashlight lighting as well.

The obvious fact that the alarm is sitting on the counter means that it won’t be sounding. Here’s another relic from the abandoned Northville Psychiatric Hospital.

Even though this wasn’t a kitchen area, there was a fridge to the left there as well. Lighting was done with a standard bulb flashlight on the fire alarm and an LED light pointed at the wall in the background where it looks blue.

So while wondering around the Northville Psychiatric Hospital, we came upon a desk that was half destroyed. When the curiosity came about to see what was inside the ajar door, we found this: a box of obviously used syringes. Imagine if you will, being completely in the dark, in an abandoned mental facility, holding a flashlight, and looking down to find this. That should just about set the mood for ‘A Shot to Ease the Pain’.

This old typewritter was found in a building on the campus of the former Northville Psychiatric Hospital in Northville, MI. While it’s not the creepiest piece I got during this little voyage to the 400 acre, multi-building campus, it has a great classic look to it.

This shot was taken at Metro Beach Metropark in Harrison Township, MI along the nature walk. While it was cold and snowy, it was a pretty nice day overall. This pond surrounded by cat-tails was frozen over with the sun peering through the clouds in a very celestial way, here’s the final shot.

This is the I-94 and M-10 highway intersection, just across the street from the MGM Grand Casino. For me, it’s the little things about this picture that make it so enjoyable. Like the fact that the water tower is green and yellow, or the Host Gator billboard.

There is the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario. In the foreground is the neighborhood nestled in between Bagley / 3rd down southwest to the Bridge.

This is one of Detroit’s “big 3″ casinos. Just down the street from the Motor City Casino, this is the MGM Grand Deroit Casino on Bagley, taken from the 8th floor of it’s parking garage

This is what use to be some sort of bowling establishment,  located at the corner of 8 Mile road and Wyoming. On the north side of 8 Mile, it’s in Royal Oak Township. It’s quite the beautiful wreck. And believe it or not, in the same little plaza around the corner is a Sheriff / State police satellite station. Go figure.

During this trip to the Detroit Institute of Arts, I learned four things:

1) The lighting in museums suck. Really really bad.

2) Under no circumstances should you be stuck with only a 55-250mm lens.

3) Things like this character to your left are truly badass, and deserve to be photographed.

4) I hate the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XT

A shot of a Wayne State University building that faces Woodward Avenue.

This caught my eye as something just plain peculiar. On public spaces sometimes little words or phrases will be placed that are usually some kind of inspirational saying or “Deep Thought” (yes, think of Jack Handy).

However, this one reads “The Unholy Beasts”. It’s on a public bench near the gazebo in Mount Clemens, between the city municipal building and the fire department. Things like this, plain and simple, just make me wonder.

This was the last shot I took before leaving the train yard that day. The sun was setting and I figured “What the hell, why not get a shot of these tracks and the sunset”. I don’t think it turned out too bad.

This image combines two very iconic things about Detroit: The Fisher Building and the steam that is always pouring out of the manhole covers. The Fisher Building is one of the highest quality luxury buildings in Detroit, so much that the Midtown Area where it resides was re-named the “New Center” area as this part was once hailed as a second downtown.

Steam pours out of Detroit manholes much of the time, a salute to our archaic infrastructure system. Don’t step on them, it’s hot and can cause complications. For example, it knocked out one of my contact lenses, which made for a pretty awful “no depth perception” drive home. So enjoy.