Railroad Square

You can tell what kind of influence you've had on one of your children when they tell you to meet them for a short father-daughter photo walk as soon as you check into your hotel room. That's exactly what Megs did. She invited her mom and dad to meet her at Railroad Square Art Park. In all the years I've trekked back and forth between Orlando and Tallahassee, I never knew this place existed. It sits right across the railroad tracks from the old Amtrack station on Railroad Avenue, caddy corner from the northwest corner of the FAMU campus. It used to be the Downtown Industrial Park in the 1960s. When it finally closed down it left behind a large collection of warehouses that were turned into over 50 artist shops and studios.

My daughter knows of this place because she had a small studio in one of the warehouses-converted-to-studios when she was taking art classes as FSU. She made the perfect guide for the short period of time we walked about and photographed the area. I just had to make sure I didn't photograph anything she photographed. So I stuck to appreciating the colors and textures of the warehouse and building exteriors I kept coming across.

This big Ford flatbed truck has a lot of dirt on it. It's been so long since it's been washed, those grey splotches that look like darker dirt are actually lichen. Zoom in on the vertical side of the upper hood if you don't believe me. I don't know if that truck still works. It may be just part of the larger works of art that lie scattered about the area.

Every time I would walk a short distance and then turn to look at a building I kept seeing patterns and colors that reminded me of modern and some post-modern works I studied in art school. I don't know if it was the lingering influence of my college art education, or if the modern artist drew some inspiration from similar industrial views, or even if the artists that work here were similarly influenced, but I kept seeing patterns and colors  that I found interesting, dare I say it, enjoyable to look at.

The only three-dee "art" I found interesting was this big black painted bus, apparently created for some unknown (to me) political reason. I just liked the way the light played over all the surfaces and the juxtaposition of the colors. This, by the way, is a black version of the white lichen-spotted truck towards the top of the post. This one looks like it's at least been washed and had a bit more love lavished on it.

Technical

Still stuck in a rut; everything photographed with an Olympus E-PL2 and Leica 25mm, post processed (lightly) in Lightroom. I didn't have to do much with the colors, they're pretty much as they appear in real life.

Editorial

I read Kirk Tuck's post where he's sold all his µ4/3rds gear and is now working with the Sony Nex7. Frankly, I have to wonder what took him so long. I figured he'd do this when he shifted all his Canon DSLR equipment and bought into the Sony α77 and system equipment. I know why he wanted the µ4/3rds gear, because Canon had nothing like it, and Kirk, when in one of his art photography moods, didn't feel like hauling any of the big Canon DSLRs around a hot summer day in Austin, a sentiment I can certainly understand.

That's one of the reasons I believe Canon is now offering the EOS-M camera line. If they had had the EOS-M when Kirk started to buy his µ4/3rds equipment, he would have probably gone with the EOS-M, and perhaps more importantly, he might have kept the Canon system. Except that Kirk keeps saying that the reason he bought the Sony α77 was because he became a believer in the EVF through the µ4/3rds VF-2 and found the α77 to be even better than the VF-2, as good as the VF-2 is.

Regardless, the Nex7 is a great compliment to the α77, far more so the µ4/3rds gear was. Kirk of course has lots of reasons why he made the switch; go read the post, it's a good read as usual.

Since the Fates have conspired to abruptly kick my emotional photographic crutches out from under me, the E-1 and the E-3, I've been wondering what I might replace them with. I've run through five different scenarios that have me reinvesting in Olympus (two different way), investing in Nikon (D7000), Sony (α77), and Pentax (K-5). All of them with environmentally hardened zoom lenses in the same focal lengths as my beloved 12-60mm and 50-200mm lenses.

Notable by its absence is anything built around Canon. I will never own anything Canon. As Matthew Robertson (@thewsreviews) tweeted, Canon might make good cameras, but they don't make exciting cameras. Every brand I listed as a possible purchase are all exciting. Canon has become an expensively dull choice if all you want is dull, safe conformity.

Kirk is by no means dull and conformist. Kirk leads a lively and entertaining life (at least as he writes about on his blog), photographically speaking, and tends to leaven his life with exciting changes of photographic equipment on a fairly regular basis. I'll be paying attention to how he grows to know and use the Nex7, as it might impart some influence on my next camera purchase. In the mean time, at least until Fotokina 2012, I'll haul my little Domke bag of µ4/3rds cameras and primes around, just having myself a real good time.