Robert Pence

Little Italy is one of my favorite parts of the city. Good shots.

Some monumental buildings! Pleasant-looking residential, too.

:roll: I know! :laugh: I saw your :whip: comment in the "Favorite Quotes" section. :-D :evil: :wink:

Absolutely gorgeous photo, and a beautiful ship. I've toured the William G. Mather at Cleveland, and thought it was big at 618 feet, but the Shelley is amazing.

Good stuff. Some outstanding facades from the first three decades of the 20th century, some well preserved, some not.

Gorgeous shots! What a beautiful park; I'm sorry I didn't get to that part of Youngstown on my visit.

Philips screwdrivers and screws. What a screwed-up mess! After a couple of days of hanging venetian blinds and installing track lighting, I'm ready to stab someone with a cheap Philips screwdriver. With almost everything made in China nowadays, the screwdrivers are no damn good because the tips are sometimes not precisely shaped to begin with, and the steel used in them isn't of the right grade or sufficiently hardened to keep the tips from wearing/rounding off quickly. Combine trash screwdrivers with screws that don't have properly-formed heads, and it's a hopeless situation. It's not possible to apply enough torque to drive the screws into any surface that will guarantee a secure hold and not strip out, because any respectable amount of force causes the screwdriver to cam out of the screw head, damaging both. Sometimes it's possible to get a good grip by using the insert bits made for power drivers like those used for drywall screws, in combination with a nut driver. Too often when installing blind brackets, etc., there's not enough room for something so bulky, though. I've worked on recreational vehicles where square-drive (Robertson) screws are common, on machinery that uses Allen (hex-key) screws and bolts, and cars that use Torx (6-pointed star), and they're all vastly superior to Philips. It's time to phase out Philips and replace it with something that works better. Ooops. I almost forgot the ending emoticon. :whip:

Dayton has such a great downtown, visually. It would be exciting to see something come of that. The transportation center isn't attractive by any definition, but it should be preserved as a lesson to future generations of what can happen when some architects are not supervised closely enough. :|

Good stuff! Some excellent building details and views not often photographed. Sometimes great minds ... Yours: Mine from 2003, with a little bit wider lens:

Cozy-looking small town, some nice historic properties. Excellent pics.

Sweet photos! Nice light and color saturation, and you gave the residential part of Ohio City more attention than it usually gets.

Honest. I tried to stop myself, but I can't. Some days ... < :type: > To carry Sherman's size analogy a little further, it ain't what you got, so much as what you do with it. It's important to have decent optics, whether you're shooting digital or film, but the photographer's technical skill and eye for good composition and light are more important than the hardware. Most people who look at a photograph on the wall in a home, office, or gallery are going to form their impression based on its overall visual appeal. They're not going to put it under a halogen lamp and inspect it with a jeweler's loupe. In the digital realm, the capabilities of computer software are making it increasingly difficult to distinguish between different technologies and hardware levels in the finished product. There's every reason to believe that advances in that area will continue at a vigorous pace. I've seen a gallery owner who was also a photography editor from a big-city newspaper carefully examine a print, and finally ask if it was shot digitally or on film. I've seen a couple of other serious photographers examine framed prints and ask if they were inkjet or silver prints. I'm not not downplaying the importance of quality gear, and if you're going for big prints, high-dollar buyers and art publications, the better your gear, the better your expectations. Still, no one should consider him/herself limited by the camera or lenses he/she can afford at the moment. </ :type: > OK. I'm done now. Nap time. :sleep:

Ha! Polaroid! Amazing how seldom that comes to mind for me. I ventured very briefly into that territory with a really cheap camera. Fortunately, none of those photos have survived. The company photographer at GE in Fort Wayne shot everything with a Speed Graphic back in the day, and at one point he got a Polaroid back for it. The 4x5 black-and-white film yielded both a print and a negative. It appeared to produce a pretty good image, but after not very long, he quit using it and went back to Tri-X cut film. I never did ask him why.

Welcome to the forums! Your post is an interesting contrast with the usual emphasis here on the built environment. Excellent photos, too.

Congrats! Zanesville is a nifty town, and I wish you great success.

I was surprised that I only had to wait a little less than 2 weeks for the D700 to come in at my local dealer. It has the En-EL3e battery, same as the D200 & D300, but I haven't run into any capacity problems with it yet. I think I may be getting more shots (RAW) per charge with the D700 than I was with the D200. The instructions say don't use the battery below 32degrees F, but I haven't had a chance to try my luck at that yet. I did a little bit of winter stuff with the same battery with the D200 and never had a problem, but I wasn't out for hours at a time with it. It'd be nice if they'd come up with an extension battery cord like the one for the Mamiya 7. It's a dummy battery that goes inside the camera case, connected by a 3-foot cord to a battery case that I can put inside my coat to keep it warm. Works like a champ.

After David makes it to the top of the economic heap, he'll join an Evangelical church and vote straight-ticket Republican. :wink:

Yeah. Maybe they could build on the reputation they established with those fabulous Muni Metro cars. :|

Is Indiana eligible for a piece of this discussion, and does it have to be automobile plants? I remember that it came up recently in one of our conversations that Amtrak intends to either scale back or shut down its facility at Beech Grove (Suburban Indianapolis). Back in the late 1980s - early '90s they invested a ton of money in part of the old Big 4 shops to create a state-of-the-art facility capable of heavy repair, including everything from wreck repair to scheduled rehabs on cars and locomotives. I can't remember all the details, but the Beech Grove shops played a significant part in building the prototype Viewliner cars. European and Asian railroads used to send technicians and observers to Beech Grove to see how a first-class maintenance facility should be run. There's a facility that doesn't need to be converted, and is underutilized but to a great extent fully equipped to do the work. If Amtrak doesn't want it, it seems to me that someone like M-K (Morrison-Knudsen) or Bombardier ought to be interested in buying or leasing it.

Neat! Still doing those excellent night shots, I see.

That's the way it works, in my experience. I was paying 50% in Chicago.

Until a visit for a forum meet in '06, I hadn't been in downtown Columbus since before Union Terminal was demolished, and then most of my visits were passing through en route to West Virginia when there was no bypass and you had to drive through downtown. As I approached downtown in '06, what I got was a definite Indianapolis vibe when I saw the city rising from the horizon. Once I got there, not so much. The area around the Capitol has some interesting buildings and could benefit from more pedestrian traffic. I found the mostly-vacant mall disappointing, especially because what remains is a testament to some visually-interesting design that must have been really something when it opened. The Capitol is a gem. If you go from the start date of construction, it's probably one of the oldest in the country, and it sits in a great open space that gives it proper respect. The thousands of cubic yards of brick in the Brewery District, German Village, Victorian Village, and lots of other places, are wonderful and contribute to the city's distinct character. From a certain perspective there's a similarity between Indy and Columbus, but in many ways they're very different. I like them both. A lot. I posted photos of both cities on UO in the past, but I don't know where they might be now, if not hauled off to the archive. They are up on my site; Columbus is here. Indianapolis is here.

Does she have a brother with similar attributes?

Pretty awesome shots. You got 'way up there! Gases from moldy grain can be quickly lethal, and the gases (oxides of nitrogen, I think) are heavier than air and collect in the bottom of enclosed spaces. Not long ago there was an incident somewhere around here where one guy cleaning a bin was overcome, and two would-be rescuers collapsed, too. All 3 died before properly-equipped firefighters could get to them. I've probably mentioned that before, and I know you've been around, but just in case, be very careful.

I didn't see any Amish downtown that I remember, although I might have not noticed some. I grew up on the fringe of Northeast Indiana's Old-Order Amish territory, and I'm so used to seeing black pants and blue shirts or blue dresses, and bonnets and straw hats and suspenders that they sometimes don't catch my eye - unless they have something special going on. Look beyond the traditional drab garb, and some young Amish men are strikingly good-looking. Most of the sprawl I saw was along Lincoln Highway West, in East Lampeter Township. While there, I learned that the boundaries between city and township are very precisely defined, and the operation of public entities like police follows those boundaries rigidly. Given the population growth in the area, I think they need to start looking seriously at integrating more of those township functions at the city/county level. East Lampeter is beginning to look like the Breezewood interchange with gobs of motels and fast-food chains. I saw two large Red Roof motels that looked fairly new, across the road from each other. The Super 8 that I stayed in for two nights wouldn't have been allowed to stay open in any jurisdiction with a public health department. It was filthy. The bedbugs came home with me, too, and I had a hell of a time getting rid of them. From what I read in the paper, that area around the 30 West interchange is experiencing in a wave of tagging, general vandalism and petty theft from cars in motel parking lots. It's mainly kids looking for excitement, and the police department with jurisdiction there still operates at the township level and isn't up to the job of making it stop. In one case I read about, a group of teenagers tagged interior walls in the public areas of several motels and restaurants during business hours, in the presence of staff and guests. They struck fast, running in and out and doing their damage before anyone realized what was going on. Property owners estimated the cost of cleaning and repainting at upwards of $20K. The downtown density creates the impression of a city much larger than we in the midwest are used to. Lancaster's official population is about 60K, but the downtown looks more like an Indiana or Ohio city 3 or 4 times that large.