playing with trucks


I found this old Dodge truck (it looks like a 1941, with the back bed and rear fenders taken off down to the frame) sitting in a pasture south of Lansing while driving to the Nelson-Atkins and Kemper Museums in Kansas. The black and white was taken on the way back Saturday, with the evening light coming in from the left. The other two colors were taken today, in the morning sun. The black and white works because of the softer shadow light over the body of the truck. The color works because of the direct morning light coming from the front, but still from the left.

There’s also the lenses used. The first two are the Olympus 45mm. The last is the Panasonic 25mm. I’ve been using those two lenses, and just those two lenses with the E-M5 the whole time I’ve been here. Some will dismiss such an arrangement, and some will argue about the right focal lengths. When I was first deciding what kind of camera to bring on this trip, I was only going to bring the 25mm. And then on a whim I decided to bring the 45mm so I could have some reach if I needed it. Turns out that was a pretty balanced pair, with about two-thirds of the photos taken with the 25mm. Of the three photos, regardless of treatment, the 45mm produced a better, tighter image than the 25mm. From an image quality perspective they’re equivalent. It’s their field of view that makes them useful tools depending on distance from the subject and the composition you’re after.

As for which one I like the best, it’s a toss up between the first two. It depends a lot on the mood I’m in when I look at them.

a brief visit to the nelson-atkins museum of art (day 6)














I spent the middle part of the day today at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. I spent the majority of my time slowly wondering through the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park which surrounds the central museum building. Being a “child” of the latter half of the 20th century, I was inspired in my art studies by Rodin, Calder, and Moore, to name but three modern sculptors. I was far happier in the park than inside the buildings, and went indoors only when I my hands got so cold they couldn’t properly operate my camera. Once I’d warmed back up a bit, I went back out again into the cold.

I plan to go back tomorrow to spend a bit more time exploring sections of the part I missed, and I also intend to go back inside the main building and look at “In the Looking Glass: Recent Daguerreotype Acquisitions.”