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Bringing back the Past
By Silver Blue | 1 comment
1In the town of Kenton, Ohio, where my grandmother lived, there was a beautiful building that had fallen on hard times.
The Hardin County Armory, circa 1998.
The Hardin Country Armory is the 3rd oldest and most unique Armory in Ohio. Its architecture finely represents the Late Victorian, Richardsonian Romanesque Style. Construction began in 1893. The corner stone was laid with an imposing parade on August 2, 1894. Governor William McKinley, soon to be President, and his staff were all in attendance as were many other prominent officials. The corner stone ceremony had an estimated attendance of over 25,000 people. The new Armory was formally dedicated on April 15, 1895 with a grandiose military ball. Some of its interior attributes included a shooting range, plunge and steam baths, hardwood auditorium floor, and a balcony which encircled the auditorium.
Massive, two story towers combined with the sharp shooter’s ports are locked in time by the inviting yet foreboding sandstone front facade. The life of this building has witnessed Ohio’s greatest dances, social, political, and military events. The structure had the ability to seat and serve dinner to over 2,000 people which caused the building to lay host to the most prominent of gatherings. One being the national Presidential campaign of 1912 when capacity audiences listened to addresses from President William H. Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt. The Armory has also served the United States and Ohio in every military action since its completion and up until it was vacated by the National Guard in 1991.
Locally, the Armory has served the county of Hardin as the location of community events including graduation ceremonies, school dances, political dinners, professional wrestling, and golden glove boxing matches. The list goes on and on. The Armory even housed one of the very first professional women’s basketball teams in the 1920’s. Prior to and up until the completion of the present court house being erected, the Armory contained an assortment of governmental agencies and services for the county.
In 1947, the Armory was totally gutted by a fire started by two individuals from Company E who were cleaning rifles in the basement. The beloved building was reopened in 1948 after extensive reconstruction was made to the interior. All of the wood in the building was replaced with block and concrete construction (which makes total restoration impossible).
The Amory sat idle for six years and in that time was neglected. The Hardin County Armory Restoration Foundation was formed in 1997 to insure that the people of Ohio can continue to use and enjoy this wonderful facility.
The Hardin County Armory, Restored, circa 2008.
I am proud to have been a part of the restoration process for the Armory, having run a web page on my site to promote the efforts of the citizens of Kenton, Ohio, and of Hardin County to restore this grand building.
The Hardin County Armory Restoration Foundation is currently taking Donations for the continued restoration of the Armory. The foundation is a non-profit organization and has a 501 C3 rating, so all donations are tax deductible. All donations may be submitted to the address below. Make checks payable to:
Armory Foundation
P.O. Box 594
Kenton, OH 43326-0594
419-673-1599
“We like to think of the Armory,
not as a building in need of repair,
but as an elegant lady with a tattered dress,
who can still smile despite her appearance.”
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/lwhdna.mp3]
Silver Blue, who remembers Doris Williams (Blum) as the person who first let me into the Armory to photograph it in the state of decay it had fallen into, and Ed Rogers, who has always kept me informed through newsletters as to the restoration process.
Through The Eyes Of Silver Blue
By Silver Blue
“Through The Eyes Of Silver Blue”
F. John Barker III
October 21, 2006
All aboard for a journey
Through the Eyes of Silver Blue
we’re tripping through my timespace
and the guest of honour is you.
We’ll go half-way ‘round the world,
and go hopping from state to state,
we’ll visit old friends and family,
and the occasional twist of fate.
Vacations and party spots,
locations far and near.
life experiences big and small,
and photos that I hold dear.
Music will be our companion,
there are poems never read,
we’ll laugh with those of the living,
and celebrate with those who are dead.
A small blue bunny will join us,
home renovations will take place,
Mother Nature will blow all around us,
and Father Time will show us his grace.
So join me for some memories,
thoroughly researched, I know they’re true –
step inside and see my life,
Through the Eyes of Silver Blue.
(When I worked at WPEX, AM1490 in November 1986, I used an old analogue mixing board and threw this song out of phase through feedback and unintentional reverb. The result, IMHO, ended up more accurately expressing (to me) the feeling of the song.)
The Calm Before The Storm
By Silver Blue
The year: 2003 The month: September. The day: 18th.
The Hurricane? Isabel.
The radar?
(This photo NOT taken by me, obviously)
Isabel, as she approached North Carolina.
The day before, however, all was calm, all was… bright.
and then the clouds started up…
and increased in volume…
Then, as night fell, we had no clue…
That what was being classified as a “minor” hurricane to hit Hampton Roads (some say a weak Category 1, some a regular, some a weak Category 2 depending on where and when you were hit) would leave us without power for 12 days, without a furnace or hot water for 3 months (due to the basement taking in 5.5 feet of water back through the sump well, destroying the furnace and hot water heater), and without a “complete” roof for 7 months.
Still, Mother Nature has a way of showing that life goes on… just four days after the wrath of Hurricane Isabel…
“Look, Rhett. The Magnolias are in bloom.” (Margaret Mitchell)
[audio:http://eyesosfsilverblue.com/p-s.mp3]Silver Blue, who wonders if the weather would be as wonky … if humans weren’t on this planet.
Why I’m starting to shoot RAW.
By Silver Blue
RAW? You mean like…naked? No, gentle readers. With most cameras these days you can shoot one of two ways: JPG or RAW. With JPG, the camera applies the White Balance, any exposure compensation you may have selected, picture styles, etc. and then compresses the file into JPG format and records it to the storage medium.
RAW, on the other hand, takes the data as recorded by the image sensor and records that to the storage medium without applying compression or any sort of modification to the photograph (some cameras store your settings in a “sidecar” file that goes along with the RAW file).
The difference? Well, using my Canon T3i (18 megapixel), my JPGs are about 5 or 6 megabytes per photo (may be more, or less, depending on the complexity of the photo – more complex means less compression, ergo, larger file sizes). RAW files are in the range of 18-20 megabytes per photo, because every pixel gets recorded. Also, a JPG is ready to be viewed, uploaded, emailed, resized, etc. from the memory card where a RAW file needs to be processed and refined.
So why bother with RAW, you might ask, given that the files are larger and there’s more manipulation that is required in order to turn out usable images?
Since the Canon T3i allows me a way of shooting RAW + JPG at the same time, I thought I’d play with it and see if RAW served any purpose other than my High Dynamic Range (HDR) that I’m learning to do. I’ll let you decide.
The JPG:
Now, the same photo, taken from RAW, and processed out:
RAW format allows you to retrieve detail and texture from areas that have been plunged into almost complete darkness in the JPG compression. The lower photo matches what my eye saw, visually.
(In order to be honest, you CAN retrieve SOME detail from a JPG, but what’s lost is lost. This was probably the best that could have been pulled back out of the shadows of the JPG, but if you look, the colours are slightly off, and there’s more digital “noise” in the photo.)
I could have possibly tweaked colour sliders and brought back the yellow cast of the approaching storm, but… it’s more work, and every time I make an edit to a JPG file, it’s considered a “destructive” edit (unless I go through making multiple adjustment layers in Photoshop), whereas the original RAW file is never altered. All the adjustments are kept in a sidecar file and are editable at any time. Now, next week, or 10 years from now. (Provided, of course, that the Mayans were wrong and the world doesn’t end on December 21, 2012.)
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/tfsw.mp3]Silver Blue, who wonders if I’m getting into the intricacies of photography a TAD too much. LOL.
I used to be confused, now I just don’t know…
By Silver Blue
…since you’ve left I’ve been watching blue skies come and go…
Somewhere around Elizabeth City, NC, 2006.
Nags Head, NC, 2006.
Monitor Merrimac Memorial Bridge Tunnel, 2009.
Harris Teeter Parking Lot, Suffolk, VA 2009.
Regardless… we’ll always have…
Paris, France, 1982.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/bsa.mp3]Silver Blue, who does watch those blue skies come and go…
Look Closer…it’s the pattern of my life.
By Silver Blue
A bear in a boat…
…and a bear with a spyglass (and gull).
A plush pink poodle that was punted from the property….
…and Mama Quinn’s face.
Silver Blue, who says there’s no love like the love of Roxette Bunny™.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/poml.mp3]More than your daily requirement…
By Silver Blue
…for cuteness.
Nothing more need be said. Except maybe… Awww…..
I’ll be watching over you…
By Silver Blue
I’ll admit, the idea of having a guardian angel is a nice one. To think there’s someone on my side, watching over me. Ergo, when I went for a walk and caught glimpse of a statue at the end of a walk, I knew I had to capture it.
Something about how your eyes are led, up the path, to the angel was something I liked.
In a more abstract sense, however, was this:
Which I can’t explain, but it’s almost as if the tiles are acting as glyphs to represent a guardian angel as well, flitting here and there.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/bga.mp3]Silver Blue, who still, after all this time, listens for the brush of angel wings.
It’s yesteryear once more…
By Silver Blue
Back in the days when I used to shoot 35mm (on my Minolta X-370 because either digital was too expensive or hadn’t been invented yet), I was on the road a lot more than I am today, which in a way, is sad. I think I have a better “eye” for photography these days, and now that I’m exclusively digital (Canon Digital Rebel XTi and Canon Rebel T3i, and 2 point and shoots thrown in for good luck), the price has gone WAY down because I don’t have to purchase film and have it developed … only to find that my photos were crap.
Not every photo I took was bad, however. Some turned out quite well. Take, for example, this storefront window in State College, PA (from 1996):
I don’t recall what store it was (even though there’s a bit of the storefront label on the window int he bottom left), or what they were promoting (other than an obvious throwback to the 50s and 60s), but something about the all in one “original entertainment center” made me wistful for yesteryear. (As a side note, if you look closely, you can see where the TV has been replaced with most likely a CRT computer monitor — the channel selector knob (lower right, under the screen) is missing, and the true TV tube would have filled the hole and pushed out in a convex shape.)
If you’re more into abstract shapes and forms, however, from the same summer, here’s something very simplistic:
Now, I can’t tell you why the broken clothespin (which, in a way, looks like either a bird in flight or a glider) caught my attention, but it did. Revisiting the photo 16 years after it was taken, I cleaned it and recomposed the photo by performing a crop to “simplify” the photograph and give it balance. In case you’re wondering what the original photo looked like, here it is:
I had to do some restoration to the photo from where the negative was rather scratched and speckled, and to correct a colour shift on the right side of the negative, where it had damage from heat (it was stashed in the attic for a good number of years). I like this photo, but I like the recomposition more. I’ve at least learned that you don’t have to put everything dead center of the frame to take a photo of it.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/qtap.mp3]Silver Blue, who wonders how many memories are stashed in people’s shoe boxes, closets, attics, just waiting for their moment to be relived, or in some cases… wondered about because the photographer has passed on…
Another view of DC
By Silver Blue
Taken in 2000. Cold. Snowy in some sections of town. But I never knew things like this existed:
I’ve heard of the Great Pyramids of Giza. But the Minor Pyramids of DC? Actually, it looks (to me) more like skylights.
What we could consider, today, a steel representation of an outfit that perhaps Lady Gaga would wear, I never could discern exactly WHAT this was supposed to be.
I seem to have a penchant for finding bunny sculpture wherever I go. 12 years ago was no exception. 🙂
Finally…. oh, to harken back to high school and…
The dreaded TYPEWRITER ERASER! LOL. Why someone felt the need to enlarge one and make it “art” is beyond me, but… it made me smile then, and still does today.
[audio:https://www.eyesofsilverblue.com/mtpw.mp3]Silver Blue, who finds things like this exciting to photograph. Such a mystery!
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