It’s Sunday morning. And I have an idea.
One of the most impressive parts of the Albany skyline is St. Joseph’s Church on Ten Broeck Street. But if you try to photograph St. Joseph’s Church FROM Ten Broeck Street, you run into problems with photographing tall structures from the street itself – the building looks tilted, as if it will fall backwards.
St. Joseph’s Church in HDR, 2009. Photo by Chuck Miller.
And as you can see from this picture, we do not possess the Leaning Tower of St. Joseph’s. Not really.
In 2009, I tried an experiment. It was Christmas morning, and I got up – drove down I-787 to downtown Albany – parked near the Palace Theater- walked back up I-787 with my tripod and my Nikon D700 and my old f/4.5 50-300 manual telephoto, and shot for about 20 minutes at St. Joseph’s Church, which was in perfect alignment. Yeah, it was Christmas morning … and yeah, I should have stayed home and enjoyed the holiday, but I was in a very bad emotional time in my life and I needed to go drive.
I do this on occasion. You might have noticed it if you read my blog for any reasonable period of time.
So here I am, on I-787 in 2009, and I got this picture out of the batch.
St. Joseph’s Church, Christmas morning, 2009. Nikon D700 camera, Nikkor F/4.5 50-300mm lens. Photo by Chuck Miller.
Okay, much better… I guess…
You know that feeling when you think you’ve created something spectacular, and then you shelve it and don’t think about it for a few years … and once you see it again, you say to yourself, “Self … you can do better than this.”
Yeah, I said that.
Said it a lot.
Okay, let’s try this one more time.
Sunday morning, 2016.
What can I do with this?
There’s some fall foliage in downtown Albany, so this might be worth a try.
People are sleeping. It’s not like I’m going to wake anybody up while doing this.
All I need to do is just get down there, grab my camera gear, get to that spot on I-787, shoot shoot shoot, get OFF that spot on I-787, and drive home.
I figured that if I caught the morning sunrise, the warm sunshine would land on the facade of St. Joseph’s Church and cause a beautiful glow.
Um… not with the cloud cover, Miller.
Oh well. I’m here already, may as well make the best of it.
Photos here and there. Then down from I-787 and back home.
And after some development and a little color adjustment here and there…
I got this.
St. Joseph’s Church 2016. Nikon Df camera, Nikkor 80-200 f/2.8 lens. Photo by Chuck Miller.
Sweet tap-dancing… I got the foliage, I got the church, it looks like a foliage fortress in the foreboding fall.
I’ll take this for sure.
Put it in one of the short piles, either for Competition Season 2017 or Charity Season 2017.
And memo to self…
Come back in 2023 and try this again. Who knows what kind of photo can be achieved with this stunt?
