Farewell Potomac Adventures

One of the reasons why I chose Zenfolio as my new provider was that they had a built-in weblog. www.gkrueger.com is now the only source that 99 percent of those interested in my work have to visit.

All future blog posts will be published on www.gkrueger.com/blog. For a smoother transition, I migrated the last 25 articles from Potomac Adventures.



Since its creation, Potomac Adventures has attracted tens of thousands of visitors from all around the world. Visitors from Germany, the United States, Russia, Austria, Switzerland, Thailand, Ukraine, France, United Kingdom, and many more. Visitors who were interested in such diverse topics as The Boston Bombings, Superstorm Sandy, Hipstamatic, A Funny Cat or simply in Good Photography ;-).

55 % of the visitors used the Windows Operating System (only 10 %, however, used the Internet Explorer), 35 % the Mac, and about 10 % came from mobile devices. Among the top keyword searches were "Whites Ferry", "Top of the Rock", "Hipstamatic", "Cemetery Fence" and "Impressionismus Fotografie".

A big thanks to everybody who visited or came back. Stay tuned, folks, and visit the new blog at www.gkrueger.com/blog. Change your links accordingly and subscribe to the news feeds to get notified whenever new posts are available.

Guido, June 1st, 2013

Moving out...

Many of you already knew that I was going to give up Studio 306 in the Torpedo Factory. Actually, yesterday was my last day. Coincidentally, Jim, my good friend and studio partner, is also taking a leave, as well as Andra, my neighbor to the right.

That's how the studio looked yesterday morning:







The printer, tools, paper, mats, frames, etc. were all gone already, only the images on the wall were still there.



I had a sale on all stocked items which actually worked quite well. Therefore the wall looked a bit unorganized at the end, with the gaps not being filled up with matching pieces.

During the course of the day, I took down the remaining frames and posters, removed the picture hangers and detached the sale signs and my tiny german-american flag.

At the end of the day my side of the studio was shift back to neutral:





Will I ever move back into Studio 306? Most likely not. Will I ever have a studio in the Torpedo Factory? Probably yes. I have already received a number of subleasing request and will definitely take the chance if time permits.

Once again I would like to say thank you to everybody who visited me at the Torpedo Factory or bought one of my pieces. Most of my images are on display at www.gkruger.com, and beautiful fine art prints can be purchased online. Quite a number of my images are also on display in the Torpedo Factory's Arts in Public Spaces Exhibition and in the Art League's Bin Gallery.

Stay tuned or send me an email, I'd love to stay in contact with you guys!

Rolling Thunder 2013

Rolling Thunder is an organization to draw attention to the prisoners of war (POWs) and missing in action (MIA) service members of the U.S. wars. Their annual event, held on Sunday before Memorial Day is a slow motorcycle ride through Washington D.C., starting at the Pentagon parking lot, crossing the memorial bridge, and riding along the National Mall up to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

I'd guess that 99 percent of the motorcycles were Harley's, so believe me, it was noisy!



















These are a few impressions from the 2013 event, all shot with the highly praised (by many) Sony RX1 full frame compact camera. The RX1 and I are still having a slightly difficult time with each other, but more on that later...

Relaunching gkrueger.com

During the last week, I have worked on relaunching my online photo presence. On www.gkrueger.com, you can now see a nicely presented and professionally hosted portfolio of photographs with browsable and searchable galleries, customer and family&friends folders, guest book, a shop for fine art prints and other articles, a new weblog, and a number of information pages:



The previous content from gkrueger.com is now at www.gkrueger.info.

Not all is finished, though. The biggest areas of construction are the shop (which needs products to be sold), the weblog (which waits for a migration solution), and www.gkrueger.info (which needs a few hours of polishing and tidying up).

Anyway, the new site has enough substance to be visited now, and is actually already being used in real world projects. Stop by on a visit and browse the galleries or leave a note in the guest book. Most important, spread the word ;-) If you find any bugs or issues, send me an email to fix the problem. Enjoy!

"Nine days after" addition

I created an addition to the April 25th posting Nine days after... (about the Boston Marathon Bombing) that briefly discusses the issue which of the pictures are shown to us in the mass media and which are held back. See the paragraph at the end of the article and follow the links down there.

Princeton

Princeton University was a real surprise among the Ivy League schools we visited during our vacation trip. A huge and clean campus in a nice town, old "Harry Potter" style buildings, impressive sports arenas and a well-designed and pleasing overall architecture. Most of the buildings were accessible and the atmosphere was friendly and open.




















More than with any other school, I felt it was impossible to do Princeton justice with a few pictures that were shot within a couple of hours. The campus is too big, offers too much and has too many hidden corners that turn into visual jewels when the light is right. The campus has enough potential to photograph for days, if not weeks. Anyway, the above pictures still might give a first impression to those who haven't been there.

The Glass Flowers

At Harvard University we visited the Natural History Museum, mainly to see the world-famous collection of highly-realistic Glass Flowers:



The glass models were created between 1887 and 1936 by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in their studio near Dresden, to ease teaching and studying botanics at Harvard:







The level of detail and the accuracy with which the models were made are nothing more than stunning. Even after an hour of visiting we didn't really believe they were made almost entirely of glass.

Apart from the Natural History Museum, Harvard University didn't have much to offer for us. Most of the buildings were closed, and their architecture and integration into a coherent Campus Site was not as impressive as in Yale or Princeton.

The MIT

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is one of biggest names in computer science. For any software engineer, it is on the same level as Stanford University and everything that has been invented in the Silicon Valley. No wonder the MIT was a must-see on our trips to Boston.

We couldn't make it into most of the buildings, but the most spectacular (and most controversial) building on the MIT Campus, the Stata Center, designed by Architect Frank Gehry, is visible to everyone:







The Stata Center hosts the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, which is inextricably linked to names like Marvin Minsky, John McCarthy, Richard Stallmann, Joseph Weizenbaum or Tim Berners-Lee. Its architecture is really fancy, everything is somehow slanted and looks a bit strange, with many different kinds of surfaces, textures and materials. I was totally amazed and I suppose this is a pretty cool place to work, think and invent.

PS. Sadly enough, but I didn't want to withhold it, the Stata Center is (very) close to the spot where the MIT police officer Sean Collier was shot to death after the Boston Marathon bombings.

Martha's Vineyard

Today, we visited Martha's Vineyard, the famous "island of the rich" near Cape Cod:



The Obamas may want to stay here all summer (probably for good reasons), but I really didn't like it at all: not really beautiful, almost no public beaches, too many cars, too expensive, and so on. I might be wrong, but I don't see any reason to ever come back.

Magnified

Of course, many of you know who that is, but any ideas where it might be?



Hint: You can see a small piece of the "IBM Mark I" computer in the background ;-)

Fish

I saw this "fish" on a sidewalk in Woods Hole today:



Entirely made from light and shadow - I couldn't resist to photograph it:



Half an hour later, it was gone - most likely forever (feel free to send me a counterexample if you like ;-). Despite working on serious documentaries and visual stories most of the time, sometimes I just like to play around with my camera and take silly pictures. Do I have to worry about that?

Plimoth Plantation

No stay in Plymouth without a visit to Plimoth Plantation, a museum that shows the settlement of the Mayflower Pilgrims arriving in Plymouth in 1620. The museum features a re-creation of the 1627 English Village and the Wampanoag home site, both equipped with actors in old costumes, showing ancient techniques and speaking in ancient language.







We were afraid that the whole thing would be a little bit too entertaining, too colorful, too loud, too much fun - but it turned out to be quite reasonable. The actors were friendly and eager to answer all questions, and their costumes, behavior and language gave a good sense of that time. We wouldn't have wanted to pay the full 35 $ admission fee, especially as the Mayflower II couldn't be visited right now, but for the discounted price we got from coupons by our landlord the museum was well worth it.

Fox on the Beach

I have never seen that before:



A fox walking the dunes, catching prey!

I wish I had a longer lens, but only brought the 2.8/12-35 (a 70 mm equivalent). Anyway, the resolution of the lens/sensor combi was good enough to learn that the little guy really was a fox:



Seen near Provincetown, Cape Cod.

Nine days after...

...the Marathon bombings, it would have been just unbalanced to show images of beautiful Boston without showing at least a few pictures that had to do with the terror attacks. Even though we're on a vacation trip (planned long before the bombings), leaving it out would have been against my photojournalistic instincts and would have made me feel dishonest.

Actually, if you're exploring the city, you cannot overlook the bombing sites. The region around Boylston Street is very busy and crowded with media teams and tourists. There are several spots that serve as makeshift memorials for the victims of the attacks. People gather at these spots and you can easily feel their sadness and their sympathy for those who were killed or injured.















PS. After the bombings, there was a discussion in the media about which pictures could be shown and which should be held back. With a few exceptions, the newspapers ran only cropped versions of the most graphic images, and there were also cases of improper manipulation (see http://nppa.org/node/60892 for a discussion on the issues). For those of you who'd like to see a painfully realistic and detailed depiction of the devastation caused by the bombings, take a look at the image collection at http://cryptome.org/2013-info/04/boston-bombs/boston-bombs.htm. But be warned, the material is very graphic and hard to look at! Thanks to my friend for sending me the link.

Boston

Today, we visited Boston.

We walked along the Freedom Trail, which turned out to be a very clever idea to discover a city that you've never seen before. The weather began rather cold and cloudy, and changed to sunny and nice around noon.

Actually, I liked Boston a lot. In my opinion, it is a very "American" city, with a strong european flair. Boston is not overwhelmingly impressive, like Paris, Rome, London or New York. But overall, it was quite charming, with a lot of things to see and to do and a bunch of nice spots to be discovered.

Enjoy the pictures, we enjoyed the trip!

















Of course, during these days, Boston is more than just beautiful pictures. But that is left over for another posting....