Photography – Page 34 – Random Connections

Composite Greenville History

February 28, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 5 Comments

History and Genealogy, Local, Photography

On our latest Lowcountry Unfiltered trip down to Bonneau Ferry I enjoyed creating some composite images from old photographs. These show a historic photo of of the plantation superimposed over a present-day photo. The photos proved popular, and I wondered if I could do more with local historic photos.

I love historic photos. I’m a sucker for those little historic images books from Arcadia Press. When I first got involved with multimedia design for the classroom, one of my first projects was to create an interactive display comparing historic images of Greenville taken from the same vantage point over time.

Finding suitable images can be tricky. Copyright issues aside, I could scan the images from my books, but I’d prefer to find something available online. The best, most extensive collection is the Coxe Collection. The Greenville Historical Society has those locked away, available only at low resolution and watermarked to hell and back. The Library of Congress has some good images, as do the South Carolina Digital Library collection and the Greenville County Library.

Recently I discovered that Greenville History Tours had been posting some cool photos of Greenville on their Facebook page. Some of these were perfect for my project, and I spent one afternoon greedily downloading images from their site.

Thursday of this week was a beautiful day, and seemed like a perfect opportunity to put my project to the test. I printed out copies of the historic images so that I could try to line up my photos with the original. I think some of these turned out quite well. I’m going to be posting larger than usual images in this post because of the nature of the project, so I apologize ahead of time to the bandwidth-challenged.

Return to Chappells

February 25, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 3 Comments

Photography, Rambling

It was an absolutely beautiful day. I had planned to go to the gym then spend the day writing. Instead, I needed to get out of the house. About the time I made that decision, I got a text from Keith Dover asking what I was up to on this fine day. It sounded like a perfect excuse to get out and do some photography.

I had been wanting to get back to the ghost town of Chappells before spring and before foliage obscured the old buildings. Late February, early March is the perfect time for ghost towning. There are still no leaves and greenery to hide things. More importantly, though, daffodils are blooming. Daffodils are often tell-tale signs of old home places and former residential areas.

Hidden Tunnels and Safety Coffins

February 24, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 9 Comments

History and Genealogy, Photography, Rambling

In the first part of our Ferris Bueller Day outing, Dwight Moffitt, Jami Sprankle, and I visited the Camp Asylum archeology dig on the State Hospital grounds on Bull Street. However, our day of adventure was not over.

Just about any city has rumors of underground passageways. Larger cities have the obvious subway lines, but there are other systems of tunnels to support both utilitarian and other more nefarious purposes. Columbia is no different. There are rumored to be three distinct tunnel systems in Columbia. There are supposed to be a set of tunnels near the Five Points area, a set of tunnels from the Statehouse down Main Street and to the Congaree River, and a well-documented set of ventilation and utilitarian tunnels under the USC campus. For our second adventure of the day we sought out the entrance to one of these tunnels.

Visiting Camp Asylum

February 23, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 5 Comments

History and Genealogy, Photography, Rambling

I’ve been wanting to have a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” for some time now with two of my great friends from Furman, Dwight Moffitt and Jami Sprankle. Since both live in Columbia the idea was that I’d ride down and we would see what all the city had to offer. While our day didn’t quite live up to the idealized movie standards, we still had a blast with a day full of insane asylums, hidden tunnels, harpsichords, safety coffins, and bagels. Oh Yeah!

The opportunity presented itself when Dwight forwarded me information about a tour of “Camp Asylum.” A group of archeologists from USC are excavating a Civil War prisoner of war encampment on the grounds of the old South Carolina State Mental Health Hospital on Bull Street. The site has been sold to developers, so the archeologists wanted to study as much about the site as they could before it was no longer available. Historic Columbia is offering tours of the dig on Fridays through the end of April. Jami starts a new job on Monday, so this Friday was the perfect time to explore.

Plans flew back and forth all week. We looked at the old Hidden Columbia videos on Facebook as well as other guidebooks and things to see what we might want to include in our Ferris Bueller Day. A cool soundtrack was a necessity. In the end, weather and family obligations limited our choices.

Time Lapse with Daffodils

February 20, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

Gear, Photography

Last weekend I tried setting up a back yard time lapse to see if I could capture the water rising when the beaver rebuilt his dam. Well, the beaver did rebuild, but I wasn’t able to catch the activity. I didn’t even get to catch the water rising. However, I did promise to post the results, and here they are…

As seen in the video, there’s a long stretch of nighttime, and that’s when the water rose. It’s low when the video starts, then when the image comes back in the morning, the water comes back up. Oh well. You can see the neighbor’s huge television from across the lake flickering in the upper left corner in the nighttime shots.

Read More “Time Lapse with Daffodils” »

Backyard Time Lapse Set Up

February 16, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

Gear, Photography

We have a very active family of beavers in our back yard. They have managed to dam almost our entire little lake (or the streams that run through what used to be a lake.) While I personally like the beavers, and enjoy seeing the lake much fuller just upstream, their activity is flooding some of my neighbor’s yards. One of my neighbors will occasionally disrupt the dam and let the water flow through. But, the beavers build it right back. It’s a never-ending battle.

On Saturday I looked out the back window to see the water flowing again. With all of the melting snow, I guess there was the danger of more flooding, so my neighbor broke through the dam once again. I knew it wouldn’t last, that the beavers would rebuild quickly. I figured this might be a good time to try out my long-term time lapse rig with the Raspberry Pi.

Time Lapse with Raspberry Pi

February 3, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 1 Comment

Gear, Photography

Take a look at the video below:

Now look at this one:

Both of these time-lapse sequences are by UK photographer Neil Bromhall. These types of time-lapse photos take a huge time commitment – weeks and months. This one, from Norway, took a full year.

In order to get the correct effect, the camera must remain in place throughout the video. Unless you’ve developed some miraculous method for placing the camera in the exact same spot each time with the exact same zoom and focus, the image will jump around and not look right. That means that you’re going to have leave your camera there, probably outside, exposed to weather, and not very secure.

A Cold Cherokee Ramble – Part 3

February 3, 2014 Tom No Comments

Photography, Rambling

So far the day’s photo trek across Cherokee County had been a mixed bag. We had found an old concrete airway beacon near Reidville, which was cool. We found a cool old chapel near Pacolet. But we had encountered No Trespassing signs just about everywhere else we tried to go in Cherokee County, and had a sub-mediocre lunch at an over-hyped joint in Gaffney. It was time to see if things would turn around.

On the way into town Tommy Thompson and I had noted the location of the Cherokee County Historical Society. After lunch I wanted to stop by to see if we could get any information on the Cooperville location, so we headed back that way. The entrance wasn’t readily apparent, but we think we found the right location and pulled in. More discouragement. First, there was a sign saying there was a $5 charge to enter, then…the door was locked. We’d had enough frustrations for one day, so we left.

A Cold Cherokee Ramble – Part 2

February 1, 2014 Tom No Comments

Photography, Rambling

So far Tommy Thompson and I had found an old airway beacon pad, and had visited a wonderful old chapel. There was more to see, though. I had several places I wanted to check out in Cherokee County that Glynda and I had explored previously, including the ghost town of Coopersville and the abandoned Cherokee … Read More “A Cold Cherokee Ramble – Part 2” »

A Cold Cherokee County Ramble – Part 1

February 1, 2014April 17, 2014 Tom 3 Comments

Photography, Rambling

Mulberry Chapel-002 — Mulberry Chapel
Asbury Community, Cherokee County

Tommy Thompson and I had set out on a cold Thursday morning with snow still on the ground in order to find concrete airway beacons. That took all of about 20 minutes, and we still had the rest of the day ahead of us. I had several beacon locations marked in my GPS, but they didn’t look promising. Instead, we decided to head out to several spots in Cherokee County.

On my last ramble out this way I found I had missed an opportunity. I was just a half-mile from Mulberry Chapel, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. I decided that would be our first target for the morning. First, though, we had to cross Spartanburg County, and there were a couple of interesting spots along the way.

First up, we stopped briefly at Anderson Mill on the Tyger River. The remnants of snow and morning light made for some nice photography.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31