Sunday, March 20, 2011

Photo musette

This lovely pile of stone is Tulsa's Union Depot, a former train station. It's now the Jazz Depot and home to the Tulsa Philharmonic. You can imagine men in fedoras and trenchcoats, tearful families seeing their sons off to war, or a Hollywood starlet stepping down from a train in front of adoring fans. I'd love to see the inside.

This is just a taste. I'm fascinated by the building and I'll undoubtedly go there again. For that matter, this is my second trip there already.


This is the first floor entry to the Depot. I like the Art Deco door handles, a nice touch considering that ordinary office doors would have been far less expensive.



This was taken with the Nikon N6006 in Collinsville last week. I like public art and I like red brick buildings, so the two go together quite well.


This was taken with the Canon A590IS earlier today. It's a motorcycle shop along Admiral Boulevard in Tulsa. This was one early alignment of Route 66, though more period buildings can be found along the 11th Street alignment.

The Canon doesn't seem to be as sharp as the Kodak Z1285. Then again, it's only 8 megapixels as opposed to the Kodak's 12 megs. I don't know if the lenses make a difference, but the Kodak has a Schneider lens too. One big failing of the Kodak is that the screen is impossible to see in bright light and there's no optical finder. I've been very tempted to attach an accessory viewfinder to this camera.


Here's another headstone from the cemetery last week too, again, taken with the Nikon N6006.

I'm a tired puppy. Besides the walking around in Tulsa this morning, I did some yard work and installed a new closer on the front door. My feets be hurtin'! Worse yet, I found out all too quickly that I'm in poor shape to be outside with a shovel in my hands.

More photos are over on my Picasa web album.

9 Comments:

Blogger Steve A said...

Accessory viewfinders? Tell us more.

6:23 AM  
Blogger The Donut Guy said...

I like the picture with the tree that has purple buds....very nice :-)

2:36 PM  
Blogger PM Summer said...

Your opening sentence almost caused me to have a heart attack. I was expecting another tale of death by preservation neglect.

1:47 PM  
Blogger Ed W said...

PM, the Tulsa World offers a nice self-guided tour of downtown highlighting Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and other buildings.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/artdeco

It's a 2 page pdf file. The train station was in use up into the 60s, then sat empty for over a decade until the Philharmonic re-purposed it.

It looks like I'll have Saturday off, so I may be down there that morning taking photos.

3:53 PM  
Blogger Steve A said...

Just how many "Union" stations or depots ARE there around the US and why does nobody seem to pay attention to that word any more?

Los Angeles also has its UNION station, along with places such as Chicago, Denver, St Louis, Tacoma, Dallas, Washington DC, and Toronto. Please don't expect me to explain that last one...

10:40 AM  
Blogger Ed W said...

It may have been built by the Union Railroad or Union Railway, Steve. Why they chose such a name for the company when unions were anathema to the steel, coal, and railway barons of the late 19th century is a question that requires some research.

As to Toronto, perhaps you were thinking of Toronto, Ohio, right next to the Ohio River?

12:19 PM  
Blogger Michael Graff said...

I believe "union" station refers to one station serving several railroads. Before that, each railroad might have had its own station in different parts of town.

It would be sort of like if each airline had its own airport, until they built a single airport that several airlines shared.

6:40 PM  
Blogger Ed W said...

My apologies for being so late re-visiting this.

Steve - I saw an add-on accessory shoe in one of the photography blogs. It was intended for p&s cameras that lack one, and it would be perfect for an old Yashica viewfinder (or a Leica or Voightlander if you carry bags of money). I could mount a cold shoe from one of the junk rangefinders with some industrial epoxy.

George, those purple trees are called redbuds. Dunno why. They look purple to me too.

8:55 PM  
Blogger Ed W said...

My apologies for being so late re-visiting this.

Steve - I saw an add-on accessory shoe in one of the photography blogs. It was intended for p&s cameras that lack one, and it would be perfect for an old Yashica viewfinder (or a Leica or Voightlander if you carry bags of money). I could mount a cold shoe from one of the junk rangefinders with some industrial epoxy.

George, those purple trees are called redbuds. Dunno why. They look purple to me too.

8:55 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home