May 2025: Abandoned Church

 This month we have a very striking-looking abandoned church, which was built in 1888. There is a companion one-room schoolhouse across the street, built in 1907, but it is nowhere near as photogenic as this church as it was still being used into the early 1970s and so had been kept up until then.

Rural America is dotted with structures just like this one, remnants of history, anchor points to a very different age. Though different, it is still an age whose structures have lessons to teach us about ourselves even today, though the doors are shut and the windows shattered. It is one of the reasons I have enjoyed shooting abandoned places for the past several years. The past, even though it is over, is still very much alive and part of our world, and can be learned from just as readily as one can learn from a present day classroom (or online!) lecture. It is a shame to overlook these lessons, and in many cases we do so at our own peril as a civilization. 

March 2025: Waiting for Warmth

 

Here is a shot from a couple years ago which I have not released anywhere else. It is another shot from my Traverse City State Hospital archive, depicting a small room with some impressive pipe fittings and what appears to be a heat register or radiator of some sort. 

I miss shooting here very much, as the angles, textures, colors, and lighting always made me feel like a kid in a candy store. The juxtaposition of that artistic Eden against the narrative of what the place actually was...an asylum...never ceased to carry a tremendous impact for me. The parallels and imagery were unavoidable and in your face all the time. The beauty and complexity of the pipe fittings and of the human mind, both broken and now fallen into disuse yet still very much visible...the broken heat source amid cold walls while the warm sun blasts through the all-too-often broken window glass...it was a place I could have spent years in and still found new things to capture every day.

I chose this image for this month because while spring is approaching it is still quite cold here, and in some ways I feel like this room...waiting for warmth. Warmth is coming, for both myself and for this room. Spring is just around the corner, and this room is now being renovated and will likely serve as someone's climate-controlled office space (an asylum of a different sort, some would say) in the near future. 

February 2025: The Devil is in the Details

 

An interesting experiment this month with a combination of infra-red photography and simulated reverse tilt-shift effect. Extremely simplified, tilt-shift is a technique used to make a real life scene look like it is a miniature. What I have done here is the opposite. This is a miniature which I have adapted using the same basic visual concepts in reverse to present a miniature as full-sized. The garden shed pictured here in real life is a model which stands only ten inches tall. While the proportions in some of the details give it away, the details themselves are quite intricate and help "sell" the illusion, as does the infra-red effect, which provides an additional sense of visual disorientation unrelated to scale. 

An interesting study in architectural photography, and a great deal of fun to integrate several different techniques which are not normally used together to make this one!

Credit also rightfully is given here to my wonderful and talented wife, who assembled this amazingly detailed model. 

January 2025: Thicker than Blood

 Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2025!

Starting off the new year with something I don't do a lot of...people portraits. Animals I find to be much easier to work with, plus they never complain about how a photo turns out. :)

This portrait is in fact my younger brother Erik, who I got to see this past summer when he came for a visit.  It is funny, but while he often is a year or two between visits when he is here it is like he was never gone and we are back to our usual brotherly antics automatically. I suspect a lot of brothers are that way though. Fortunately for the two of us it is usually harmless these days. It wasn't always thus. :)

In other news, I have just received the physical "all-clear" to resume my normal activities, so I should be back out and about with the cameras very soon. It has been a long 12 weeks of recovery and healing, but I am now almost 100% pain free for the first time in 8 years! Just occasional twinges now and then which I am told will likely pass in the next 9 months or so. 

With new years come new opportunities, which themselves bring new hopes and new beginnings. I hope that for all of you those all come with new blessings as well. I am looking forward to sharing some more wonderful photos with you, and am grateful that you choose to make me a part of it! 

Cheers!

Jonderson

December 2024: Spider Web Pilings

 Hello there all, and welcome to December!

This month's image is an oldie, from a series I did on spider webs many years ago. Spider webs are actually a great deal of fun to photograph, as you can do tons of interesting things with them using all different kinds of light.  Plus, spiders are everywhere! 

Things are going well with my recovery, and I am hopeful that I will be off restrictions and back at it in three more weeks, getting some new and interesting things for you all to look at. In the meantime, I am still not allowed to lift so much as my little "go" bag, as it is over my weight limit.  It is frustrating, especially because I feel so good now, but I do not want to mess this up as being able to walk is pretty important. :)  The takeaway is that the surgery was a resounding success, and I have had the first 100% pain free days I have had in 8 years!  Three more weeks of cautious care seems like a small thing to ask when I keep it in that perspective.

Now if I could just find a better perspective to see the snow and ice with.......Ha!!

November 2024: American Bison

One of the nearly forgotten symbols of America is the great bison. Like many iconic American symbols, it came very close to extinction. Close...but not quite. And in the long run, like many of those other symbols, thanks to the efforts and sacrifices of many people the bison has survived. A number of valuable lessons are to be learned from these incredible animals. 

October 2024: Chugging Along

 

This is the Canadian National Railroad engine 1395, built in Montreal in 1913.  Currently parked in Coopersville, MI, USA, it belings to the Coopersville and Marne Railroad Museum. Sadly it is too far gone to restore. Even so, and even in its current state, it is a beautiful thing to see. 

Well, as I may or may not have mentioned, I had spinal fusion surgery a week ago. Two titanium rods, 4 screws, and a titanium vertebral spacer implanted to relieve a nerve which was being compressed due to disc damage, arthritis, and bone spurs. The surgery went very well, and I have not been in very much pain. The healing process will be another 11 weeks though, as the bone needs to grow into and around the spacer in order to keep it in place permanently, so I will remain on restrictions until Christmas, but I can already tell that this is going to be a very positive thing. 

Apparently, unlike the 1395, I am not yet too far gone to restore, and so I will keep chugging along. :)