No. 27
Walking down the alley in early autumn darkness, No. 27 showed its welcoming arc of light.
Copyright (c) 2015 Bernadette E. Kazmarski
Floating Window
Floating Window
Interesting how the lighting at night is more intense, even reflections, and things look like they’re floating. Some of them really are.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Main Street at Twilight
Main Street at Twilight
The first block of East Main Street in Carnegie, PA at dusk.
I have no idea how my little hand-held digital metered the colors like this, but I heartily approve! Honestly, this is not touched up in any way, even though the sky looks as if I either added from another photo, I adjusted the color in that area or I just painted in another sky. The whole thing looks like a movie set.
The time of day was twilight, after the sun dropped below the horizon but still reflected on the sky and the thin overcast of clouds. I know I pointed my focus spot on the darkest area in the scene, way down at the other end of Main Street, the building that is actually on a hill in the next community, and that would have influenced the internal metering especially since the scene looks very bright although it’s only the street lights that provide illumination. I can assure you they are not that bright.
And likely the yellow lights also pushed the complementary blue of the sky a little brighter than it actually was. However it happened, I approve.
This was taken with my little Lumix point and shoot where I have very little control, but the other settings that would have influenced this outcome are two I’ve always set on these little cameras. First, I turn the stabilizer mode, which will help to eliminate blurriness in low-light conditions, to “off” because in these small cameras it simply changes the ASA setting to a higher number. This results in a photo that looks great in your view screen, but when you open it up on your computer it’s completely grainy. I use a tripod, or, as in this case, I find something to set the camera on or press it against and set the shutter for a 2-second timed delay so that everything is as still as it’s going to get when the shutter finally opens.
Second, I set the EV, or exposure value, setting two or three steps below the middle. Most cameras shoot light so that as much light as possible gets into the lens, but you also lose detail in the highlights and I find it doesn’t meter well for images with a lot of contrast, which is usually what attracts me.
So, I guess that’s how this one turned out like this.
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Purchase a canvas or a print of this image
Canvas print of “Main Street at Twilight”
Canvas print
This 16″ x 32″ canvas print is beautifully printed in archival inks on artist canvas and gallery wrapped around 1″ stretchers. Sides are finished in black. You can find it in my Etsy shop.
I can also prepare a digital print in a variety of styles and sizes.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Wild Hollyhock
Wild Hollyhock
Another of my Instagram photos, this as part of a bouquet of wildflowers I gathered on my way back from a trip to the post office in the afternoon.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Rainy Night on Main Street
“Rainy Night on Main Street”, acrylic, 24″ x 12″, 2007 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
“Rainy Night on Main Street”, Acrylic • 12” W x 24” H • 2007
I pulled up to a stop sign and saw this view of Main Street at night in the rain. I took a photo with my ever-present digital camera (and actually have it in my gallery “At Night in the Rain” ) but at the time a friend had also given me boxes of leftover art materials from her aunt including canvas panels and acrylic paints and brushes. I could visualize this in acrylic paint, the fuzzy glow around the streetlights, the lights in the windows, the long, ragged reflections on the street, and so I did. I entered it in annual the “Carnegie Painted” art exhibit in 2007 and it’s also part of the gallery “My Home Town”, a collection of 12 of my favorite paintings of all the ones I’d entered in that exhibit over nearly a decade. The original painting is sold, but I have made prints of it in various sizes.
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This is shared on Friendship Friday on Create With Joy
Friendship Friday.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Cool and Warm
Cool and Warm
Abstract patterns in a shop window.
Those alien-looking organic shapes weren’t the only things I found on my gray day walk this week. Walking down Main Street in the dusky dark I also passed shop windows with bright lights inside, and holiday decorations just illuminated for the evening.
One of the shops has strands of silver beads and flat coin-shapes hanging in a curtain across the entire front window. The cool gray light caught the edges of silver beads and baubles in a shop window with flecks of warm yellow light inside flashed on the edges.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
A Party on Main Street
Main Street on Election Day.
The sun was turning golden in late afternoon when I walked down to my polling place on election day in November 2012. Main Street looked lovely, and with this flag perfectly illuminated at the moment I walked toward it I thought what being able to cast a vote means to all of us in every town and city all over this country. We whine, boast, throw mud in each others’ faces, but in the end we have this one basic right that ensures us a say in what happens to us.
I thought of my mother and my older relatives, the children of immigrants who had left one tyranny after another and risked their lives to come here to freedom, that “greatest generation” always so proud to cast their vote. I drove them to the polls and was proudly introduced to their friends from grade school, also the children of immigrants, who were electoral workers. They are all gone now. They left this to duty me.
People die for this right all over the world, every day.
Women in this country died for this right less than 100 years ago.
African-americans in this country died for this right barely 50 years ago.
Veterans who served under this flag died to ensure this right to us in every conflict from our founding to today.
Standing there on the sidewalk with my camera pointed at this gently waving flag, waiting for the perfect moment, whatever that would be, I was intensely grateful for the safety of my street, for the people who honked and waved at me seeing what I was doing, for my freedom to creatively express myself without fear of reprisal, and I knew that, pacifist that I am, if any foreign nation came along to try to take that moment away from me I’d be on the front lines risking my life to keep this freedom for all of us.
I’m glad all I need to do is vote.
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All images used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission. Please ask if you are interested in using one in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of this image or a product including this image, check my Etsy shop or Fine Art America profile to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Saturday Smiles
Lemon Smile
I encountered the last of a row of exuberant sunflowers on my way back from the post office this morning. I wish I would have had my DSLR to blur out some of those backgrounds and get even more dramatic closeups, but these are fine. Enjoy!
Orange Smile
Shy Smile
Russet Smile, with a little green bee.
Smiling Quartet
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Blossoms at Night
Blossoms at Night
The ornamental pear trees on Main Street are ready for spring, suddenly in full flower after only a few days of warm weather, and snow, ice and a freeze just four days ago. They are about two weeks later than usual, and have even bloomed as early as a month before now. It’s good to see them now.
It’s taken with my smartphone which doesn’t catch the details my DSLR would capture, but I just had to get it in the moment.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms.
Colorful Stars on Main Street
Holiday lights on Main Street.
Carnegie’s holiday decorations light up the street. Main Street is getting to look like this, and I can’t beat this photo, at least not yet this year.
Hmmm, how can I make a street I photograph all the time look a little different from the last year? Well, get out the cross-screen filter for starters so that each light or highlight in the images has extra interest; I like to set the cross a little off-kilter, not a plus-sign, not an “X”, but something in between. Next, use the 70-300mm zoom lens and manual focus so just the very first light and wreath are in focus and all the rest, all the wreaths all the way down Main Street to Washington Avenue, are successively blurred just a little each step of the way. Even the stop lights look festive, as noted in a holiday song. I liked the effect.
Last night as I was crouched to photograph this in a fairly dark spot on Main Street, I frightened a couple of teenage guys who apparently didn’t see me before I suddenly stood up very near to them, and the shuttle that takes residents from one of the local nursing homes on their errands stopped, opened the door and looked at me, then went on. I photographed this last year as well, and included a story of photographing where people don’t expect it, including hunching down in the dark by a wall wearing a cape and having the police stop to ask what you’re up to.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
Main Street Autumn Evening
Main Street Autumn Sunset
This camera didn’t quite catch the tangerine sky on the horizon, but it did catch the glow of that color on the buildings, the gradated blue sky with wispy clouds, and the evening star are all there to wish us well on a quiet autumn evening on Carnegie’s Main Street.
Main Street at Twilight
Main Street at Twilight
The first block of East Main Street in Carnegie, PA at dusk.
I have no idea how my little hand-held digital metered the colors like this, but I heartily approve! Honestly, this is not touched up in any way, even though the sky looks as if I either added from another photo, I adjusted the color in that area or I just painted in another sky. The whole thing looks like a movie set.
The time of day was twilight, after the sun dropped below the horizon but still reflected on the sky and the thin overcast of clouds. I know I pointed my focus spot on the darkest area in the scene, way down at the other end of Main Street, the building that is actually on a hill in the next community, and that would have influenced the internal metering especially since the scene looks very bright although it’s only the street lights that provide illumination. I can assure you they are not that bright.
And likely the yellow lights also pushed the complementary blue of the sky a little brighter than it actually was. However it happened, I approve.
This was taken with my little Lumix point and shoot where I have very little control, but the other settings that would have influenced this outcome are two I’ve always set on these little cameras. First, I turn the stabilizer mode, which will help to eliminate blurriness in low-light conditions, to “off” because in these small cameras it simply changes the ASA setting to a higher number. This results in a photo that looks great in your view screen, but when you open it up on your computer it’s completely grainy. I use a tripod, or, as in this case, I find something to set the camera on or press it against and set the shutter for a 2-second timed delay so that everything is as still as it’s going to get when the shutter finally opens.
Second, I set the EV, or exposure value, setting two or three steps below the middle. Most cameras shoot light so that as much light as possible gets into the lens, but you also lose detail in the highlights and I find it doesn’t meter well for images with a lot of contrast, which is usually what attracts me.
So, I guess that’s how this one turned out like this.
. . . . . . .
Purchase a canvas or a print of this image
Canvas print of “Main Street at Twilight”
Canvas print
This 16″ x 32″ canvas print is beautifully printed in archival inks on artist canvas and gallery wrapped around 1″ stretchers. Sides are finished in black. You can find it in my Etsy shop.
I can also prepare a print in a variety of styles and sizes.
This photo is also available as a print in my gallery on Fine Art America.
Reading the Paper on the Bridge
Reading the Paper on the Bridge
Just an interesting shot on a sunny summer afternoon in Carnegie, and quite colorful.
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For a print of any photo, visit “purchasing” for availability and terms. For photos of lots of black cats and other cats—and even some birds as I first published this post there—visit The Creative Cat.
Sketch: Main Street Sunday
“Main Street Sunday”, pastel on sanded paper, 9″ x 12″ © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
This is one more sketch from my art and photo extravaganza Sunday a week ago, and this is what happens when you try to do six sketches in one day—they are finished at a later time.
This sketch I had not had the chance to begin that day, only took photos with intention. It was near noon and I’d already been out in the sun for about two hours, and the only place to stand to get this sketch was in direct sun. I don’t mind the sun, but I knew that would have been too much.
As I always do when I photograph people where they might be recognizable, I went to the nice young couple with the baby sitting at the table by Papa J’s and told them I was only photographing for reference for a painting I’d like to do but I would likely never use the photograph unless I had a release since they were recognizable. That was fine with them. I took several photos and packed things up on my bike to continue on my journey to a shadier spot for mid-day.
So I began this sketch entirely from a photo, and sometimes that’s okay, but there’s a lot going on here and something just didn’t feel authentic with the sketch I’d finished a day or two after. I had to let it sit…and sit…and sit until I decided I just had to find the time around noon on a sunny day to go back to that spot and look at it again, and work on the painting for a bit if I could. Then I had to wait several rainy days for a sunny day. And so today I did. It seems I needed deeper shadows and sharper highlights. If I’d been able to I would have removed the two cars, but that wasn’t possible so I toned them down. The street’s a little out of proportion…oh, well.
So here we are, Main Street in Carnegie on a Sunday in June, just about noon! It was June 9, to be exact.
(If you see a couple of stripes about 1/3 of the way from each edge, that’s my scanner, still unhappy and not getting any better. I really have to look for a new one.)
Main Street is a frequent subject of mine:
West Main Street August Afternoon
Memorial Day Parade: A Pencil Sketch
And an exhibit entitled “My Home Town”
Main Street Colorful Afternoon
Main Street Colorful Afternoon
The pear trees are blooming on Carnegie’s Main Street again, and though each year looks like the previous years I still can’t help myself from photographing and sketching the sight. This is one of the reference photos for my sketch, a bright late afternoon though a little bit overcast.
One of my favorite paintings of Carnegie, and also a favorite of others is also from this time of the year, and I realized as the pear trees began this year that I painted it ten years ago. It is called, not surprisingly, “Pear Trees on Main Street” and you can see it here where it is the signature image for my series “My Home Town”. Can’t wait to finish the new one.
And you can also see a slideshow of photos of the pear trees blooming on Main Street. It’s really quite a sight.
Meanwhile Last Year: Illuminated Blossoms
Illuminated blossoms.
The pear trees were blooming on Main Street on this day last year! Not a sign of any pear trees or magnolia, and even the daffodils are hesitating.
Sunny Main Street
Main Street Carnegie
Well, it was sunny, but instead of leaving it in its natural colors, I desaturated it to approximate a black and white shot because I liked the close-set details of all the buildings and light poles and bollards and bricks. I then added a yellow filter because it seemed to help define things better.
Colorful Stars on Main Street
Holiday lights on Main Street.
Carnegie’s holiday decorations light up the street.
Hmmm, how can I make a street I photograph all the time look a little different from the last year? Well, get out the cross-screen filter for starters so that each light or highlight in the images has extra interest; I like to set the cross a little off-kilter, not a plus-sign, not an “X”, but something in between. Next, use the 70-300mm zoom lens and manual focus so just the very first light and wreath are in focus and all the rest, all the wreaths all the way down Main Street to Washington Avenue, are successively blurred just a little each step of the way. Even the stop lights look festive, as noted in a holiday song. I liked the effect.
Last night as I was crouched to photograph this in a fairly dark spot on Main Street, I frightened a couple of teenage guys who apparently didn’t see me before I suddenly stood up very near to them, and the shuttle that takes residents from one of the local nursing homes on their errands stopped, opened the door and looked at me, then went on. I photographed this last year as well, and included a story of photographing where people don’t expect it, including hunching down in the dark by a wall wearing a cape and having the police stop to ask what you’re up to.
View of Main Street
View of West Carnegie
Walking around affords all sorts of interesting views you don’t see from the car. Walking a little out of the way affords views you haven’t seen before. Putting this together and planning for the right time of day pays of in an interesting shot. The leaves have fallen off the trees, an overcast day opened up just before sunset, and I finally got one of the shots of an area of Carnegie I’ve been planning for a while.
At this time of day, at this time of year, the trees are bare and otherwise large pools of shadow are open, and the sun, angled down after the autumnal equinox instead of shining from overhead, flows down the east-west leading streets and alights the details on the houses.
And here is this view in sepia, similar to my last view of West Main Street.
West Main Street from above, in sepia.
West Main Street
West Main Street
It’s only at a certain time late in the day that the sun lights these six blocks of West Main Street all the way to the west end of town. Bonus that the sky was reflecting on the railroad tracks. I tried my best to avoid the mail utility pole and “stop here at red” sign for what they blocked, but I love the busy-ness of wires and poles further down.
And just to show that the town still looks much like the small town it’s always been, here’s a sepia version of the same thing.
West Main Street Carnegie looking vintage.
A Party on Main Street
Main Street on Election Day.
The sun was turning golden in late afternoon when I walked down to my polling place today. Main Street looked lovely, and with this flag perfectly illuminated at the moment I walked toward it I thought what being able to cast a vote means to all of us in every town and city all over this country. We whine, boast, throw mud in each others’ faces, but in the end we have this one basic right that ensures us a say in what happens to us.
I thought of my mother and my older relatives, the children of immigrants who had left one tyranny after another and risked their lives to come here to freedom, that “greatest generation” always so proud to cast their vote, who I used to drive to the polls and be proudly introduced to their friends from grade school who were electoral workers. They left this to me.
People die for this right all over the world, every day.
African-americans in this country died for this right barely 50 years ago.
Women in this country died for this right less than 100 years ago.
Veterans who served under this flag died to ensure this right to us in every conflict from our founding.
Standing there on the sidewalk with my camera pointed at this gently waving flag, waiting for the perfect moment, whatever that would be, I was intensely grateful for the safety of my street, for the people who honked and waved at me seeing what I was doing, for my freedom to creatively express myself without fear of reprisal, and I knew that, pacifist that I am, if any foreign nation came along to try to take that moment away from me I’d be on the front lines risking my life to keep this freedom for all of us.
I’m glad all I need to do is vote.
All Roads Lead to Carnegie, 2011
Main Street Banners
Our everyday banners in Carnegie line up neatly along Main Street and add color with a few awnings. In a few weeks these ornamental pear trees will turn to bronze.
I designed these banners for the Carnegie Community Development Corporation and Carnegie Borough to replace the set of turquoise banners we’d had for at least six years.
The phrase came from a stop I made at a convenience store out in the middle of nowhere while actually only about 15 miles from Carnegie—rural southwestern Pennsylvania is like that, wooded hills and open fields and numbered state roads. Remembering another visit out that way I knew one of the roads I was on led right back into Carnegie from out there, windy and hilly, but no turns.
I asked the clerk, “Which one of these roads leads to Carnegie?”
She paused and considered for just a few seconds. “All roads lead to Carnegie,” she said, as if it was a fact that everyone knew.
It’s true too. Carnegie, even though only six miles outside Pittsburgh, was once a hub for all the small towns to the south and west, and looking at a map, especially before the interstate, all those state and county roads do lead to Carnegie.
This is also one of the images in my photo exhibit, Carnegie Photographed.
Main Street at Twilight, 2011
Main Street at Twilight
The first block of East Main Street in Carnegie, PA at dusk.
I have no idea how my little hand-held digital metered the colors like this, but I heartily approve! Honestly, this is not touched up in any way, even though the sky looks as if I either added from another photo, I adjusted the color in that area or I just painted in another sky. The whole thing looks like a movie set.
The time of day was twilight, after the sun dropped below the horizon but still reflected on the sky and the thin overcast of clouds. I know I pointed my focus spot on the darkest area in the scene, way down at the other end of Main Street, the building that is actually on a hill in the next community, and that would have influenced the internal metering especially since the scene looks very bright although it’s only the street lights that provide illumination. I can assure you they are not that bright.
And likely the yellow lights also pushed the complementary blue of the sky a little brighter than it actually was. However it happened, I approve.
This was taken with my little Lumix point and shoot where I have very little control, but the other settings that would have influenced this outcome are two I’ve always set on these little cameras. First, I turn the stabilizer mode, which will help to eliminate blurriness in low-light conditions, to “off” because in these small cameras it simply changes the ASA setting to a higher number. This results in a photo that looks great in your view screen, but when you open it up on your computer it’s completely grainy. I use a tripod, or, as in this case, I find something to set the camera on or press it against and set the shutter for a 2-second timed delay so that everything is as still as it’s going to get when the shutter finally opens.
Second, I set the EV, or exposure value, setting two or three steps below the middle. Most cameras shoot light so that as much light as possible gets into the lens, but you also lose detail in the highlights and I find it doesn’t meter well for images with a lot of contrast, which is usually what attracts me.
So, I guess that’s how this one turned out like this.
This photo is available as a print in my gallery on Fine Art America. I can also prepare a print in a variety of styles and sizes.
The Tired Sunflower, 2011
The Tired Sunflower
She’s resting her head on one of the posts along Main Street, making a striking image of contrasting colors. Was this sunflower ready to lie down and become bird food…or did she have a little too good of a time on Saturday night?
Known by the company she keeps.
Today 