And now time for something completely different.

Throughout my art show career I’ve always been pretty much entirely a nature photographer, but this fall I’ve been playing with photographing urban scenes around my hometown of Madison.

The new subject matter is an opportunity to try new things as well as an excuse to get out photographing a lot more often. With nature photography it usually involves traveling a good distance, which isn’t always practical. If I lived next to a National Park I could photograph nature every day, but I live in a city so it makes sense to photograph the city. It’s been really nice to be able to get out shooting on any given day I have some free time. Nature photography is still my first love so this new direction will ad to it, not replace it.

Here are some early images in the new direction. I’m hoping to have some photos printed and ready for the local fall shows coming up in a few weeks.

One evening while driving downtown I saw the nearly full moon rising and made note that I should try and use it in a photo. The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art on State Street lined up perfectly.

A foggy morning helped me out a bit to photograph the “Forward” statue in front of the state capitol.

The state capitol with some muted fall colors showing through the fog.

Monona Terrace in downtown Madison was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright who’s architectural philosophy was to have his buildings fit into nature. I think he succeeded here. It blends right in with the clouds above. (I also have one of my favorite art shows of the year in the building in November!)

Inside the capitol I’ve played with combining details together into one composition. I like how these three play off each other.

This photograph of the North Gallery in the capit0l is 10 photographs taken with a 14mm lens stitched together into one very wide panoramic. In fact the two doors on the left and right are actually facing each other so this photograph is over 180 degrees wide. The camera is seeing behind itself. It’s been fun playing with this, it took 5 trips to the capit0l to perfect this. I felt a little bit like I did back in the darkroom days, I had no idea how it would look till I got home and “processed” it.