The Rainbow Bridge in Broad Ripple Pentax K1000, 55mm f/1.8 SMC Pentax Kodak Gold 400 2017
This bridge was built in 1906 to carry Guilford Avenue over the Central Canal in Indianapolis’s Broad Ripple neighborhood.
Underneath the deck, it’s a typical single-span concrete arch. What sets this bridge apart is its railings. The oval “links” are unique.
I have a dim memory from 25 or more years ago of the railings being painted in a more random color pattern. I have a clear memory of this railing being much shorter — in about 2013 a row of block was added underneath the links. See a photo of the shorter railing here. This was probably done to make it harder to fall off the bridge into the canal.
Checking for a suspected shutter fault in my Nikon F3 I put two rolls of film through it late last year: one Kodak High-Definition 400 (see some of those photos here) and the other Kodak Max 400, photos from which I’m sharing here. Both rolls expired in 2007. I’m not a fan of expired film’s unpredictable results. So to me, the stuff is best used for a job like this.
The F3 went along on our day-after-Christmas road trip up the Michigan Road. All of these photographs are from the road, in and near Rochester. As I shared in this post, Rochester has a long row of lovely old houses on the road as you approach downtown from the south.
Even though it was midafternoon, given the time of year the sun rode fairly low in the sky and delivered some delicious light. The film’s colors all shifted a little, which is a hazard of being expired. But the Auto Tone tool in Photoshop fixed that right up in a second.
At full scan size you’ll see considerable grain in all of these photos. But at blog size the grain is managed well enough. I’m pleased that I was able to get a little blurred background at EI 400 with the 35mm f/2.8 AI Nikkor lens I was shooting.
On Rochester’s square, apparently Santa comes to visit in this little house. On the day after Christmas it had not yet been removed.
I also aimed the F3 at the abandoned bridge abutment north of Rochester, which I wrote about more extensively here.
This is the Tippecanoe River, placidly flowing past the bridge on which I stood.
That bridge, a simple modern steel stringer, features this plaque commemorating its 1982 completion. I love the typeface they used for the plaque.
Standing by that plaque I focused on the memorials on the old approach, enjoying the ever-fading afternoon light.
The F3 performed flawlessly, by the way. My worries about the shutter were unfounded.
The Mormons’ Indianapolis temple isn’t actually in Indianapolis. It’s in Carmel, a city that borders Indianapolis to the north.
But I gather that this building is drop-dead gorgeous inside. After it was completed a few years ago, they offered tours to the public. My parents went, and my mom gushed for days about the quality of the materials and the attention to details. I wished I had made time to take a tour.
Because after the tours completed, non-Mormons were forever blocked from entering.
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This is my favorite shot from that Pentax ME and 50/1.7 lens I recently picked up on eBay. The muted colors and enhanced grain of the expired film really work here, complementing this gritty scene.
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Snow-covered steps Kodak VR35 K40 Kodak Max 400 (expired) 2018
At church, we all come in the back door. Our parking lot is back there.
But it means we often forget about our front door. The door that the neighborhood sees. And so on this snowy Sunday, nobody thought to shovel it clean. Were it not for the footprints on the steps, our neighbors might think we were not even open. Indeed, when we encounter them around the neighborhood that’s sometimes what they tell us.
It’s a common trap churches fall into: we know our ways. But we want to meet people who aren’t in our church, and they find our ways strange, or even to make no sense. And we wonder why we seldom see anybody new on Sunday.
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Delicious and refreshing Kodak VR35 K40 Kodak Max 400 (expired) 2018
Hey, look! The first single frame that I shot in 2018! And it’s of this sign, obviously a recently painted reproduction of an old-style sign. It’s on 9th Street in Lafayette. Just check out all the ghost signs still peeking out from around it on that building’s flank.
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