sweet juniper!

So I've been working like crazy to get these photo books ready for the kid's grandparents before the printing deadline passes. I'm thinking of using Blurb (has anyone had a good or bad experience with Blurb)? The book with my favorite pictures of the kid was easy, but I've also been putting together a book of all my favorite non-kid shots of Detroit, hoping that I can get them to see it with my eyes and hopefully understand a little better why we love it here so much. So of course that means I feel the need to write captions for all the pictures, and I've been formatting pages in photoshop until two in the morning all week.

I received a bunch of e-mails over the past couple of weeks asking if I would sell prints of some of the pictures I've been taking of Detroit. I was really taken aback by this. I have no photography training. And while it's an incredible honor, it also makes me feel like apologizing to the professional photographers who actually know what they're doing. But I am looking for a way to sell photos from this site. I promise that if I do this, the prices will reflect my status as a total amateur. So if anyone is still interested, stay tuned.

This past week, I brought a friend who was interested into the Michigan Central Station. Again, it was empty except for us, and we climbed up through the tower to where his mother once worked as a secretary for the Grand Trunk Railroad. I took a bunch of new pictures in HDR. It was bitterly cold and so windy that chunks of the metal roof were banging around loudly and pieces of glass were falling from the windows. The floors of the station are covered in the debris that has fallen off the ceiling and walls, and when we got back down to the main floor, along with the sound of the roof threatening to come down in one giant chamber, we heard the distinct sound of sweeping, like, with a broom. We turned the corner and there was this crazy white guy in a red sweatshirt sweeping up all the debris into little piles. He saw us, but didn't say anything. He just kept working. We thought about asking him what he was doing, but I didn't want to know the real answer. I wanted to think he just loves the place so much he feels compelled to break in and keep it neat, a one-man army standing up to a ceaseless tide of taggers, vandals, and even nature itself. Crazy, of course, but the world (and this city) can always use a bit more of that kind of insanity I think.