This is supposed to be a GIF that cycles thru all the pictures shown below.
Montage One.
Another montage experiment
Those diabolical people at Newsvine Photographers thought up another challenge for us shutterbugs. This one involves taking pictures of Main Street, or anyway of one's hometown, and doing something a little bit unusual with them.
I found the other entries so fascinating that I had to dig up some photos of 16th Street in Milwaukee. Sixteenth Street is in an older neighborhood, hence the interesting architectural details. Unfortunately the camera I had at that time was extremely simple and did not enable me to take any zoom images of those roofline details. Natch.
Anyway, the neighborhood has gone through many changes, and at the time the pictures were taken was in the throes of a bit of a revival at the hands of the current Mexican/mixed race inhabitants of said area.
Older, established vendors like the Sanitary Comforter, the George Webb diner, the Archery shop, the musical instrument shop which specialized in accordions (stop that laughing, you bums in the back row!) -- now vie with a Mexican grocery, Novo's Restaurant, a Hispanic-named hair salon, a carniceria (butcher shop), and a low-income health clinic.
I put some of the pictures into montages, and I tossed all of them into a blender and got a GIF that cycles thru all the images at three-quarters of second per image. Then I also chopped up the most interesting photo of a guy on a scaffold painting a sunburst marquee into 16 squares, and put all 16 plus the original whole image into another GIF that cycles thru all of them at the same rate in the first GIF. I hope you enjoy those shows; they are another way to get a slide show without having to make a movie of the photographs, which can be darn tedious to do.
The street scene.
Assorted corners.
A Ben Franklin five-and-dime abuts the carniceria.
A bookkeeper is on the left. I cannot make out the sign on the middle building -- I think it was a religious bookstore. To the right is a medical clinic.
Obviously a family lives above the carniceria (butcher shop). Signs in Spanish line the windows on street level.
Experimenting with some composite pictures. Note the BV logo on the tower.
Many places are seedy-looking yet still have a fascination. The old Continental draws customers with disco night (this was when disco was still in).
Many buildings avoid boring old rectangles. Think outside the box, you know.
A bulldozer levels off the site of the former Harry Tann shop. Tann sold tires.
The old Harry Tann shop has been torn down. Note the sign on the building informs readers that the company has moved to a new address.
I mentioned the horse barns that still survive in this neighborhood. This pic shows a marker at one of the few remaining horse troughs in the city -- at the corner of Bow, Pearl, and 16th Streeth. The trough is covered in winter but opens up every spring. No horses come by to drink, but it serves as a link to the past.
A couple blocks to the immediate south of the business district are residences with architectural details like this. Homes in this area are mostly small bungalows, and a couple horse barns (where a garage would normally be) still survive.
A locksmith and an Italian pizza restaurant are neighbors.
I really, really liked this subject but was infinitely disappointed in the outcome. After letting it sit for several years, I decided it wasn't so bad.
While the windows are plastered with bright-colored signage, the actual shop sign respects the architectural details of the building.
A bright red awning on the upper level of this building provides a blast of color on a bright fall day.
The main door of the St. Martini church is bright red. The church also has a school.
The tower of the St. Martini church.
A little GIF-t for the Newsvine crowd.
