Sweet Carolina's

Where to start? I love barbecue. I love butcher shops. I love cities with tall buildings and great people watching. I also love air conditioning.

My 4th of July week was spent in South Carolina, right by the border of North Carolina. Even though I spent a lot of time in each state I really only dug the cameras out in NC. SC was more for relaxation time, TV watchin’ and board game playin’ (in that AC I was talking about, of course).

We always have game time when we visit our family. New one this time. If you are unfamiliar with the game, “Carbles” you are seriously missing out. It’s like Chinese Checkers or the board game Aggravation. But… it’s its own thing and in its own way so much better.

Better, because it was custom 3D printed and personalized by our relative himself. We played it a ton- even with my family’s neighbors who also had a blast playing it. And to be fair- they were hilarious people to hang with making the evening perfect! We need to go back to family game nights. They’re the best.

Like I said, this was a custom 3D in-house game and my mom and I and went home with our very own Carbles board, marbles and three decks of playing cards. All I needed to finalize the set was a bag to keep the board game set in and an electronic card shufflin’ device. Amazon = Success. That card shufflin’ machine will contain anyone’s ADD or ADHD. Pass it on to the behavioral health pros. Love playing with that dumb thing.

Anyway, back to photography- My first adventure in the Carolina’s took me to a little town called Waxhaw, North Carolina (I’ll be fully transparent- I had no idea we even crossed state boarders from South Carolina to enter into this wonderful geographical location- those invisible boarder lines will get ya sometimes).

Within this town is a bridge, some sidewalks, eateries, tea shops and some trains. After crushing a fantastic Cuban-like sandwich with tater chips at a little spot called Cork and Ale (a phenomenal culinary experience), we set out to wander around ol’ Wexhaw. Wexxxxx-HAW! YEE-HAW! Let’s do it!

CSX locomotive rolling through the town of Wexhaw, NC at approximately 50 miles-per-hour. With full cargo, this train at one point weighed right around 34-35 million pounds total

We started out our journey by crossing over the aforementioned bridge to visit some of the aforementioned shops. In the middle of the bridge, an elderly man engaged us in conversation (get ready for some train nerd talk).

Though I am not a stop and chat type, this guy was able to peak our interest by informing us a big-ol’ freight train was about to roll through. He was super passionate about trains as he used to be an engineer for Amtrak back in the day (which was a long time ago). The train was a CSX operated freight train that would be right around 1.5 miles in length (2.41402KM for you Canadian and European nerds) and would weigh in at roughly 14,000,000lbs empty. EMPTY. Sounded like a great shot so we hung around and learned about trains from our new friend. I learned sometimes they put extra locomotives in the middle of the train for extra braking power because God knows these things don’t stop “on a dime” as they say. This man taught us way too much for me to even remember to share. I grew up with Lionel model trails and taking the Amtrak Auto Train to Florida a bunch of times. This conversation just about made my visit. A small world, this now brings two humans into my life that have literally been an engineer operating trains I would have ridden on as a child in the 1990’s. Oh how old I’m getting, but oh how cool!

A couple days went by and we finally found ourselves venturing into Charlotte, North Carolina. Armed with our cameras, we hit up a spot called NoDa first. It’s a very vibrantly entertaining, somewhat mysterious, artsy and unique place to hang out with some vintage RV trailers converted into stores and food trucks, a cantina and a ton of murals to lay your eyes upon. The photography opportunities were endless and stunning. This was a great first stop! It has a lot more to explore, so I will save that exploration for my next visit.

From there, it was off to Uptown Charlotte. Here is where I got the Nikon D810 IR converted camera out and FINALLY got to explore using it as an architectural camera (my main reason for the conversion). Exploring the color grading and different artistic approaches in Light Room was a treat as well. This IR thing has really added a remarkable tool to the photography tool kit for various subject matter.

Down below are the images I decided to bring to life from shooting with my Fuji GFX 50SII and Infrared converted Nikon D810. Click the images to enlarge.

- Mike

PS: New images added to Arch/Design, City Life and Transportation portfolio sections…Browse away friends…


Lavender and Cream but no Fields of Butterflies

Saturday’s adventure was just up Route 15 to Dillsburg. What a town. They hold an annual lavender festival filled with artists, food and gardens.

I enjoyed a whoopie pie infused with lavender, if you didn’t already guess. The lavender cookies are great, too. There were some cool antique John Deere’s and a sweet old Ford F-100 pickup truck on site too, which you’ll see some close-ups of below.

All in all it was a great day to get some fresh air, walk around in the rain and enjoy great company.

There isn’t too much else to say but to enjoy the photos I took! Thanks for stopping by! Support your local town events, artists and get fat at the mom and pop’s restaurants.

- Mike

CANNONBALL!!!!!!!!!

Cannonball? Yeah, we will get there. But let’s start with my visit to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania- A place where I can’t stand their sports teams and hearing the words, “yinz and yinzers.” I will also take Hunts over Heinz any day of the week any week of the month any month of the year. I’m a principled man. And no- nothing to do with actual politics, just condiment politics which honestly are much more important and slightly less divisive.

The journey started off around 7:30 or so in the evening at a spot called Mario’s to watch the Phillies / Pirates game and grab a bite to eat. I enjoyed the double burgle with cheese, habanero BBQ sawwwwwce and sauteed onions with a healthy hill of tater tots dripped in a non-Heinz brand ketchup. I do have to mention, I was in Pittsburgh back in January for the Shane Gillis show at PPG Arena and had tater tots at Fat Heads on Carson Street which also took on the supporting act for the star of the show, another fantastic burgle. Which burgle? The KELSEY burgle. I mean, I ordered it for the name which probably isn’t after the best center to ever play football (we’re in a cross-state rival city here) but it also sounded great and ended up being amazing. Pittsburghians tend to really know their way around tater tots. Every place I’ve been they’ve been super savory, ultra crispy and internally fluffy. Just an astute observation I’ve made. And let us be clear- I am a tater tot connoisseur. So I do, actually, know what I’m talking about here.

Anyway, after this adventure I took a ride share to my hotel downtown. My driver was pumped to discuss transmissions, engine components, timing belts and braking systems on old Buicks and his current Nissan. I earned my auto mechanic certification in eleven minutes and was exhausted.

Baxter Buick dropped me off at my hotel and after checking in, I signed into my YouTube TV account and watched the end of the miserable Phillies game and hit the sack as they say. Who is they? And who still says, “hit the sack?” Not relevant. I got a great night’s sleep.

I then awoke Saturday morning and descended 4 floors to the 2nd floor where free (my favorite four-letter F word) breakfast was served. I enjoyed some unripened fruit, questionable scramby eggs and cheap sausage. But the cool part was the entire area was basically occupied by Phillies fans and I got my fill and enough energy to get back to the Shadyside neighborhood to get the day started.

There was some sort of arts fest in the Strip District today that I was forced into via a city bus. After checking out the first “art” tent, Puttshack sounded way more appealing, so my buddy Chad and I played a few rounds of mini golf. Indoors. In the frigid but imperative air conditioning. I definitely channeled my inner Happy Gilmore in this place and was thankful not to be asked to leave. I never knew about Puttshack and I’m super excited there’s one in Philadelphia near Barcade. What can be more fun than some climate controlled mini golf and retro arcade games within a 10 minute walk in Philly (which is a way better city than Hicksburgh)?

After playing a few fun rounds of indoor air conditioned mini golf, I ditched my party and did some photography on my way to PNC Park for the baseball game where the Phillies would blow it big time. I had fun taking other peoples photos along the way and shooting some fun shots that I found creative.

From travel team soccer tournaments, Backyard Brawls and just passing through, I’ve been to Pittsburgh a ton of times yet I had never gotten a good opportunity to explore this incredible city. The food was amazing, the people are generally friendly, there are awesome views everywhere and the traffic is really dumb which is on par for any city. I may knock on them for this or that and definitely their dumb sports teams, but I gotta say… Pittsburgh is a FUN city! I can’t wait to revisit.

Below are some images I shot with my Fujifilm GFX 50S Mark II body with the Fujifilm GF 45-100mm f/4 LR OIS WR lens. I had to pack light as I knew I’d only have a very small pack to carry in order to bring it into the stadium for the baseball games. The 45-100mm is a sharp and versatile walk-around lens.

Finally got to break the new Alienware laptop out to do a bit of editing in my hotel. It’s an absolute dream to edit images with. Looks like a Micro Machine compared to that Tonka Truck of a TV!

Oh yeah, let’s return to that part about cannonballs I mentioned at the start of this rambling. What do YOU know about cannonballs? Big spherical metal projectiles shot from battle ships and cannons? The thing you do where you bend your knees and hold your legs before jumping into a pool to splash everyone around you? No, even better. Deep fried balls stuffed with cabbage, noodles, copious amounts of cheese, bacon and some obligatory kielbasa. I discovered them while looking up the food offerings at PNC Park and wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night without trying them. I found them in Section 146. Worth the hype! If you go to a Pirates game and don’t get these, seek help.

- Mike

Hershey Gardens

As we near my mom’s next rotation around the sun, I decided to take her on a nice stroll around Hershey Gardens as an early birthday gift. It’s a great place to get into the open air, enjoy some beautiful flowers and plants and things and just enjoy nature.

So as we visited, I obviously brought some camera gear. Today, I carried on me my workhorse Nikon D850 as well as my infrared converted Nikon D810. I flew solo with just one lens- the Nikon 24-120mm Nikkor f/4. It’s versatile and fast, for what it is.

In addition to the gardens, Hershey Gardens also boasts a very impressive tropical butterfly atrium.

After photographing very few flowers and plants with the D850, I got bored and switched the the IR cam. Images below… You’ll know what is what! I’m absolutely loving the IR converted D810. HUGE props to Life Pixel! Our business relationship started a bit rocky but they came through and absolutely crushed it quality wise and customer service wise.

- Mike

Fighter Jets!

I’ve always been fascinated by aviation. Then in 10th grade my science teacher was like, “dude you barely passed algebra and need like tons of physics courses and stuff to get into that.” She told me I was dumb in a really nice way. Bless her heart. Anyway, my dreams of flying the Millennium Falcon or even an X-Wing were completely shot.

Today, though, I got an opportunity I have been seeking for quite some time. I received a ticket to the Air Show at the airport in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. I have missed the past few years in Ocean City, Maryland so I jumped right on this chance.

There were several pilots doing really cool stunts in really cool airplanes. I had never shot or tracked anything this fast so this was a great learning opportunity for me. I took full advantage. I brought my Fuji GFX 50S II for my walk around camera using the 45-100mm lens. For the aerial stuff, I used my Nikon D850 with a 200-500mm Nikkor lens with a 1.4TC. I removed the TC as it had trouble tracking in AF-C mode. After removing the TC and simply shooting 200-500mm and fine tuning some settings I was able to get some satisfactory images.

The Blue Angels were the obvious headliners. There was also a solo F-16 flying around as if it were the Ferrari of the skies. In between everything there were other pilots flying some older aircraft doing some phenomenal stunts almost making them look like they’d crash. A P-51 Mustang also raced a Tesla Cybertruck. Guess who won? Unfortunately I was behind the tents so I missed the race.

The Life Lion also took flight. Although no barrel rolls, flips or inverted flight, it was cool to see such an important aircraft to our area do a few pass by’s. It was nothing shy of skillful flight displaying pure ability and talent. These pilots and helicopters are relied on for every day life saving procedures regardless of weather conditions. They are the true heroes of the show. That being said, it was positive experience to see them displaying their flight mastery over the local Harrisburg skies proving their abilities to save lives.

The sheer propensity to control their aircraft and the pure skill these pilots displayed today blew me away and I am now FULLY addicted to continuing to get better at photographing aircraft of all types! What an amazing day! It was also awesome running into my good buddy Kenny at the show! It was his birthday this weekend, so I made sure to photograph him eating his favorite milkshake. Enjoy the photos below.

- Mike

Navy’s Blue Angels #5 and #6 doing some inverted tricks roughly 12-18” from wing tip to wing tip, cockpit windshield to cockpit windshield. These are the elite of the elite. Phenomenal performance. Really makes you appreciate everyone in the military who keep us safe.

Horse Farms and Popes!

Today, May 10, I visited the Hanover Horse Shoes Farms in Hanover, Pennsylvania. These are a pristine series of over 30 farms housing 900+ horses that will be sold as trotters, race horses and work horses. Full history can be found here. I would check it out as they are world famous! They recently sold a foal for over the massive price tag of $1,000,000. That’s a pretty penny.

After leaving the horse farm my photography club visited the Sacred Heart Basilica. This church boasts being the oldest church in the United States of America built of stone. Named a Minor Basilica on June 30, 1962 it’s a church officially designated and given special privileges by the Pope, who is a fellow baseball fan. As a Church of Christ guy myself, I don’t know a ton about the Catholic Church so I can’t comment too much further other than the renovations to Sacred Heart were phenomenal and I enjoyed grabbing a pano from the rear pews.

As for the photos I am presenting, the first three are shot through my Nikon D810 which was recently converted to infrared. The magenta image of the shack was brought into Light Room as shot from camera and tweaked. I kept the IR without converting to black and white for dramatic effect. Those are all shot through a Nikon D810 with 24-120mm f/4 glass. The abstract horse stall, chain and panorama was shot with my Fuji GFX 50S Mark II with a 45-100mm lens.

- Mike

REVISIT: Martin Guitar Factory

Welp, 510 Sycamore St, Nazareth, PA 18064, here I am again. Hello, Hi! Great to see you again.

April comes and May MAY rain down some showers, but Michael (me in 3rd person) makes guitar factory visits. This time I visited with my buddy Nate who can shred with the best of them.

It was great seeing this factory again as many things, including their artists wall, were redone. They also installed a patented machine I probably can’t talk about but watching it is pretty sick. When I was there in the fall of 2024 they were installing it and literally could not speak of it- just that it was a new installation to make their already amazing instruments better. So if you are interested I guess in all fairness you just have to visit. There’s plenty of other cool history to check out while you’re in town.

As always I have nothing but great things to say about this place. For five crisp one-dollar-bills, one crisp 5-dollar-bill you get in. Don’t try a three-dollar-bill, because it might get you arrested. Actually…ya gotta sign up online with a solid piece of plastic. We calls them things debit or credit cards. Either way, the tour is $5 (should be clear by now, nerds).

It is worth every penny. Trust me. Sign up. And please visit this place to eat on your way out of town. They rule and take great care of you. No, I’m not sponsored but I’ll take free stuff if they see this! I recommend the burgers and pierogies.

- Mike

Yeeaaahhhhh, that’s me. I’m playing a $4,000+ Martin acoustic guitar in their, “Picking Room.” What am I playing? Great question. “Horse with No Name” by America. Or Nirvana. Who knows. All I know is I didn’t want to break it!

Pennsylvania State Library - Yes I Visited One of Those!

Nestled between some inconvenient parking garages that discriminate against trucks and annoying street parking is the Pennsylvania State Library. There is WAY too much information to provide for the deep, structured and chalk full beautiful history of this facility so I’ll go ahead and post it here (from their very site). It is well worth the read and the librarians and staff did a fantastic job giving us an overview.

After our orientation, we got to explore all floors and even the basement which houses the archives. Downstairs on the, “G LEVEL” are some really cool artifacts, historical books, (Rick from Pawn Stars would drool over these for his shop), statues, paintings and cool sculptures. We happened to run into an employee who showed us the attached auditorium to the library which was not originally part of our photography club’s tour. Right place right time for sure! This dude made my day!

What a blast today was exploring such an amazing historical building housing so many things I would never touch…books. But those are cool, I guess!

- Mike

Antique Cars; No Coffee with the Cars

It really doesn’t make a difference if there was coffee and cars combined today. I don’t take part in those, “gatherings.” I’m jamming out to some Thursday and Witness Marker enjoying the post production photo editing process and my afternoon / evening.

However, I had my dose of caffeine this morning alongside some leftover shrimp and a bottle of my Gingerbread Oats Overnight. Full disclosure- I rag on Sheetz (SUCKS) all the time for their watered down nonsense they call coffee. They’ve been watering it down for 12-14 years now and it’s obnoxious. But as I was browsing for some tater chips of my one persuasion one fine evening, I found this winter blend (now unavailable from SHEETZ shucks who cares) and pulled the ol’ trigger. It’s actually really good, believe it or not. Even though it is finely ground it has worked well with my French press. Very flavorful and I generally am not a “flavor” coffee fan. Try it. Or not. Your choice. Actually, I’d rather read books than drink this stuff again. But that’s just me.

Man, what a start to this post. What I really meant to say is that I visited Hershey Pennsylvania’s finetastic, yes, FINETASTIC, Antique Auto Museum. Or as they call it, WORLD CLASS. It really is, though. It is well sponsored and funded and at only $16.00 to visit (if you’re under 61 years of age - Fourteen and just two quarters if you’re a geezer) it is full of automotive history from motorcycles, to police cars, to muscle cars to even busses that were used in the film, “Forrest Gump.” There are nostalgic cars for just about every age group going back to the early 1900’s to Tucker’s from the late 40s to again muscle cars and all of that good stuff!

This was my second visit to the museum and it was not as great as the first. I felt like the first visit had more busses and better displays downstairs. However, the vintage Shelby Mustangs (one of my favorite cars) were well lit and on display and I have to say, that made my day! The model train set was also still on display with buttons you can press to make it make sounds and light up.

I brought my Fujifilm GFX 50S II along with me today equipped with a 32-64mm and 100-200mm lens. Below are the images I captured. I went for close ups today as it’s a museum and featuring the whole car is not always possible. The place truly presents awesome opportunities, though! Whether a photographer or just a car enthusiast I highly recommend visiting this spot if you are local or in town. It will not disappoint! I promise!

P.S. Added a couple of these images to my “Transportation” section. Check out the portfolio!

- Mike

Longwood Gardens - Kennett Square, PA

Happy New Years! First post in the good ol’ 2025!

For the second time in a row, I got my mother and myself tickets to Longwood Gardens Christmas lights display. Per usual it was amazing! Not a square inch left untouched by the Christmas Spirit. This place is purely a playground for myself and my photography. So it’s a great mix of spending time with my mother and enjoying each other’s company as well as machine gunning my memory cards. My mom adores this place so it’s much more of a blessing being together than the images I create. Though those are fun, too.

I came home with just north of 500 images to sift through. Below are the ones I chose to edit and display for all to see. Please enjoy!

If you’re in the Philadelphia area and want to check this amazing place out please see this link for directions and information. Their “events” page can be found here. During the prime season (Nov-Jan) I would highly recommend parking in the South Lot (Google Maps can find this) so you can take busses to the entrance. It saves a TON of walking and the bus trips are free.

- Mike