The Mrs., Hucker and I took a walk downtown Petoskey yesterday.

The sun was poking its head in and out of the clouds, the apple blossom's are blooming 

and the smell of summer was floating around.

The alley way behind Leo's bar, Ethnic Creations and the Mitchell Street Pub is pretty famous 

by Northern Michigan standards.  

I dont know how many local bands have had their promo pictures taken there, high school seniors, engagement photos etc....   But regardless of how many photos have been snapped in this little alley way it will always be one of the prettiest spots in Petoskey.

Here are some photos of the alley way, they way I see it....

This is my favorite shot for part 1.

I love the apple blossoms in Petoskey!

Anytime you can contrast nature against architecture you will 

walk away with some interesting to look at.

I really liked the two tone of this door, and the steps crossing just

above it added to the mystery of it all.

If you click on this picture and enlarge it you will see some really

interesting stuff going on! 

The cobwebs in the corner, the pollen on the glass, the construction 

going on inside the building, the cars and parking in the reflection!

Pretty neat if you ask me!

I have been thinking a whole lot about perspective lately, 

and how it can change the way people think or feel about anything.

Photography is a great way to mess around with perspective and get

an inside look at what it really is.

The next four pictures are all of the same general area.

What I did to test out the different perspectives was this.

In this one I went against the natural grain of the alley way.

Crossing my lens and camera body against the lines of the buildings,

trees and retaining walls.

In this one brought the camera body up a little bit from the first frame to 

to match my frame to the angle of the building in the foreground, then

focused hard immediately in front of me to gain a good depth of field.

This next one followd the previous with the foreground building laying

naturally with the camera, then I added more to the other side of the frame

by pulling back a bit and lengthening my depth of field. 

On this one I noticed how the alley ways road was 

transitioned up in to the wall of the building.

So I laid the bottom of my camera body flat on the little 

transition of alley way to get this kind of organic feel

out of the lines the architecture in the alley way form.

It's amazing to me that such little movements can either make or break 

the way people feel about a photograph.  And such is life. Where you are standing when a certain thing happens dictates how you interoperate said event.  And the guy standing across the street will have seen the same event but have a completely different idea of what happened due to his own perspective.

Crazy, I know!

Once again, I was trying to contrast nature and 

architecture.

My wife Bre pointed out these bees to me.  There were tons of them 

buzzing around pollinating the trees and bumping in to one another.

I must have taken 500 photos of these dang bees!!!!

It was driving me insane! I just couldn't get the shot that I wanted...

This is one that satisfied my goal.

Now I have been in this alley way more times than I can count, 

and for some reason have never noticed this other little alley way that leads 

to these apartments.  I just struck my fancy, so I took a couple pics and we rolled out!