National Tube & Lorain Slag Photo – December 1962

No big story today – just a nice reminder of the days when Lorain was an industrial giant. It's a photo of the steel mill and salt heap from the W. 21st Street Bridge. As the caption notes, "The billowing black smoke from the Lorain Slag Co. and the National Tube Division, Lorain Works darkens the early morning sun-lit sky and blends with pinks, oranges, golds, blues and grays of sunrise. The photo was taken by Journal photographer Norman Bergsma at 7:15 a.m. Tuesday from the Central High Level Bridge at one-eighth of a second at f/11.

The photo ran in the Journal back on December 7, 1962. It's a pity the photo isn't in color.

Chief Photographer Norm Bergsma's work has been featured many times on this blog. The photographer himself was the subject of a post as well back here. Here's the 1968 photo from that post.

Much has changed in the world of photography since that 1962 photo.

Drones make it possible to get fantastic aerial photos easily without renting a plane or having to find a vantage point like a bridge or high building. And HDR (high dynamic range) photography makes it easy for a so-so photographer to create mind-blowing images that are absolutely surreal.

As for me, I'm not a fan of HDR photos. They're simply too phoney-baloney looking, although they are very popular when posted on Facebook.

I'm nostalgic for the days when I took my Pentax K-1000 SLR camera and roamed Central Ohio while playing hooky from Ohio State for the day. I'd shoot cows (with my camera) as well as a variety of rural vistas, creating black and white photo compositions while trying to remember which F-stop settings to use to give me the effect I wanted.