Home > Photography > Albany, New York
We all have an obsession. This is one of mine. This started as an interest in the history and architecture behind the capitol complex, and has since expanded into an obsession (when I have the time) around the architectual history of Albany New York. I've started with the historic downtown district, and am planning to continue to photograph farther up the hill west of the capitol complex into lark street and the sort. This is but a small sample of these images, and at that poor quality scans of them. This entire project is being undertaken with a large format 4x5 camera, with the intended final medium being silver-gelatin prints, and/or carbon prints. I plan to update this page as progress is made, everything on here is a rough draft, and subject to my own lazyness and dislike of the hassle that is digital file management. Also I cannot stress enough the poor quality of my scanning setup and software. None of these images have good tonal range, and the exposure on them seems a bit lacking, and i'm not sure how to get that right with negetive scans, it does look quite a bit better in a silver print. I may update this page with photographs of silver prints when I get farther into the project.
The facade of the former Albany train station, this building is now an office building from best my understanding. This building served as the train station untill the tracks were pulled up for highway construction. Located properly in the downtown area, it's a great location. These days one accesses albany via the station across the river, a 40+ minute bus ride from downtown.
An old social club and resturant, today I believe it to be out of business, although I may be wrong. As the sign states, it was established in 1913 and is a clear part of Albany's State street & Broadway street downtown. This section has stood in for gilded age NYC in media due to the persistance of art deco style, although Albany art deco is a slightly unique style as compared to downstate NY.
This one is an old parking garage, I'm not entirely sure where to go other than that, I'm sure the building has a history, and I'll get to that at some point.
The historic home of Albany's YMCA, now an office(?) building. The current YMCA location is much farther west. I like this building a lot, and do plan to talk about it more, but for now i'll say that there's a cute little cafe that I have yet to try underneath it that looked like it had a pride flag in it's window.
The New York State Library and Natural History Museum as viewed from Empire State Plaza. I've yet to go inside, although I belive they may have something I've been trying to find for ages, but I've heard the museum is good. This building was a part of Governer Nelson Rockefeller's infamous vanity project that damage to downtown Albany on the levels that many American cities received via highways. Of course, this project itself also was highway related with an arterial road and large interchange crossing into the town, and terminating under the plaza.
Another part of the Empire State Plaza complex, this is the state's main legeslative building. Located across the street from the old capitol complex, which itself was just as grand as the plaza yet in a far older style, this building is a good example of the internationalist style that encompasses a lot of the complex, yet shares similarities to older Albany Art Deco buildings such as the old post office & the train station on Broadway.
Former offices of the Delaware & Hudson Railroad (whose tracks previous ran just east of the building), a part of SUNY Albany. I had a bit of chemistry issues, and obviously this print needs a lot of attention
Downtown Albany courthouse, located just off broadway. This style gives me a lot of trouble when it comes to finding a way to make prints that actually look decent, there's something about the contrast between certain things that isn't the best