Father Pitt

Tag: Monochrome

  • Backstreet Bar on the South Side

    Cupka’s Café

  • Moody View from the West End Overlook

    View from West End Overlook

    A pair of moody views taken on moody black-and-white film in 1999, probably with an Argus C3.

    Wider view

  • Beechview at Night

    Shiras streetcar stop in Beechview

    A streetcar stop in a quiet residential neighborhood of Pittsburgh after dark.

  • Chartiers Hill United Presbyterian Church in 1999

    Chartiers Hill Church

    The congregation was founded in 1775 by John McMillan; this building was put up in 1840. These pictures were taken with an Argus C3 in 1999. Three years later, while renovation work was in progress, the whole tower end collapsed.

    Chartiers Hill cemetery
    Old front

    The lens on Father Pitt’s old C3 didn’t like being pointed toward the sun, so we have a bit of glare in this picture; but it does show us the old front before it collapsed. It was replaced with a new front, somewhat different but in sympathy with the building, as we see in this picture from 2015.

    New front

  • St. Josaphat’s in Black and White

    Two attempts at arty photography with the old Samsung Digimax V4 set on monochrome mode. We also have more ordinary color pictures of St. Josaphat’s.

  • Concord Presbyterian Church and Cemetery, Carrick

    Concord Presbyterian Church

    This building was dedicated in 1915, but its congregation was organized in 1831—and really dates from before that, since local members had been meeting before the Presbytery recognized them as a church. This was a country church that was engulfed by city in the early 1900s; in its old country churchyard are the graves of a number of early settlers and the third mayor of Pittsburgh.

    In black and white
    From the churchyard

    Addendum: The architect of the church was George Schwan. From the Construction Record for October 11, 1913: “Architect George Schwan, Peoples Bank building, is working on plans for the proposed church building, for the Concord Presbyterian Congregation, Carrick. The building will be one-story, either brick or stone, and cover an area of 72×90 feet. Cost $35,000.”

  • Rooftops of Brookline

    Father Pitt was trying out a very long lens after making an expedition to Pitaland. In the center of the picture is the tower of Engine House Fifty-Seven. It was about half a mile away.

  • A Walk on the South Side with a Black-and-White Camera

    Corner of 16th and Sarah Streets
    Corner of 16th and Sarah Streets.

    It was not really a black-and-white camera; it was old Pa Pitt’s nineteen-year-old Samsung Digimax V4, a strange beast that was made for photography enthusiasts who wanted something that would fit in the pocket but still had most of the options of a sophisticated enthusiast’s camera. Father Pitt has set the user options to black-and-white. There is no good reason for doing so: obviously the camera collects color data and throws the colors away, and the colors could just as well be thrown away in software after returning from the expedition. But knowing that the picture must be black and white forces one to think in terms of forms rather than colors. So here are half a dozen pictures from a walk through the South Side Flats.

    Building on 17th Street
    Building on 17th Street, probably from the 1920s.
    Entrance to St. Adalbert’s
    The entrance to St. Adalbert’s Church.
    St. Adalbert’s Rectory
    St. Adalbert’s rectory.
    Rowhouses
    Rowhouses on Sarah Street.
    Front steps
    Front steps.

  • Mushroom

    This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is 600px-Mushroom%2C_Homewood_Cemetery%2C_2022-06-27.jpg

    Trying out a new camera. Actually, it’s twelve years old, but it just arrived, and twelve years old is newer than most of old Pa Pitt’s cameras.

  • Cloudscape

    Cloud