3 Reasons Why Cincinnati is a Photographer’s Paradise
From Art Deco architecture to pyrotechnic madness, Cincinnati offers endless subjects for the shutterbug.
Cincinnati is a beautiful city with a seemingly endless supply of subjects to keep a shutterbug happy. If you are visiting with a camera in hand, here are three major reasons why you need to fill up your memory cards (or rolls of film) in the Queen City.
1. The Architecture
From excellent French Art Deco landmarks like the Carew Tower to beautiful engineering feats like the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge, you could spend all day walking around downtown.
If you have a moment, visit the Cincinnati Museum Center and check out the largest semi-dome in the Western Hemisphere. If you go inside, you should be warned: I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the hip of Orion, C-beams covered with glitter in the park… but I’ve never seen so many screaming children (one of them being my very own) rampaging around like something out of a scene in World War Z!
Look, even if you can’t tell the difference between a Samuel Hannaford original or the guy next door with his truck up on blocks, just point the camera anywhere and shoot like a tourist! You can figure out what everything is once you get home and open up a cold can of Google.
2. The Parks
If you aren’t into architecture, there are a lot of great parks with hills and excellent views of the skyline (not the restaurant, the city). When I say “a lot,” it’s actually an understatement. We probably have more parks than chili parlors! We probably have more parks than every coney served at Skyline AND “Death Star” Chili over the course of a year!
Okay… maybe not quite THAT many. That’s crazy talk.
I want you to know that a lot of these excellent parks are conveniently dropped on top of a bunch of hills we have strewn about all over the place. “Big deal!” I hear you say. You aren’t very easy to please, are you? Just go buy some coneys, pick out a park (with the exception of that one over by UC where the creepers like to park), force those coneys down your throat, chase it with a magnesium hydroxide smoothie, and clean the grease off of your lens. You are ready to go! Don’t forget to take off the lens cap.
3. The Fireworks
Yeah, yeah… I know. You are probably thinking you could just attend your local 4th of July display and snap a few candid shots of toddlers setting dogs on fire with sparklers. Kids are dangerous! I know this for a fact (ask me about the time my daughter stabbed me in the eye with a drum stick).
But, if you haven’t witnessed the brown-trouser-inducing power of a Rozzi’s Famous Fireworks display for Labor Day (Riverfest) in Cincinnati, then you are truly missing out! They don’t just shoot off a few fireworks and call it a day… nosirreebob! They blow up so much that you’ll find shrapnel dropping on your picnic a month later! It’s awesome!
If you drive into town a few days early, you can spread out your ground tarp, drop your beer cooler on top of it, and mark off a spot to photograph the fireworks down by the river. A word of caution: if you have any future plans to have children, you might want to skip the finale, as the sheer volume of the explosions may render your “wedding tackle” effete. You’ve been warned.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention you can see fireworks at Reds games, too. I hear they fire off a round every time someone argues that Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame.
A Final Note on Gear
Don’t judge Cincinnati on my photography alone. I shot all of these from my basement window with a broken Walgreens disposable camera that I picked up used at the Goodwill.*
I’m sure you will land some impressive shots with your Hasselblad, and I expect you to send me a link! Also, if you are going to shoot photos through the window of your McLaren SLR 999, the least you can do is roll the windows down. Technique matters!
Enjoy your visit!
*not true at all
