Magnificent.

The colonnade. Click the image to see the map.

Boasting one of the longest and tallest colonnades of any building, the 1912 Beaux Arts style New York State Education Building in downtown Albany is breathtaking in both its beauty and size. It is also home to one of the largest continuing frauds in American government, as this Wikipedia quote attests:

Fraud on a New York scale – a $30 billion annual theft.

My son and I visited en route to Union College on a rainy Sunday and were lucky to be given a detailed history of the building and the vast ‘The Genius of America’ painting by the receptionist, right down to the placement of Juno and Minerva!

Articulate and well spoken, our ‘tour guide’.

Adolphe Yvon’s canvas hangs in the building and is suitably large at 30 x 18 feet. These sort of allegorical paintings are no longer in favor, but our guide gave us a detailed and historically involving explanation. America would do well to return to adulation of its greatness when half the population thinks it’s no problem to extort foreign governments to further your corrupt political goals.

iPhone 11 Pro snaps.

Mystery in the rain.

This image was taken on a rainy day in downtown Albany, NY during a college visit with my son.

Pizzeria – corrected image.

I used my UWA lens correction profile to remove distortion from the ultrawide lens in the iPhone 11 Pro. Cars were parked in the roadway and the sidewalk was narrow, dictating the use of the ultrawide optic. Rain? Not a problem with the iPhone’s waterproof design.

Here’s the uncorrected image:

Re-purposed.

‘Re-purposed’ is hardly the most elegant of English words, but this building in old Albany, the NY state capital, has indeed suffered this fate.

Back in the day it served as home to a diverse collection of businesses, as the fascinating signage indicates.

iPhone 11 Pro, verticals corrected in Photoshop.