Sam Glover - Great American Tower Project 2025: Appendix A

Sam Glover's Cincinnati Collection: Great American Tower Project 2025

Appendix A: Plans for Photography from Larz Anderson Park

by Samuel E. Glover, PhD

sam.e.glover@icloud.com

513.609.2920

Created on December 31, 2024

Annotated on the following dates:

January 1, 2025

February 2, 2025

Cincinnati bathed in the light of Sunrise: Cincinnati cityscape from Larz Anderson Park, buildings front lit by sunrise during initial site tests in December 2024. Canon R6m2, Canon RF100-500mm lens @167mm; ISO 400, F/16, 1/13th of a second shutter stop.

Intentional Photography: Sometimes photography opportunities just happens. An iPhone 15 has a great camera for many applications and is always with us. Sometimes it may even be the camera of choice! Intentional photography puts you in a place where you hope to be more likely to be there when they do happen and be prepared to photograph it well.

I have been photographing Downtown Cincinnati for about the last six months after enjoying dinner at PrimaVista and the great overlook the nearby park provides. But I wanted some different vantage point - in particular viewing Cincinnati from the East which may offer some river shots as well.

Larz Anderson Park was a new overlook for me that I wanted to get a better feel for to catch sunset and moonset photos of Cincinnati. As usual I did a check in App (I use it on an iPad) called The Photographer’s Ephemeris {TPE}. TPE has a SKYFIRE module that predicts spectacular sunrise and sunset opportunities - December 26th, 2024 showed that sunset was fairly likely to be good (50% as rated by Skyfire for the Cincinnati area. So I reviewed options in TPE to see where the sun would go down in relation to Larz Anderson Park and downtown Cincinnati. It was not perfect but still well within framing of a 100 - 150 mm lens that seemed appropriate for the 5.6 km distance between the park and downtown. The location would be able to check out for sunset and sunrise shots.

I photographed for two days in December 2024 to get a feel for framing and views. These images were great in their own right but also helped provide information to be used to plan photographs from the location during 2025. After reviewing PhotoPills I decided to focus on the Great American Tower from this location and came up with a number of different dates to correspond to interesting intersections of the Moon and Sun to showcase it.

Cincinnati sunset December 26, 2024 from Larz Anderson Park with a Canon R5 and IRIX 150mm Cine Macro Lens and Breakthrough Photography drop-in Variable Neutral Denity Filter

Cincinnati Sunset with Canon R6m2 and Canon RF100-500mm lens shot in Portrait mode at 118mm.

Image of the Canon R5 setup overlooking the Ohio River and downtown Cincinnati

Cincinnati in the early morning December 22, 2024 as captured with Canon R5m1 and IRIX 21mm Lens - shown for Field of View.

R6m2 with RF100-500mm lens (@100mm). HDR composite with noise reduction.

2025-1-24: Sunset over the Great American Tower taken with Canon R6m2 with RF100-500mm lens and Breakthrough Photography CPL on lens filter

Notes from Test Shots:

I took images from the park during sunrise and sunset in December 2024, using several camera setups while I decided what I wanted to photograph and what Field of View made sense. While I finalized on focusing on a project on the Great American Tower I will use the location to take opportunistic photos of the night sky and landscape such as snow cover and fog are often great shots.

The distance from the park to Cincinnati is 5.3 km so it allows for some creative photography involving the Sun and Moon, especially with the Cincinnati cityscape.

December 26, 2024: Sunset photography in Larz Anderson Park

Each camera was setup to take 3 images bundles to create HDR images , 0 eV, -2 eV, and +2 EV by changing the shutter speed to go up and down by a factor of 4.

Two camera setups Camera

Camera Setup A:

- Canon R6m2

- Lens: Canon RF 100-500mm Lens

- Filter: Breakthrough Photography on-lens filter Circular Polarized Lens (CPL)

- Tripod: Leofoto LN-324C Carbon Fiber Tripod

- Tripod Head: Wimberley WH-200 Gimbal

- I took 414 photographs {308 raw (3 image HDR which produced 103 jpg

composite images)

Camera Setup B:

- Canon R5m1

- IRIX 150mm Cine Macro Lens

- Kondor Blue R5c cage

- Tripod: Leofoto

- Tripod Head:

- Filter: Breakthrough Photography drop-in Variable Neutral Density

HDR Images prepared: 108 raw images, 38 jpg composites)

You can find additional information about Larz Anderson Park here: https://www.cincinnati-oh.gov/cincyparks/visit-a-park/find-a-parkfacility/larz-an-derson-park/

Planning Sun and Moon Photography for 2025 Great American Tower Project from Larz Anderson Park

Planning photography opportunities from various locations one can find some really great resources such as Photopills and The Photographers Ephemeris (TPE). For 2025 from Larz Anderson Park I am going to focus on photographing Sun and Moon shots featuring the Great American Tower, the tallest building in Cincinnati at 660 feet with a spectacular roof feature (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Tower_at_Queen_City_Square)

Using estimated heights of the sunset taken from preliminary efforts I was able to enter the data into Photopills (at about 2 degrees of height the sun should line up with the top of the tower) and produce a window occurring in January for Sunsets. A number of opportunities of alignment with the moon occur, mostly mid to late in the year. Some of the moon opportunities can't be used because the park is only open 6 am to 10 pm.

Given the distance of 5.7 km the sun will appear to be 54 meters in size which will be 25% of the size of the Great American Tower!

A separate project for the Larz Anderson 2025 will be created and a YouTube video showing the shots and some editing information prepared as it goes along. Links will be added.

PhotoPills Predictions showing alignment from Lars Anderson with the Sunset at ~2 degrees over Great American Tower in January 2025

PhotoPills Predictions showing alignment from Lars Anderson with the Sunset at ~2 degrees over Great American Tower in November 2025

PhotoPills Predictions showing alignment from Lars Anderson with various Moon phases at ~2 degrees over Great American Tower