All prints are made-to-order and will require one to two weeks’ production time before being shipped. Each order will be acknowledged after payment has been received to confirm the shipping date. To customers who order prints of the same image subsequent to their original order, there may be slight variations in image density and/or contrast when compared to the initial print. If exact matching prints are desired, these should be ordered at the same time.
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Central High School, Overall View Showing Capped Turrets and Front Steps, Tulsa, Oklahoma, July, 1976
There is a certain misty quality to hazy late afternoon sunlight on a summer day in Tulsa. Caused mostly by insufferable levels of humidity, this diffused warm light may not be comfortable to endure, but it makes for excellent photography, as detail is held in shadowed areas of photographs that is lost in Colorado’s dry clear contrasty sunlight.
Only from May to August of each year does the sun shine on this north facade of a classically designed high school at 212 East Sixth Street in the south east section of downtown Tulsa.
Shown here in this overall view in fleeting late afternoon sunlight are several prominent architectural features of note. The capped turrets, crenellated walls suggestive of medieval castle themes, magnificent crisscross masonry artistry above the third floor, and the well-worn steps leading up to the massive front doors are all elements that coalesce to create an imposing structure memorable to generations of former Central High School students.
When Public Service Company of Oklahoma purchased the school no longer in use in the late 1970’s, stylistically correct “Central High School” stone engraved letters were replaced with a “Public Service Company of Oklahoma” font far less ornate due to the need for nearly twice as many characters in the same space, and, I suspect, the scarcity of stone cutters in this city on the rolling hills of northeastern Oklahoma.
Those of us who attended high school in this venerable building rarely noticed the rich carved stone detail based on educational themes above the Tudor arch which remains today.
Of note in this photograph is the amazing ability of a perspective control lens to maintain perfect parallelism of vertical lines, even though the camera is pointed up and is not plumb to the earth. With an ordinary wide angle lens looking upward, vertical lines in a structure converge, creating a visually disturbing effect in photographs taken without perspective correction. The 28mm f4.0 Nikkor Perspective Control Lens mentioned below was in 1976 the widest such lens in production for a 35mm camera.
Taken with a Nikon F2 35mm SLR camera coupled with the aforementioned 28mm f4.0 Perspective Control Nikkor lens on Kodachrome film, a high resolution digital scan of the color transparency faithfully represents the original image taken ten years after I proudly graduated from Tulsa Central High School in 1966.
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