Last week I grabbed some new Kauffman Center shots – some from standing in different locations on the site than I have before – and duplicating some past shots but under sunset lighting conditions also, such as the front facing fisheye shots highlighting the steel cabling holding up the “glass curtain” on the south side of the building. A lot of my website traffic derives from searches for the Kauffman Center so it makes sense to continue populating the Internet with keyworded images of the building.
A large old house around 34th and Southwest Trafficway was just demolished this past week. These shots were taken on Tuesday on the grounds of the shuttered Norman School (one of the KCMO school district’s closed schools). I drove by again on Thursday and saw it looked like the whole site had been cleared.
Last Saturday I went downtown to collect some potential stock images for future sale with downtown all busy, although I kind of failed at capturing anything related to the Big 12 tournament going on as everyone was inside the Sprint Center during the MU-Baylor game while I was there . I haven’t posted in a little while as I’ve been busy de-bugging my blog after a hack – which is what happens when you don’t keep your WordPress theme updated. The WordPress install itself I updated, but not the theme.
These are just starting at the Sprint Center around 14th and Grand and winding over to 13th and Main, down to 14th, and back to the Sprint Center.
Another protest this week on Sunday was held near Nichols Fountain on the Plaza against Syria’s Bashar Al-Assad and his government. People from the mideast living in Kansas City have done a good job of holding solidarity protests alongside the overthrow of mid-eastern dictators over the past year.
2-26-12
Saturday afternoon a small protest was held at Mill Creek Park on the Plaza in Kansas City against the fraudulent Russian elections that took place at the end of last year. The group was also joined by some members of the Occupy Kansas City movement for the protest at the corner of 47th and JC Nichols Parkway.
This Saturday 1-28-2012 a small protest took place at 39th and Southwest Trafficway in Kansas City MO. A recent study came out by the Kansas City Police Department indicating that the cameras do nothing for traffic safety except perhaps making it even worse at the intersections where they are installed. Tracy Ward, a local activist was on hand and organized the event. I noticed a couple of news station reporters on the scene as well.
The last time I had shot photos of the West Edge project demolition progress was on Christmas Eve – Previous set here. Noticing the building has been getting less tall and that a month had gone by it seemed like I ought to get some more.
Twenty very recent shots from downtown Kansas City. I’m getting a better feel for what kind of stock photo material sells and I’ve been feeling motivated these last few days.
First, there is a local client who wants a north side fisheye view close up of the Kauffman Center post-construction. The first day I went out it clouded up on me on short notice:
Then on Sunday after the snow melted I went and re-shot since they are more interested in an uncloudy view:
…although I wonder if the discoloration on the sidewalk because of the salt will be a problem. Following are some more fisheye Kauffman Center shots –
Then that evening I went to the top of the garage at 13th & Grand downtown for some fancy sunset shots, where I realized the state of disrepair my tripod is in. The wobbliness made most of the pictures blurry rubbish, but these are what I did (barely) get with an insecure tripod head:
Some Kauffman Center and AMC Mainstreet Theater shots…
The next night (MLK Day) after having something tightened on the tripod head I went out to 12th and Main:
On Tuesday afternoon/evening I went to Penn Valley Park to get yellowish late afternoon skyline photos. The tripod came undone once again so most of these are handheld, and the fact that I was freezing my hands off with no gloves meant I wasn’t going to wait for it to get dark blue in the sky…
The tents housing the good folks of Occupy Kansas City during the cold January weather…
Shots from Muriel Kauffman Theater, one of the two performance halls at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. On Tuesday I posted pics from the adjacent Helzberg Hall. We spent Saturday afternoon photographing the two halls to obtain some shots for the gift shop to utilize on prints and products of the new building.
On Saturday Jan. 7 2012 I shot for several hours in the two performance halls at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. They’ll be using a selection of what we shot for prints and products available through the gift shop, along with several other pictures I took in 2011 both on the interior and exterior. I’ll be trying to post a few shots this week. These are some of the first from Helzberg Hall. Muriel Kauffman Theatre to come later.
On the afternoon of Christmas Eve I snapped up some more deconstruction/demolition progress shots of the West Edge project on the Plaza.
Demolition progress photos on the ill-fated West Edge project by architect Moshe Safdie, who noted he’s had projects fail to make it to the construction phase, but until now never one that got 75% completed and then torn down. The initial developer got into financial trouble and the general contractor walked off the job for not being paid, followed by lawsuits and negotiations back and forth. Eventually it was decided the partially completed structure would be torn down and ultimately replaced with a new building that is yet to come.
Because I still get a fairly noticeable amount of traffic to this one post back in June of shots of the Ferment stainless steel tree sculpture by Roxy Paine on the grounds of the Nelson Atkins Museum, I decided to go back and get more and do a web traffic experiment. Sunset on 12/22/2011.
Parting shot of one of the row of trees on the grounds of the Nelson.
On Tuesday 12/20 I had the chance to get some shots at the Kauffman Center of some interior window washing in the Brandmeyer Great Hall. I ended up using four out of the five lenses in my backpack for this post.
I’d parked along Broadway so as I was leaving I threw on the fisheye lens and did some rain/cloud/cold-type pics.
I have long maintained an employ at the Kansas City Board of Trade. Here are a few shots of the wheat futures pit during a couple of closing sessions last week.
The KCBT is the world’s largest market for the Hard Red Winter Wheat grown in this region of the country, with futures and options contracts on the wheat traded electronically and in the old-style open-outcry trading pits that have been around since the Board’s inception in 1856 – making it Kansas City’s oldest business still in operation.
These were all shot with a lens aperture of f/4.0 with the light sensor’s ISO cranked up to 12,800. There are things you can do with these modern DSLRs like a Canon 5D Mark II that you wouldn’t have been able to get away with that long ago.
I met up with a few members of the KC-area Russian community at Mill Creek Park on the Plaza Saturday afternoon to get a couple pics at a small protest of the allegedly fraudulent elections recently held back in Russia. Large protests have happened in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Saturday Dec. 10, 2011.
This is my first part of two sets of Manhattan street scenes from November, also to go along with my 2nd KC Skywalk post Thursday, more NY street scenes Friday, and sometime the posting of the rest of my One World Trade Center construction shots that I took from the ground. The aerials posted to this blog can be seen here on my portfolio site.
I’ve done skywalks from the inside before but Saturday was so nice and dreary and wet that I wanted to do an impromptu round again inside them, all with my fisheye lens. I took so many for the lulz that this post consists of along Pershing and Main while another coming later in the week will be in the tubes above Grand and also Wyandotte and Central.
On Thursday afternoon I met up with Brandon Ellington, newly elected Missouri State House Representative for the 41st District which includes the East Side of Kansas City Missouri. It has some boundary overlap with the KCMO Third City Council District. We rode around and did a photo tour of some of the blighted areas. In some cases there are even good houses selling so cheap on the east side that a renter west of Troost or Main could own their own domicile east of Troost.
Horace Mann School off of 71 Highway in ruins.
Sometimes No Dumping signs have the oppposite effect.
Holy Name Church Demolition in progress at 23rd and Benton Boulevard. See photoblog post from January about Holy Name Church.
Fence over railways on the East Side.
Brandon says he remembers this building being vacant since he was a kid.
Buildings near 23rd and Waldron.
Seventies era apartment complex left abandoned and open to the elements. Similar apartment complex designs in northeastern Johnson County from the same time were more fortunate.
Quick snap of Brandon standing in a part of the MO 41st District.
I was coming back from a local bar on foot and saw some stuff I figured I’d try getting with the ISO cranked to 4000 and the aperture wide to 3.5 or so – still having to hold still. I stopped in and grabbed my camera and put on its wide angle lens. For the lulz you know. These days with these modern DSLRs you can get away with handheld night street photography without a tripod since the ISO (sensor light sensitivity) can be cranked up so high. I could have run these through my noise reduction filter due to the high ISO and noise viewable at high resolutions but didn’t bother since I’ll probably never use these for anything but posting to the photoblog this one time.
The Mayor’s office was kind enough to allow me some up close access at the Mayor’s Christmas Tree Lighting at Crown Center on Friday evening. R&B/Soul performer Janelle Monáe and Mayor of Kansas City Sly James were on stage and also mingling with the crowd before and after the lighting. Friday 11/25/11.
Second round of shots taken the late afternoon of November 10th from a helicopter above Lower Manhattan as we circled around the World Trade Center site.
CLICK for Part One
I wanted to get some aerial shots of the new One World Trade Center tower in New York before they top it off and finish cladding it with glass. I had a little time and (barely) enough money to go this past week. These aerials were taken on the afternoon of Thursday November 10th a day after I arrived. I figure it should make at least some business sense to get progress shots of a construction project of this magnitude.
The September 11th Memorial, as I understand it, as accessible if you call ahead and schedule a visit – I think. I didn’t have a lot of time while there to investigate every detail. I took a little over 500 shots while in the helicopter above Lower Manhattan, and on Sunday when I got back to Kansas City and got the pics onto the computer, chopped that down to 100 or so, with still some more selection to do and some editing to do on a few additional ones.
The Wed. morning Nov. 9th flight from KC to NY – Laguardia.
CLICK for Part Two