A Kansas City Star article can cover the details of Missouri Proposition C. Groups both for and against the law concerning the recent health care reform bill protested at the same time, yesterday at 5 in Mill Creek Park/Nichols Fountain on the Plaza. Six photos –
07/29/10
Kauffman Center Construction - varied exposures // f/18 // 285 mm // ISO 500
The Kauffman Center’s ongoing construction as seen from about Pershing and Broadway on July 16, 2010.
In other news I’m without my wide angle lens for the time being as it somehow mysteriously acquired a zoom ring problem, and I’ve had to ship the lens to Canon. It would be nice if I hadn’t sold the old 17-40 L f/4 when I upgraded to my currently faulty 16-35 L f/2.8.
Yellow Cab - 1/80 sec. // f/8.0 // 220 mm // ISO 640
I read a few weeks ago that Ford will be completely discontinuing production of the Crown Victoria, the staple of cabs and police cars, next year. By that, I might grab a few extra police car and taxi cab photographs as I go, while the current new and late model fleet vehicles age and are retired. Many current city scene photos may start to seem antebellum more quickly.
Also, I see the cab business in KCMO has picked over the last few five years I’d guess. Something I notice all over the midtown area that wasn’t as frequent as before, and they’ve picked up a lot downtown also, going by my unscientific, purely visual observations.
Cabs running around. Sounds like it could be some kind of trailing economic indicator replete with both correlations and inversions.
This taxi shot is from my time on Saturday evening at the Worldwide Photowalk. Here I was looking eastward across Grand, where that vast parking lagoon shows what’s across the street the next block over too. That’s another win for Kansas City real estate.
Western Auto Sign - 1/50 sec. // f/8.0 // 285 mm // ISO 800
On Saturday evening I took part in one of two Kansas City photowalks organized under the Third Annual Scott Kelby Worldwide Photowalk, this past Saturday the 24th. Our walk started near the Freighthouse and wove around the Crossroads area, scheduled between 6 and 8 pm. Right at the end the best lighting hit in tandem with the weather that day, and I managed to snag this shot of the Western Auto sign that I’ve had in the back of my head to try and capture for a long time but have been figuring it could be years or never. After the walk was finished we met up at the Cashew.
Cosby Hotel
The 1881 Cosby Hotel – In the local media lately for being saved from demolition at the last minute when it was determined at the pressure of local historic preservationist Adam Jones to leave the building intact. There were conflicting structural reports, but a third one managed to be ordered, confirming that the cost of temporarily fixing the structural problems are far less than demolition costs would be.
See article in the Kansas City Star.
Facebook Petition for saving the Cosby Hotel
Hyperblogal’s post yielded some interesting comments
I’m late to the local media party on this, but thought it would be enjoyable to get a shot of the old building kept standing. If you’ll notice, the later, mid-century parking edifices of the effluvial type surrounding the old Cosby are what would be planned for this site in downtown Kansas City now as well. This place loves to tear itself down with glee and replace its building stock with horrid, singular-use, post-modern dreck.
Anyhoo, photo taken Wednesday evening 7/21/10 at 9 pm, with my fisheye lens (Canon 15mm EF) and my 5D, and some barrel distortions adjusted and then played with in Lightroom.
Downtown KC Buildings
While taking a Kauffman Center photo from Truman Road on Saturday evening, I noticed I like this view too – all that’s good about the old buildings in KC, the first and second (AMC Mainstreet Theatre and Hotel President) were saved from near demolition. I aimed for kind of a film noir look with this one.
Brandon Cummins (left), Paul Burns (center), Justin Gardner (right)
Back on June 23 I did some behind the scenes still shooting for a new short film about Kansas City resident Paul Burns, who was the victim of a terrible face slashing last year, and how Paul is getting by in life. The nature of the crime perpetrated on Paul naturally makes the film slant to a somber note, though the crux of the story is more that Paul manages to keep a good sense of humor and a happy outlook despite what happened to him. Paul, the movie
Three Skyscrapers
I took this in June on Broadway west of Union Station while getting sunrise shots of the Kauffman Center construction. Of course, I had I hopes for a fun color photo here, but I haven’t got my hands on a haze filter just yet. So black and white was called for, since I still wanted to do something with this photo. I had invested too much time trying to take it that I wouldn’t let it go.
On Tuesday evening (07/13/10) out in south Overland Park, Kris Kobach, the UMKC law professor who helped draft Arizona SB 1070 appeared for a speaking engagement with Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaiobefore a supportive crowd. On the sidewalk out front, a large counter-demonstration was held in opposition to the Arizona law and the impetus to enact similar laws in Missouri, Kansas, and other states. There were some familiar faces as I photo-documented the counter-protest, as the KS/MO Dream Alliance helped organize the demonstration. I have met with them on the Plaza in KCMO two or three times in the past for photography of their demonstrations in favor of the Dream Act – which will help ensure a path to citizenship for the now-adult children of undocumented residents who find themselves also technically ”undocumented” despite having lived their childhood and formative years as Americans, geographically and culturally. It was unfortunate that later on in the evening, after I had left, there turned out to be a bomb scare, though luckily it was just an unattended briefcase. Below are several photos from the demonstration in front of the Ritz Charles meeting facility in Overland Park, Kansas where the Kobach/Arpaio event took place.
Last week while nabbing some more shots looking at the Kauffman Center construction, I turned my telephoto lens briefly to see what kind of shots could be had of 71 Highway and the traffic trails. In this shot my camera shutter was open for 13 seconds.
You can see here how much acreage must be devoted to moving cars around in the downtown area, given the way the actual built-up urban environment has been allowed to nearly be eviscerated over the decades through reckless urban planning ideas centered around the ideas of tearing down the city in favor of easy, happy motoring.
Old Drum
On Friday afternoon I drove down to Warrensburg, MO – my old college town where UCM resides, having graduated in December ’03. This was the first time being back to Warrensburg since fall of ’04, even though it’s actually not that far away.
This statue of the dog that sits in front of the Johnson County Courthouse signifies an old, interesting court case from 1870, where it’s recounted the saying “a dog is a man’s best friend” came into existence after an estranged brother-in-law shot Old Drum the dog for trespassing. Carrie Nation’s husband David even represented Old Drum’s owner at one point as the case was sent around to various courts, eventually making it to the Missouri Supreme Court. CLICK HERE for further info.
Kauffman Center Construction at Dusk #2
Another shot of the Kauffman PAC construction, from a slightly different viewpoint and thirty minutes later into the night than the prior post. Actually if I could do it again I would have started at this location first, as I thought this offered the best view, but the prior shot offered the best actual lighting.
Kauffman Center Construction at Dusk
Here’s an angle on the new Kauffman Center that I hadn’t tried yet, looking in a north-westerly direction toward the construction site via telephoto lens from about 25th and Troost, at one of the bridges above 71 Highway as it ingresses to and egresses from downtown.
I hadn’t made any plans for pics, but sometimes you can spontaneously get the urge to make something new. Photo taken about 9:20 pm, Tuesday evening, 07/06/10
On Monday night/early Tuesday morning when I was out getting new city photos, I ended my time capturing this telephoto view looking south, up the street toward some signs – a small part of the Muehlebach Hotel sign, and the blue parking sign – which now sits where the old Italian Gardens restaurant sat for decades. That was an interesting joint with a cool old lounge area. I was never that much of a regular there, but I kind of miss the place – especially compared to the parking edifice now residing at that address.
I was standing at the corner of the street right by the Library Lofts – formerly the Dwight Building, with my telephoto lens zoomed out to its maximum 400 focal length.
Seeing as I have this shiny new website and photoblog now, I was rather weary of having no new content, yet again. Therefore as we all consigned this year’s Fourth as a rain-out, I hobbled around one of my favorite areas of downtown KCMO for awhile, around midnight. This shot was five minutes before the Independence Day ended last night. Anywho, something was necessary to keep occupied. I must opine that I’m afraid my other shots were all of the rubbish variety, as it was like a sauna outside and I failed to bring along any of those cloths you wipe your lenses with. I’m ordering a large supply of those very soon.
Enough rambling, onto the subject matter at hand – In the middle of this fisheye view are the 21 Ten Condos, at one time a one story building of the New England National Bank, sitting across the street from the Downtown Library at 9th and Baltimore. I may have rhapsodized over this former personal horror before, but I was caught up in an employment of some sort in the City Center Square building five years ago, and every day I had a clear view of the backside of this building. That wasn’t what was bad about that employment though. Actually the view was lovely.
Note on this afore-mentioned new photoblog and website: most of my ducks are now in a row, though there are a few small things I’ve still yet to make correct. Soon to come, with luck. It never worked out between myself and the old site.
Kauffman Center at Dusk
Welcome to my first official posting on my newly overhauled website and photoblog. There are still numerous things wrong and I’m rather annoyed and tired about a lot of it, but I’m going to have to put some of it off for the next day after I submit this to the draft queue.
Seeing as I was so bound and determined to get this site up and online somehow, someway, for statistical and analytics reasons due to July 1st being the start of the second half of the year, I’m not delaying any longer. I’ve been trying to put together the new home page and galleries for nearly weeks now, and have spent most of Thursday trying to get the new blog up and going as well as doing last minute stuff that really is more like “last day” stuff.
I needed new content if I was to launch today, so on Thursday night amid this stupor of website overhauling I ran out for new pics of something I’ve covered before, just so I’d have some new content – another look at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, this time taken over in the Quality Hill area near the Argus building. It afforded this view, using the telephoto lens of course, of the Kauffman Center with part of Crown Center as the background.
