I got word that a church I’d taken a couple street pics of before was on fire Thursday evening so I went to get a few shots. 12/29/2011.

And one shot of the church I took in early 2009:

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.

A friend met up with me for Plaza shots on Friday – first time this season I’ve done shots of the Plaza lit up for Christmas. I’m going to try for a few extra before they turn them off in mid-January.

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.

Shots I took Saturday evening from an obscure hilltop near 20th and Troost looking toward the KCMO skyline using my telephoto lens, which I’ve kind of neglected using lately. 12/17/11.

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.

Second round of pictures from the streets of Lower Manhattan, NYC on November 11, 2011.

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.

Second round of these shots from last Saturday afternoon. The first few are from Crown Center above Grand Avenue and some at the end are from the 10th and Wyandotte skywalk between the hotels.

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.

For the lulz I took a round of snaps Friday afternoon at the Kauffman Center with only my fisheye lens, hoping to promulgate new things both weird and strange. Hopefully I succeeded if even just a little.

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.

Intersection 1.

Intersection 2.

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.