Novum Structures was one of my clients recently who subcontracted on the construction of the Kauffman Center For the Performing Arts. Novum commissioned shots of their work on the Kauffman Center’s glass and cabling structures on the roof and to the south end of the building. Kansas City, MO – September 2011.
Not far at all from where I live – and grew up too incidentally. I’ve visited four continents thus far but always after the return flight revert to a townie in the midtown area. My car from which you may have seen its interior shots is currently immobilized due to manual transmission/clutch indecisiveness and disagreeability. I am therefore confined to the Metro and on foot, so for this I did a bit not far of a walk away…
^ Above: I thought the terminal sightline view with the telephoto lens down the long street might be a little fun, but I thought compared to the fun that can be had with a wide angle it wasn’t my favorite type of shot to do. So immediately to the wide angle lens…
^ People whom I would guess don’t see in geometrics as much don’t understand why I tilt the camera a lot. All I did was line it up with the corners and lines of the sidewalk so that those lines are straight, thereby everything else is skewed.
^ Vanishing point down Roanoke Parkway next to an under-renovation apartment building between Terrace and Roanoke. Again lined up with the sidewalk as reference.
^ Sometimes photography puts you into the role of property trespasser, as I found myself here inside this circular thing with no windows on the first floor of the unoccupied apartment building under renovation. In my opinion fisheye combined with circularity works great in a lot of situations – from the Kauffman Center to a decades old Midtown apartment building.
There was a small rally/protest in Ft. Leavenworth adjacent to the detention facility where Bradley Manning, also known as the Wikileaks whistleblower is being held. Manning is an Army soldier arrested in May 2010 on suspicion of passing along classified material to Wikileaks. Wikipedia does a better job of explaining than I can… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_Manning
Photos from near a medium security detention facility in Fort. Leavenworth Kansas on Saturday, October 29.
Fall-ish October shots from just off the Plaza that detail somewhat the West Edge project being deconstructed before it was even finished. Get your pictures now while you still can. Friday 10/28/2011.
This weekend will be busy – there’s a protest/rally for the Wikileaks whistleblower Bradley Manning at Ft. Leavenworth on Saturday and an Occupy KC event Sunday downtown both of which I’m going to try for shots of.
As far as I know I’m finished shooting my work for some subcontractors on the Kauffman Center For the Performing Arts building. These are from a shoot Sunday night in Helzberg Hall – one of two performance halls at the Center. I took a number of shots for GKD Metal Fabrics, a company that installed the stainless steel mesh at the front of the hall around the pipe organ from floor to ceiling. Quite a number more photos have been taken for them but the ones I’m posting here give a more overall view of the performance hall.
As I mentioned previously I’ll have a line of prints and products in the Kauffman Center gift shop shortly, with some exterior shots I’ve been gathering lately and a few from inside the building.
These photos alternate back and forth between fisheye and wide angle – both of which are the most useful kinds of lenses inside a lot of the building usually.
With the opening of the Kauffman Center last month I’ve been able to get to work putting together portfolio photography for some of the companies who subcontracted construction on the building who’ve become my photo clients. Most of my work is done at this point but I still have some to complete next week. In this post I’m showing the photos I shot for ELP Lighting, which designed the recessed lighting fixtures in the walls that I focus on in these shots.
There will be a line of prints and products based off my photos at the Kauffman Center gift shop. Right now we’re going through the process of selecting from the existing stock what they’ll want, and I also need to get busy shooting new photos in the near term too it looks like.
On Thursday evening I caught up with Brandon Ellington at a fundraiser for his campaign for Missouri 41st District State Representative. There’s a special election being held November 8. In addition to Brandon I’m performing some campaign photo work for another contender in the Nov 8 special election as well.
Brandon is a community organizer and on the East Side where he often leads cleanup efforts in blighted areas, and is co-founder of the group Voices Of The People.
While shooting some portfolio pics for GKD Metal Fabrics, a subcontractor on the Kauffman Center building that installed some stainless steel in Helzberg Hall around the ceiling and pipe organ, I also had the chance to go up on top of the canopy hanging from the ceiling inside Helzberg Hall – accessible by a small lift you stand in to get from just under the roof of Helzberg Hall through a hole in the floor to the top of the canopy. They had me harness up to get near the edge.
1) Front of Helzberg Hall and the pipe organ from the elevated view standing on the canopy.
2)
3) Part of the top of the canopy on the right.
4) Canopy accessible by a lift going through the hole in the ceiling.
5) Standing above the lift down to the canopy as a couple of the Kauffman Center employees I was with were coming up the lift.
6) Some of the GKD Metal Fabrics stainless steel winding its way up to the top of Helzberg Hall, taken from the leftmost skylight space near the roof.
7) View of GKD stainless steel with the front of the hall and the canopy.
Consecutive posts by coincidence of architect Moshe Safdie’s two buildings in Kansas City – yesterday’s West Edge post and these shots of the Kauffman Center’s northwest side. Last night while working on some photography for subcontractors on the Kauffman Center building I nabbed these shots with the moon while outside. I was able to get up on top of the canopy in Helzberg Hall and will have photos from that posted soon enough.
^ Literary embellishment on above photo – I see a face in the sky looking back at me. As a rule sometimes that’ll happen.
I’m performing some photo work for contractors on the construction of the Kauffman Center building, taking shots of their work for their company portfolios. Last night I was attempting to grab some evening/dusk pics of some of the light fixtures in the Brandmeyer Great Hall. I nabbed a few additional shots for the fun of it contained herein. It was a little surreal standing there alone in the hall with the lights on just after it got dark outside.
If I recall correctly the lobby/Great Hall area is open from 10 to 6 pm to the general public if you want to go see the architectural detail at work in the building.
Final shot… from October 2010 on one of my first walk-throughs, and first with Stan the chief engineer on the project…
Second of my photoblog posts showing shots of the IOU/USA shipping container temporary art display on city park land across from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. Click here for my previous posting of photos.
I did the Kauffman Center’s event photography for Tuesday morning’s Civic Dedication. Sunday is a big open house event. The Civic Dedication’s speakers included Mayor Sly James, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, Jane Chu, CEO of the Kauffman Center, Jan Marcason of the City Council’s 4th District, and Julia Irene Kauffman. Here are a few general scene shots. Morning of my 31st birthday by coincidence.
Tues, Sept. 13, 2011
Lollygagging around this area the other afternoon…
Protip to one or two dopes in the comments sections of my favorite Kansas City blogger Tony’s Kansas City that there’s no special “star filter” for when the sun shines like this, it’s shooting with a narrow aperture (this was at f/16). When it’s that narrow the lens aperture blades refract the light in the same shape of the aperture onto the sensor (or film). You’re my community service for the day.
Next…
This was an f/10 aperture; you’ll notice the “starburst” look isn’t as pronounced now with a wider aperture and more protons flying through the wider aperture and onto the sensor.
^Did a symmetrical photoshop hoo-haa with it.
A drive to downtown Kansas City, which included parking a few times to take pictures. Monday night, Sept 5 ’11.
After all this time I finally made a Facebook Fan Page for my pics CLICK HERE. Like I’m saying in my own FB newsfeed, click like on it if you’re one of those people who like clicking on things you can like on Facebook.
Photo plans involving some others on Saturday evening got changed, so I wound up taking pics of this little Twentieth Century urban modernist remnant from hell, along Central Street downtown between 14th and 16th Streets. I used my wide angle Canon 16-35 L II for the highway/convention center shots and my telephoto 100-400 L for the shot of the exterior of Kauffman Center’s Helzberg Hall.
Four shots of the temporary conceptual art installation by John Salvest in Penn Valley Memorial Park that happens to be across from the Kansas City branch of the Federal Reserve. Made of shipping contrainers, it spells out USA and IOU.
Article on Channel 9’s website
Thanks for Tony’s Kansas City for mentioning this and bringing it to my attention.
Abandoned Switzer School and West Jr. High in the West Side – Shots from Wednesday night 8/31 of the old Switzer School and West Junior High in the West Side neighborhood of Kansas City, as seen from the 20th and Summit side. Looking on the Google maps I see there’s a whole other side to it down the hill to the west I should check out too. Above the entryway on this side of the building it said Public Library.
According to this Pitch article from 2008…
Switzer School, West Junior High and Switzer Annex
1810 and 1829 Madison
Yuppies continue to renovate and build on the West Side, and here’s a future condominium complex in the making. Not far from Mexican bakeries and upscale bistros, this complex of 10 lots has the potential to be a Kansas City gem once again.
History: Switzer opened in 1881 and served as a middle school for the children of West Side immigrants, first Scandinavians and then Mexicans. Educators figured the kids wouldn’t go to high school, so Switzer offered classes from seventh through 10th grades. The oldest of the abandoned schools, it’s also one of the longest abandoned, having closed in the 1980s.
Square footage: 82,596
Price: $1.6 million
EDIT on 04/17/2018 – updated view in 2017 of Switzer school after renovation to apartments.
I’ve had to start tearing through my photo files doing mass deletions of all the superflous non-essentials to clear up hard drive space. Every once in awhile I come across compositions from the past that I never got around to editing and posting. These two are from April 30, 2010 at that lookout pedestrian bridge at 2nd Street in the River Market overlooking the Missouri River. I took these with my now retired original version Canon 5D that served me faithfully for three years before I got my 5D MK II a year ago.
I have accumulated so many RAWs and TIFFs that my three terabyte array in my desktop computer was nearly full and making the computer lag and run slowly – so it’s been my multiple-day project doing the tedious chore of going through deleting like mad. I’ve upgraded internal hard drive capacity two or three times before and decided I’m not doing it again – there’s no good reason to keep so many useless digital files in my computer. But occasionally I come across old stuff that’s good that I never did anything with.
Both are fisheye lens shots…
I started noticing I have a tendency to take pictures of the outside while I’m inside things, and it’s happened with my car’s interior a couple times before, so I’ve decided to continue the theme for a bit.
Downtown scenes from inside my car… just this week I arranged for her tags to be renewed for another two years. JEALOUS?
All day Tuesday on Pershing in front of Union Station there was a modern streetcar demo in place to highlight the push for a modern streetcar line in the downtown area of Kansas City MO from the River Market to Crown Center/Union Station. I ran into a few people I know/recognize, including Fourth District Council Lady Jan Marcason. Mayor Sly James was scheduled to visit at 7am but I didn’t have it in me to be up that early.
On Sunday afternoon I went for pics as a storm blew through Kansas City – I went to the Link skywalk, also referred to as the above-street honkey tubes – at Crown Center for shots as the storm blew over. I’ve done pictures in this skywalk before but only the sections above Pershing and Main, while these shown here are more above Grand Avenue. I hope the commenters on the blog of my BFF Tony’s Kansas City like the profuse amount of camera tilting I used.
I hopped around the Crossroads yesterday evening on First Friday with a friend who encouraged me to go do something. I used three lenses, the fisheye, my wide angle, and my telephoto for these 21 shots affixed to my Canon 5D MK II – August 5, 2011. The somewhat unexpected below-100 degree weather made the evening more bearable for everyone.
A couple shots from around some industrial areas in North Kansas City looking south toward the skyline on the other side of the river. I’d actually gone out for Bond Bridge pictures but did this instead after I saw the location I picked for the view toward the bridge on the map is blocked out by trees.
I was out visiting my eccentric 92 year old grandmother for a long weekend out in the country in Stafford Kansas, a four hour drive southwest of Kansas City. Maybe another post with more photos later on. All the shots in this post were with the pairing of my Canon 5D Mark II with my Canon 16-35 L II wide angle lens.
Three different edits of the same shot, something random I took Sunday afternoon on Westport Road.
Color version.
Fisheye lens distortion corrected in Adobe Lightroom. I usually don’t like the distorion-less fisheyes but in this case I thought even it was a little interesting as well.
First one with a black and white treatment.
I live not far and grew up in the area. It’s a testament to my speed and agility that I’ve crossed Westport Road on foot as many times as I have without getting maimed or killed by traffic. It’s a street that epitomizes Kansas City’s decades-long fixation with moving cars as fast as possible and saying to hell with everything else.
I took some shots today (Saturday July 9) for my friends Jason and Diana Kander as Jason had his yearly fundraising picnic for his seat as Missouri 44th District State House Representative. There was a get together at the home of some of Jason’s constituents. Jason and I were in the same high school graduating class, and I usually run in to old friends and acquaintances when I attend one of his functions.
1) Above – Jason talks to the crowd at the fundraiser.
2) Jason’s wife Diana, accomplished in her own right as one of Kansas City’s top entrepreneurs with Kander and Rigby.
3) Left to right – Genaro Ruiz, Senior Advisor to the Sly James KCMO mayoral administration on Community and Intergovernmental Affairs, Jason Kander, and Theresa Garza-Ruiz of the Jackson County Legislature.
4) Jason with former Kansas City mayor Richard Berkley, who served in office from 1979 to 1991.
