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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
A couple more shots from my visit to the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts construction site on Tuesday –
Above – looking southeast with the fisheye lens giving a view toward the Crossroads and Crown Center.
Below – facing the front of the building with a view inside the grand lobby, Brandmeyer Great Hall.
Fisheye lens view of the Kauffman Center's construction progress on April 19, 2011.
I had the chance to go in the Kauffman Center construction site again this afternoon and nabbed this fisheye view of the point as symmetrical as I could get with my tripod. Inside the glass is the grand lobby, to be known as the Brandmeyer Great Hall.
On Tuesday, Mar. 1 I had the chance to go back inside the Kauffman Center on a tour again. At present most of the seats have been installed in Helzberg Hall, pictured in both photos below. The seat installation in the adjacent Muriel Kauffman Theatre is to begin very shortly as well.
Above: Standing where part of the pipe organ will be installed.
View from the upper level at Helzberg Hall.
Backstage at Muriel Kauffman Theatre at the Kauffman Center
I don’t yet fully understand all the technologies at play inside the Kauffman Center. I’ve had them shown to me on a couple of occasions and I wish I could recite what and why this large edifice is hanging down from the ceiling behind the stage of the Muriel Kauffman Theatre but the proper response escapes me at present.
Muriel Kauffman Theatre Under Construction
A fisheye view behind the stage of the Muriel Kauffman Theatre at the Kauffman Center. As you can see there is a level underneath the stage that is made visible from this angle.
From my visit to the Kauffman Center’s construction site last Friday, here are a couple external up-close shots. From this angle the Grand Lobby is the prominent feature being seen of the new building.
Facing eastward, Canon EF 16-35 L II f/2.8 Lens at f/18, 16mm, ISO 50, Shutter speeds varied.
Facing westward in the afternoon, Canon EF 15 mm f/2.8 Fisheye Lens at f/18, 15mm ISO 50, Shutter speeds varied
Last Friday I had the chance again to go on-site and inside the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts for further construction and progress photography. For this post I’m showing the two venues in the building, the Muriel Kauffman Theatre and Helzberg Hall.
Muriel Kauffman Theatre Under Construction in January 2011.
In the instance of both photos I stood as far to the top and center of the interiors as I could and used my fisheye lens (Canon EF 15 mm f/2.8 Fisheye) with my 5D Mark II DSLR. I used HDR/Tone mapping in the computer post-processing to even out the differing levels of exposure that were inherent in both scenes.
Helzberg Hall Under Construction in January 2011.
The Kauffman Center is scheduled to open this coming September.
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts Construction on the evening of Dec. 1, 2010.
I’ve had a paying client or two here and there request up-to-date images of the Kauffman Center’s current progress, which is why I have so many shots of the grand structure rising as of late, this being yet another. I don’t know about you but I’m in the mood for another good old fashioned protest and march to go photo-journal accompanied with news vans or protestors getting willfully arrested . Eh, eh? Sound good?
A few times before I’ve had a good time making some symmetrical architectural doo-dads with the computer. For this one I used a photo I took a few days ago nearing the evening as workers were putting some touches on the Kauffman Center’s ongoing construction.
Photoshop-imposed symmetrical look upon the city's skyline and its construction.
And the photo it derived from, edited and made B&W for my whims prior to having the idea to do the symmetrical thing above.
Kauffman Center Construction, November 29, 2010.
Kauffman Center Under Construction
Monday afternoon I was scouting good angles for some shots of the front of the Kauffman Center. I took this telephoto close-up shot around 4:15 in the afternoon (Mon. Nov. 29, 2010), but the light was so bland and uninteresting I figured the only thing I’ll be doing with the shots I did take will be some abstract black/whites, and I’ll go back around the dusk civil twilight hour again for better lighting of where I’m thinking of shooting next.
In this photo we of course have one of the members of the construction crew at the Kauffman Center, seen zoomed in at a focal length of 400 mm as I stood quite a bit away across 17th. I also cropped in tight quite a bit even after the zooming in with the lens, made possible with the very high resolution of my Canon 5D Mark II I was fortunate to acquire back in September.
REMINDER! Gallery show of my photography at The Hook Gallery in Westport this coming Friday evening. See the Facebook and Yelp pages listed for the event.
Kansas City on a November Saturday Night
In my travels to the top of the City Hall garage for photography recently, this was one of the colorful sights on Saturday night – 5:30 pm Nov. 20, downtown Kansas City, MO.
Reminder: Photography show at The Hook Gallery in Westport on Friday December 3rd. Here are the Facebook and Yelp listings.
From the Grand Lobby in the Kauffman Center under construction, looking south.
One of my shots from the Kauffman Center’s Grand Lobby, seen from the top level outside of the under-construction Muriel Kauffman Theatre. This is the skeletal frame at the south of the building coming together to show a pattern here for me while inside for construction progress photos about three weeks ago.
On Monday Sept. 20 I went on a tour of the Kauffman Center’s interior with a group from Hallmark. Since there were a number of useful photos resulting, I might stagger this across two or three posts total – so here’s Part One.
Scale Model of the Kauffman Center's Helzberg Hall
In the lobby and looking upward
Looking southeast from the lobby at the skeletal frame
Kauffman Center Construction at Dusk
While over on the lawn of the Convention Center Ballroom on Tuesday night getting telephoto shots of the Crossroads and Crown Center, I put on the wide angle and moved over a bit for yet another shot of the Kauffman Center construction and its cranes. I was on the radio show Up To Date with Steve Kraske on KCUR 89.3 a week ago talking about places to get good shots of the city, and this vantage point came up as one of the good sightseeing locales.
Sept. 7, 2010
Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts construction progress
Tuesday evening was a good night to get out and get some dusk pics. I had been meaning to try this angle for myself for a while after noticing some other photos taken around the south entrance to the Ballroom at the convention center. The weather was cool, with nice cloud cover for a change, and it worked out great with the light at dusk.
I used six manually bracketed camera raw files at differing exposures for HDR tone mapping, at f/16, ISO 200, 16 mm focal length, and varied shutter speeds.
-August 17, 2010
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
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.