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I thought this would be a new and maybe interesting place for angles on the city. I might have been wrong as this part of downtown Kansas City is one urban planning blunder after another, but I tried to make something decent looking from it. There are weeds growing out of the sidewalks and a huge parking lot at 20th, and a desolate feeling as there’s mostly nothing around but office uses, at least south up the hill on McGee. When you get north toward 20th there’s just too much parking to have much of a real city there until you move up to about 19th. There are all kinds of holes the 20th Century left in this city still needing to be patched.
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.
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.
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.
Inside The Link in February
A couple weekends ago I spent some time at sunset inside The Link for the second time this year getting sunset shots looking outward from the edifice toward the streets. In this, Union Station is at left with Crown Center at the right.
Kansas City, Missouri. February 12, 2011.
Fisheye lens view out of The Link
This is the third of my five shots from The Link last Saturday near Union Station at Crown Center. With this fisheye lens angle through the windows we can see both Union Station at the right, some flags, and Liberty Memorial up the hill, and a tunnel with people thrown in for good measure.
Inside The Link in February
I returned again to The Link skywalk over Pershing and Main at Crown Center on Saturday evening for more photos. I collected five total I want to post, this one being the first. Two were with my standard wide angle lens, as this photo above is, and three more were taken with my fisheye lens. Both work great inside a skywalk looking from inside out.
Looking South In The Link
From my Sunday evening around sunset inside The Link tunnel between Crown Center and Union Station at Pershing and Main. This shot was rather unintentional, as after I finished taking tomorrow’s photo posting, I went on my way to get situated to take the one I posted back on Tuesday. But in between those two I stopped for this one and was lucky enough to do it at a time with low enough foot traffic through there so as not to mess it up, as I was gathering several manually bracketed source images from the camera for eventual HDR/tone-mapping on the computer.
I thought it odd what’s seen in the left windows, which doesn’t at all look like what is actually out there, I see now because of the floor reflecting in that left hand glass. I had kind of thought the result was sort of similar to THIS PHOTO, although in that one from last summer the whole intent was for there to be a light duplication on one side from the other. Here it’s more a particle physics issue with how the photons behave, I guess. It was accidental and I didn’t even notice it until I was processing the photo on my computer. What you’d normally see out of the left window is the Westin Crown Center Hotel building.
Plus I thought this shot makes it kind of look like you’re in a tunnel and they’re coming to get you.
I went out Saturday morning to get some shots of the American Royal Parade. These are from Grand Avenue between Crown Center and Truman Road.
1) At Truman Road looking south down Grand
2) One of the marching bands.
3) Ollie Gates and crew.
I especially liked the Gates Barbecue showing – the truck behind this car here was playing one of Tech N9ne’s new songs from the Gates Mixed Plate album.
4) Caballeros
5) John Deere tractors going up Grand Avenue
Crossroads District at dusk
Photo taken Tuesday evening, Sept. 7, 2010 a little after 8 pm. About three weeks ago I went to the south end of the Convention Center Ballroom and took this photo of the Kauffman Center construction, and noticed then a view toward Crown Center would be interesting too with the lighting at dusk, and my telephoto lens pointed toward Crown Center instead of my wide angle lens for the Kauffman Center. And speaking of the Kauffman Center, I did end up taking another shot of it as well that I’ll probably post in a day or two.
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.