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Here we have a couple shots from near the gates to the driveway at Liberty Memorial, a couple closer up from along the sidewalk looking toward the skyline and past the Memorial with my long telephoto lens, then off to the side where I climbed up to a spot I’ve gone to three or four times now without being told by any security staff to get down. This spot allows for a slightly atypical view than the usual scene from directly north of the Memorial base – and from here you can practically make the Kauffman Center sit right behind Union Station in the photo.
I was up on the 19th floor of the City Center Square building downtown around 5pm Wednesday (08/15/12) to get some shots at the Bratcher Gockel and Kingston law office. While there and waiting for the staff to prepare I threw on the wide angle lens in the conference room and took a few snaps out the window with its elevated view of things. One of the firm’s partners, Lynne Bratcher, took the case for my friend and favorite blogger Tony’s Kansas City (Tony Botello) in his dispute with retiring Local 42 union chief Louie Wright.
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.
Ten photos taken Monday evening of the former AMC Mainstreet Theatre, which recently became the the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. I licensed a few photos of this place to AMC not long after they opened back in 2008 I believe it was – and with the ownership change-up I figured I’d grab a few new ones. If they eventually modify the signage more-so than just the removal of the AMC logo, maybe it will warrant some more shots later.
I spent an abnormal amount of time shooting this past Saturday, so I’m dumping 27 photos on to the blog all at once.
In protest of Kansas Senate Bill 79 – the anti-Sharia law bill, a protest took place on the Plaza –
Interior of Boozefish Wine Bar on Westport Road –
View of downtown and the Crossroads from Liberty Memorial –
View of Switzer School/West Junior High on Summit Street in the West Side, taken from Liberty Memorial –
Union Station waiting hall –
Pedestrian bridge between Union Station and Freighthouse –
Union Station exterior up close –
Highway loop and intersections along Truman Road downtown –
I remember this stretch along McGee near 10th – I worked in the UMB building on the corner one summer years ago, before the Sprint Center and the tear-down of the Shoppers Parkade garage. There used to be a deli we’d get food from. Now with nothing but a giant parking lot bounded by 10th to 11th and Grand to McGee, the views have changed a lot from what I remember back in 2001.
I also meandered over to Oak Street and around City Hall too.
Power and Light Building –
Sprint Center from 10th Street looking south down McGee.
Bryant Building, Wall Sreet Tower, Town Pavillion –
The notorious Pickwick Plaza sits closed down now –
Alley behind Pickwick Plaza building –
Around 10th and Oak –
City Hall and Oak Tower –
Statue across from City Hall of former mayor Ilus Davis.
18th and Holmes is a fairly unassuming and non-descript intersection but after stopping and parking there I thought it worked out pretty well. Near the end I climbed to a second-floor exit to get some elevated shots. Three lenses used for this post. Also, I need to update the aesthetics and presentation of this blog, it’s getting a little stale. Hopefully that will be coming in the not too distant future.
Other shots from the top of that Crossroads parking garage I mentioned the other day – I did a few shots there two or three weeks back with the wide angle lens and this time went back to use the telephoto aimed at the Kauffman Center. These two other shots here I nabbed in between and after getting that shot.
Last Saturday I went downtown to collect some potential stock images for future sale with downtown all busy, although I kind of failed at capturing anything related to the Big 12 tournament going on as everyone was inside the Sprint Center during the MU-Baylor game while I was there . I haven’t posted in a little while as I’ve been busy de-bugging my blog after a hack – which is what happens when you don’t keep your WordPress theme updated. The WordPress install itself I updated, but not the theme.
These are just starting at the Sprint Center around 14th and Grand and winding over to 13th and Main, down to 14th, and back to the Sprint Center.
Twenty very recent shots from downtown Kansas City. I’m getting a better feel for what kind of stock photo material sells and I’ve been feeling motivated these last few days.
First, there is a local client who wants a north side fisheye view close up of the Kauffman Center post-construction. The first day I went out it clouded up on me on short notice:
Then on Sunday after the snow melted I went and re-shot since they are more interested in an uncloudy view:
…although I wonder if the discoloration on the sidewalk because of the salt will be a problem. Following are some more fisheye Kauffman Center shots –
Then that evening I went to the top of the garage at 13th & Grand downtown for some fancy sunset shots, where I realized the state of disrepair my tripod is in. The wobbliness made most of the pictures blurry rubbish, but these are what I did (barely) get with an insecure tripod head:
Some Kauffman Center and AMC Mainstreet Theater shots…
The next night (MLK Day) after having something tightened on the tripod head I went out to 12th and Main:
On Tuesday afternoon/evening I went to Penn Valley Park to get yellowish late afternoon skyline photos. The tripod came undone once again so most of these are handheld, and the fact that I was freezing my hands off with no gloves meant I wasn’t going to wait for it to get dark blue in the sky…
The tents housing the good folks of Occupy Kansas City during the cold January weather…
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.
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?
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.
After my taekwondo class ended I grabbed my camera bag last night and ran out to the plot of land that the “L-Shaped House” used to sit on, intending to get some Kauffman Center construction telephoto shots. Instead I was more fond of the general downtown skyline pictures I nabbed, until it started raining so hard I had to stop. Hopefully the Canon 5D Mark II camera is weather sealed really nice, as it did get rained upon quite a bit in my mad dash back to the car.
Above: Part of downtown including the Bartle Hall Skystations and the One Kansas City Place building, Kansas City, Missouri not long before it started raining hard.
Below: A view across the Crossroads District toward Crown Center and Liberty Memorial. I-35 traffic in the foreground.
-Evening of May 11, 2011.
Downtown Kansas City Skyline #1
I was asked by a local client to try and duplicate a previous photo I took last summer that at the time had more cranes in the foreground working on the Kauffman Center construction. Now there’s a demand for shots with the cranes gone, although one remains in these shots it is not very prominently seen. The first shot above is my attempt to duplicate last summer’s photo as precisely as I could figure out how. It helped having my iPhone to view the original on the screen from my own site and compare with the display on my camera as I composed this shot. I took a couple extra shots as well while the lighting was good, seen below.
Downtown Kansas City Skyline #2
Downtown Kansas City Skyline #3
Garment District Architecture
At 8th and Broadway in downtown KC lies the old “Garment District” area. I’ve always really liked coming back to this area every now and then for further photos. Here we have the entryway area for the building on the southeast corner of 8th and Broadway – It’s the type of thing you’d never notice taking in the area from behind a windshield like most do.
I would have gone wider on this shot but accidentally left my zoom ring at 18mm instead of the minimum focal length of 16 mm I would have preferred.
KCMO Skyline and LIberty Memorial Grounds
This was one of my three photos I came away with (Saturday’s post being another) from my time over near the Federal Reserve building with my telephoto lens trying to capture both parts of the Liberty Memorial grounds along with the skyline after the snowfall last week. Photo taken Friday, Feb. 4 a little after sunset.
Kansas City MO Skyline with LIberty Memorial
I was intending for shots from Liberty Memorial’s overlook area of the downtown skyline, but it was closed off due to the mess the blizzard left behind. After I was leaving I looked left out my window and noticed from around in front of the driveway of the Federal Reserve building you have this view (via telephoto lens) of part of the downtown skyline.
– evening of Friday, Feb. 4, 2011 –
North on Main in The Link
This is the first of the three photos I bothered editing from inside The Link on Sunday evening, and the final one I’m posting for now. The last time I had been inside The Link for photos back in October, this section where the main part of downtown is viewable was closed off due to some kind of maintenance work. I’d gotten in here this time with the intent to utilize my oft-used standard wide angle lens (Canon 16-35 L II), but ended up trying the fisheye while waiting for the lighting to get good and decided fisheye was the way to go. Magnified in real close on my monitor you can make out the “Go Chiefs” display emblazoned with an electronic Arrowhead on the front of the downtown Marriott.
Fountain at 8th and Main
At a questionable hour on Saturday night, I perched in the median with my camera and tripod rigged toward this fountain in the middle of the street, amid several of the Commerce Bank properties on Main between 8th and 9th in the north loop. I used my fisheye lens here and cropped the photo somewhat on the computer afterwards.
Skywalk Glass Reflections
During the Fiesta Hispana I had the idea to go hop into the skywalk connecting the Marriott and Muehlebach Hotels at 12th and Wyandotte and see if anything interesting was to be had from up there. I tend to gravitate towards these kind of window/glass reflection things like this, and they’ve actually led to photo sales in the past. Here’s another shot I took down on the street underneath the skywalk just over nine months prior on January 2nd, 2010. In this photo above I’m pointing the camera and lens toward the southeast, though with the reflection coming in from the glass behind me, you can see the Bartle Hall convention Center and a couple of the Skystation pylons as well, although those are actually to the southwest of where I was located. Between the One Kansas City Place tower and the Muehlebach Hotel, you can kind of see an air vent inside the skywalk I was situated in. Crazy visual complications like that get me all excited.
Horse Statue at Barney Allis Plaza
This past weekend was the Fiesta Hispana at Barney Allis Plaza in downtown KCMO. Honestly I did not get any actual good photos of anything pertaining to the festival itself, although I did nab a couple of general, urban scene type of shots, this being one, and another coming tomorrow. Here we have quite a horse statue in the park across from the Marriott Hotel, with the old art-deco Municipal Auditorium behind.
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.