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I’m working on a photo project for the KCMO Parks Dept which entails gathering and collecting shots of KC parks and amenities, so Saturday evening I was at Case Park in Quality Hill downtown. At the end I brought out my telephoto lens and aimed it toward the West Bottoms trying to catch that tradeoff between natural light and artificial light. These two pics obviously won’t be submitted as part of my parks project but I wanted to include them in a photoblog posting nonetheless. The narrow aperture of f/18 for both pictures causes the starburst effect from the street lights as the aperture blades inside the lens refract the light onto the sensor.
From Case Park toward the West Bottoms at a focal length of 180 mm.
At the maximum 400 mm focal length on my telephoto lens toward part of the West Bottoms.
The center-point of Old San Juan, Puerto Rico and a hub for the touristy historic area, the public square Plaza de Colón in San Juan.
A placeholder weekend post – a photo from my trip to Puerto Rico back in mid-March. I still haven’t quite finished all the editing work on those photos yet. Another image I shot while there, at Fort San Felipe del Morro, is now listed on Getty Images.
I took these two telephoto shots the same night as the two wide-angles from my most recent prior posting. I had gone that night to 18th and Jefferson to train the telephoto lens on the Kauffman Center for a scheduled lighting pattern inside the building, but that didn’t go as planned – plus I think if I’m to ever get any decent shots of the building from that location I’m going to have to rent a lens that extends farther than the 400 mm maximum focal length on my own telephoto lens.
Downtown Kansas City skyline on Monday night, June 13…
Over the Easter weekend I took some extra time off and went out to my grandma’s place in central Kansas. This shot was taken Sunday at dusk north of Stafford Kansas halfway to Ellinwood in a cluster of trees around a dirt road that I could see from the paved two-lane highway. The deer were hopping around a lot that night and I had to be careful to not total my car in the process of making it back to Stafford in the dark, as there were several deer witnessed on the side of the road. I just paid off the car too so I’m a little extra suspicious of deer right now when venturing into the country.
Don’t forget – Photo show and sale tomorrow night at The Hook at 45th and State Line in KCMO – see the Facebook page for further information.
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
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.
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 –
The Plaza Medical Building with high-rise residential behind.
While getting shots Sunday evening I nabbed this view from the top of the garage on 47th looking southeast toward the Plaza Medical Building in the lower foreground and the old high-rise condo and apartment buildings along Ward Parkway towering behind.
Plaza Lights from 47th St.
Something from Sunday evening, January 2nd along 47th on the Plaza. I haven’t done any Plaza lights photography this season at all, or much other photography for that matter – due to a lot of things I’ve been having to take care of lately. But I’d been meaning to try and get a view from this particular spot in this garage looking toward the intersection. Of course the reality of it is always different than how you envision beforehand in your head, then you just try and compose around what you’ve got in front of you.
Hearn Farms
Monday, Aug. 23 at nightfall on my aunt and uncle’s farm out in southern Kansas, Stafford County to be precise. This is in the feedlot area with the moon coming up on the horizon. Back in April, hours before BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig famously blew up in the Gulf of Mexico, I took this photo standing just a few dozen yards away with a view of this John Deere implement in action.
I heard later on there was a bobcat prowling the area earlier that night, which I guess would have been fun to come across while getting photos. I don’t know if bobcats would find tripods all that intimidating.
Pastures outside Preston, Kansas
Photo taken this past Sunday evening. I see here in August the moon rises at just the right time for a certain dramatic effect. I was in Preston, Kansas, a tiny, and regrettably foundering town of which I have some ties to. I stop there every once in a while when I’m visiting my grandmother who now lives in Stafford, roughly twenty miles to the north.
This photo is different than my normal in a few ways. I deactivated the telephoto lens’s auto-focus and manually trained it on the moon, allowing everything else to blur, including the foliage. I took several varied exposures for HDR to display the very subtle differences to be seen in color and contrast across parts of the photo. Actually I do that kind of thing frequently, but manually focusing on blissful, pastoral country settings take a bit of getting accustomed to for me. Normally I leave the serene nature photography to people who have more practice at it. I imagine those photographers are of a more serene and content personal nature in general as well. It makes one wonder.