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“A Wicked Little Town”

I had reasons to be at 18th and Jefferson Monday night for photos, but those plans didn’t work right so instead I went beyond the open fence on the open plot of land where the “L-Shaped house” used to sit and did a couple shots with the trees and the I-35 traffic and the skyline with the new Kauffman Center building being shown off in the distance.

My friend Tony’s Kansas City has recently taken to referring to Kansas City as a “wicked little town,” on occasion. Which I think is hilarious. So much so that I think the Convention and Visitor’s Association should be a bit riskier and  re-brand our city as a wicked little town – which could boost tourism and conventions, furthering the downtown renaissance which we could then give Tony credit for in the end.

Anyway, two pics from Monday night June 13, a wicked little town in the early summer…

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Old San Juan Streetscape, Puerto Rico

A street in San Juan Antiguo, or Old San Juan, Puerto Rico

A street scene looking west after sunset in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, back on March 21.

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US Airways Morning Flight

After Take-off

Photo looking out the window of a 6:50 am US Airways flight to Philadelphia taking off Sunday morning a week ago out of Kansas City International, somewhere over the rural Missouri area outside the KC metro, flying toward the sunrise. There’d be less fail in this photo if one of my fingers wasn’t visible in the lower right of the photo, but a fisheye lens is awfully wide.

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West Bottoms, Kansas City, March 26

Kansas City's West Bottoms

On a drive-around/walk-around photo tour yesterday with a friend we stopped in the West Bottoms. I had fun spending a couple minutes getting shots of the available geometric angles the elevated protruding part of the building here shows off.

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Old San Juan Rockface

A rockface near Fort San Felipe del Morro, Puerto Rico.

A walk around the wall of Old San Juan reveals this rockface that fronts the bay and weaves around to view the Atlantic Ocean. On a warm sunny afternoon like it was it’s a great place to watch the waves come in and hit the rocks on shore at the base of Fort San Felipe del Morro in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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The Link Skywalk in February Pt. 4

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.

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Union Station and Liberty Memorial in One Shot

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.

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Union Station at Sunset from The Link

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.

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Tilted and Colorful Downtown KCMO

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.

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Photo Show Put Off One Week

Downtown KC at Sunset, November '10

Photo is from something I was gathering a week or two back in some work detailing the Kauffman Center construction.

Due to someone’s scheduling foul-up the photo show I’ve been posting about is put back to Friday, December 10 instead of this coming Friday. So, don’t come this Friday. (facebook)

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Kauffman Center at Sunset

Sunday night on top of the City Hall garage with the Kauffman Center.

The caption is right. That’s how I live life.

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Elmwood Cemetery

Elmwood Cemetery

Here we have the sun going down from Elmwood Cemetery on Truman Road, KCMO, Saturday 11/6. On Saturday I took a few shots here and then later after dark, photos from inside a downtown skywalk, which I’ll be posting over the course of Monday through Friday.

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Sunset Part 2

Sunset view from Downtown Kansas City

One more shot from the top of the City Hall parking garage looking west right after sunset. It was good and colorful last Saturday evening when I took this. Unfortunately so much of the urban parts of Kansas City have been gobbled up by parking, it can be hard getting a good shot of things that aren’t parking structures or lots – all the more ironic since it’s convenient to go to the top of garages to get elevated views. But only to a point apparently – too many garages everywhere and there’s nothing left worth looking at.

Since the City Hall garage is rather new, it has very high guard rails making it about impossible to take a picture through the camera’s viewfinder. For this one I had to activate the Live View mode so I could see the visual on the camera’s LCD and prop it up high with my tripod, and manually bracket my shots looking at the light meter display on the LCD. So that’s one other advantage of my Canon 5D Mark II – as much as I loved my old original 5D I couldn’t have gotten this shot with it.

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KCMO at Sunset


Kansas City Skyline from City Hall Garage

On Saturday evening I went to the top of the City Hall garage trying for a couple shots of the skyline as the sun went down.

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Garment District Architecture

On Saturday night/Sunday morning I was moving about already with my fisheye lens affixed after taking yesterday’s fountain photo, and thought this ornate entryway on 9th Street in the Garment District area was begging to also be shown via fisheye and HDR to get the evened-out light exposure between interior and exterior.

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Kauffman Center at Sunrise

Kauffman Center Construction at Sunrise

Here we have a look at the Kauffman Center construction site at sunrise on the morning of Wednesday, October 6th. I was mostly hoping for a shot like this, except when I got to the site at Summit Street in the West Side I couldn’t help but think that the billboard and Denny’s restaurant sign between my lens and the Kauffman building seriously messed things up. Whatever… I can’t chop them down.

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Crown Center and Liberty Memorial

Sunset scene from downtown Kansas City in October 2010.

While gathering yet more shots of the Kauffman Center construction, I turned my telephoto lens a bit to the southwest while standing on McGee at sunset on Wednesday October 6th. This is a shot of the Assurant Building, the Westin Crown Center Hotel, Liberty Memorial, and One Park Place back in the distance. I’ve been using five or six manually bracketed RAW files at varying light exposures and merging to HDR with Photomatix recently for these shots with extremely gradual changes in color and tone that come about so often when you’re shooting photos right after sunset.

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A new camera is a good excuse

First Day with my 5D Mark II

I ordered a new Canon 5D Mark II so I could retire my old workhorse original version 5D to a leisurely life serving as a backup or secondary camera body when I need to use a couple different types of lenses at the same time. So seeing as the new 5D II arrived Thursday I went out in the afternoon and evening roaming around downtown. This shot was on 9th Street between Grand and Walnut, I believe. My old 5D was starting to show some signs of wear, and its technology is now a bit dated compared to what the 5D Mark II provides. Funny thing though is the 5D Mark III, assuming that’s what it will be called, is expected by the photo community rumor mongers to show up in about six months to a year. I decided not to bother waiting.

Actually for this particular photo I’m posting, I like the overall composition, but there are some things about it that annoy me, although I’m posting it anyway. I didn’t keep my shutter speeds fast enough for the three handheld, bracketed exposures for HDR, and therefore when magnified on the computer monitor I can see problems. Whatever. I’m giddy to have a new 5D Mark II to work with. Coming up this weekend is a hot air balloon festival, a red light camera protest to be held by the Liberty Restoration Project, and the Waterfire event at Brush Creek on the Plaza Saturday night. I’m going to try and make good and sure the new camera doesn’t end up at the bottom of the creek, as I’ve had some bad luck before concerning equipment damage at Waterfire – nothing that couldn’t be repaired though, thankfully.

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A Feedlot in Stafford County, Kansas

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.

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Pastures outside of Preston, Kansas

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.

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Stafford Train Depot

Stafford Train Depot

The old unused train station/depot in Stafford Kansas, this past Saturday evening, 08/21/10. Maybe old unused depots are cliche subject matter, but whatever. This one has the red glow of the exit sign inside showing through the windows. I was out there in southern Kansas for a long weekend.

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