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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.
Photos from Saturday evening in the Crossroads after taking the Roasterie airplane photos posted yesterday – Kansas City, MO.
MAX bus shelter across from the Kauffman Center:
Webster House and the Kauffman Center:
After turning around…
I climbed a chain link fence, tearing up my jeans and underwear, to get these rooftop skyline shots from along Baltimore:
View of the Kauffman Center’s southeast side from the roof of the one-story building on Baltimore St:
Artistic guardrails over the highway along Wyandotte Street across from the Convention Center Ballroom:
North side of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts from the Convention Center:
View toward Crown Center from the Convention Center:
Pictures from Wednesday night of the “Float” installation of hammocks by artist Jarrett Mellenbruch across from the Kauffman Center on the south lawn of the Kansas City Convention Center Ballroom. The hammocks are open to lie in 24/7 now through September.
First, a shot of the Convention Center with the Kauffman Center outline reflected in the windows –
And hammocks…
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 –
Because I get a noticeable enough amount of incoming search traffic for the Kauffman Center and photos of it, I decided it would be a good idea to make a new website dedicated to my shots I’ve compiled over the past three years of the building, from interior and exterior to construction and completion phases. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have a domain name dedicated to the collection. The exterior shots not requiring property releases are available for print and licensing purchases.
Check it out: https://www.kauffmancenterphotos.com
I found a new spot on top of a Crossroads parking garage a couple weeks ago that affords a near unimpeded view of the front of the Kauffman Center – Sunday I went back to nab a close up with my telephoto lens.
Last week I grabbed some new Kauffman Center shots – some from standing in different locations on the site than I have before – and duplicating some past shots but under sunset lighting conditions also, such as the front facing fisheye shots highlighting the steel cabling holding up the “glass curtain” on the south side of the building. A lot of my website traffic derives from searches for the Kauffman Center so it makes sense to continue populating the Internet with keyworded images of the building.
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…
Shots from Muriel Kauffman Theater, one of the two performance halls at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. On Tuesday I posted pics from the adjacent Helzberg Hall. We spent Saturday afternoon photographing the two halls to obtain some shots for the gift shop to utilize on prints and products of the new building.
On Saturday Jan. 7 2012 I shot for several hours in the two performance halls at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts. They’ll be using a selection of what we shot for prints and products available through the gift shop, along with several other pictures I took in 2011 both on the interior and exterior. I’ll be trying to post a few shots this week. These are some of the first from Helzberg Hall. Muriel Kauffman Theatre to come later.
Final Shots – Casavant Frères organ.
On Tuesday 12/20 I had the chance to get some shots at the Kauffman Center of some interior window washing in the Brandmeyer Great Hall. I ended up using four out of the five lenses in my backpack for this post.
I’d parked along Broadway so as I was leaving I threw on the fisheye lens and did some rain/cloud/cold-type pics.
Novum Structures was one of my clients recently who subcontracted on the construction of the Kauffman Center For the Performing Arts. Novum commissioned shots of their work on the Kauffman Center’s glass and cabling structures on the roof and to the south end of the building. Kansas City, MO – September 2011.
As far as I know I’m finished shooting my work for some subcontractors on the Kauffman Center For the Performing Arts building. These are from a shoot Sunday night in Helzberg Hall – one of two performance halls at the Center. I took a number of shots for GKD Metal Fabrics, a company that installed the stainless steel mesh at the front of the hall around the pipe organ from floor to ceiling. Quite a number more photos have been taken for them but the ones I’m posting here give a more overall view of the performance hall.
As I mentioned previously I’ll have a line of prints and products in the Kauffman Center gift shop shortly, with some exterior shots I’ve been gathering lately and a few from inside the building.
These photos alternate back and forth between fisheye and wide angle – both of which are the most useful kinds of lenses inside a lot of the building usually.
With the opening of the Kauffman Center last month I’ve been able to get to work putting together portfolio photography for some of the companies who subcontracted construction on the building who’ve become my photo clients. Most of my work is done at this point but I still have some to complete next week. In this post I’m showing the photos I shot for ELP Lighting, which designed the recessed lighting fixtures in the walls that I focus on in these shots.
There will be a line of prints and products based off my photos at the Kauffman Center gift shop. Right now we’re going through the process of selecting from the existing stock what they’ll want, and I also need to get busy shooting new photos in the near term too it looks like.
While shooting some portfolio pics for GKD Metal Fabrics, a subcontractor on the Kauffman Center building that installed some stainless steel in Helzberg Hall around the ceiling and pipe organ, I also had the chance to go up on top of the canopy hanging from the ceiling inside Helzberg Hall – accessible by a small lift you stand in to get from just under the roof of Helzberg Hall through a hole in the floor to the top of the canopy. They had me harness up to get near the edge.
1) Front of Helzberg Hall and the pipe organ from the elevated view standing on the canopy.
2)
3) Part of the top of the canopy on the right.
4) Canopy accessible by a lift going through the hole in the ceiling.
5) Standing above the lift down to the canopy as a couple of the Kauffman Center employees I was with were coming up the lift.
6) Some of the GKD Metal Fabrics stainless steel winding its way up to the top of Helzberg Hall, taken from the leftmost skylight space near the roof.
7) View of GKD stainless steel with the front of the hall and the canopy.
Consecutive posts by coincidence of architect Moshe Safdie’s two buildings in Kansas City – yesterday’s West Edge post and these shots of the Kauffman Center’s northwest side. Last night while working on some photography for subcontractors on the Kauffman Center building I nabbed these shots with the moon while outside. I was able to get up on top of the canopy in Helzberg Hall and will have photos from that posted soon enough.
^ Literary embellishment on above photo – I see a face in the sky looking back at me. As a rule sometimes that’ll happen.
I’m performing some photo work for contractors on the construction of the Kauffman Center building, taking shots of their work for their company portfolios. Last night I was attempting to grab some evening/dusk pics of some of the light fixtures in the Brandmeyer Great Hall. I nabbed a few additional shots for the fun of it contained herein. It was a little surreal standing there alone in the hall with the lights on just after it got dark outside.
If I recall correctly the lobby/Great Hall area is open from 10 to 6 pm to the general public if you want to go see the architectural detail at work in the building.
Final shot… from October 2010 on one of my first walk-throughs, and first with Stan the chief engineer on the project…
I did the Kauffman Center’s event photography for Tuesday morning’s Civic Dedication. Sunday is a big open house event. The Civic Dedication’s speakers included Mayor Sly James, Missouri Governor Jay Nixon, Jane Chu, CEO of the Kauffman Center, Jan Marcason of the City Council’s 4th District, and Julia Irene Kauffman. Here are a few general scene shots. Morning of my 31st birthday by coincidence.
Tues, Sept. 13, 2011
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 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…
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…
Two shots from around the Brandmeyer Great Hall in the soon-to-be completed Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Kansas City. They’ve just launched their Twitter feed for the 100 day countdown to the grand opening, https://twitter.com/#!/KauffmanCenter
Above: Near what will be the bar area on the upper level with a view toward the south.
Below: One of the elevators with a bit of the KCMO skyline in the distant background (City Hall, Jackson County Courthouse, Bolling Federal Building, Sprint Center).
I went back in the Kauffman Center for another photo tour on Thursday May 26 as the building nears further completion.
Above: The grand lobby/Brandmeyer Great Hall from the lower level of the lobby on looking toward the southwest.
Below: On the upper level of the lobby. Because of the glass and light reflections you can see the Hyatt and the Lathrop & Gage buildings reflected in the glass next to the Bartle Hall Skystation pylons to the left.
Continuing where I stopped from this post a few days ago we have downtown KC with storms coming in on the night of May 11th. Visible from left to right are the Crown Plaza Hotel, the One Kansas City Place building, Town Pavillion, Power and Light Building, 1201 Walnut with the Stinson sign, and a sliver of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts with one of its parking garage cranes.
Above – at the top of a garage at 9th looking south down Central St. toward the new terminal view of the north side of the Kauffman Center with the Bartle Hall Skystation pylons.
Below – in the garage elevator bank looking through the glass with the camera and tripod viewable in the reflection at left.
For the first shot it made geometric sense to keep the camera/tripod level, while in the second photo a different angle was needed given the interior combined with a wide angle lens.
-evening of Sunday May 8, ’11.
Above: The grand lobby, to be known as the Brandmeyer Great Hall undergoing further construction on April 19, looking toward the northwest. Glass railings will take the place of the current makeshift wood railing.
Below: The under-floor heating tubes are being installed on the floor of Brandmeyer Hall.
Reminder: Photo show tonight at 7 pm at The Hook Gallery near 45th and State Line around the antique and art shops at 1711 West 45th, KCMO, immediately east of State Line. Here’s the Facebook page.
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.
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