A passage at the Mission

As I was walking around Mission San Jose in San Antonio, I came across this passageway and it caught my eye.  I always like looking at architecture and enjoy history as well.  This place is rich in both!  We spent a little while there and I definitely recommend a visit if you are in SA!  There are several missions along their "mission trail", all just south of downtown and really easy to get to.  I hope to get back so I can photograph the others too!  This is a 7 exposure HDR shot at f/11, merged in Photomatix, and with some adjustments in Topaz Adjust and Aperture.

Neon explosion

I spent a little time in Dallas this week, and got out with the camera for a bit too.  It rained on me a lot on the way up there, and I thought for sure I would get stuck in my room, watching the rain fall, but the storm broke for a while and I hit the streets.  I did get rained on some, but it was on and off and my trusty Nikon stayed mostly dry.  This shot is a closeup of some fountains that I found downtown around the JFK Memorial area - sort of near the West End part of town.  I was just playing around and took 4 exposures at f/5.6, thinking I might try an HDR.  The challenge was that the lights were changing more quickly that I was shooting, and the water was moving up and down very rapidly, so my 4 shots were all different colors - purple, blue, pink and orange - and the water was different heights in each too.  I went ahead and merged them into an HDR for the heck of it, and this is what it looks like.  Kinda fun, and definitely colorful! I like the abstract look to it. Look for some cool HDRs coming next week from this little trip.

Bay Bridge bokeh

Here is another one of my "pure blur" or pure bokeh shots, this one from San Francisco.  Though San Fran is obviously a great location for typical photography, I found it to be interesting for these bokeh shots as well since there are so many twinkly lights around.  This is the Bay Bridge, and unlike some of my other pure bokeh shots, you can pretty much tell, if you know the bridge.  I was on a pier one evening, taking shots of just about everything, and turned and saw this.  Of course I got a bunch of "normal" shots of this bridge too, but I just had to spin the dial and blur it up a little!

A summer night

Last weekend I took off for a little while to shoot some around sunset, but didn’t really know where I was going to go.  I ended up driving up to Georgetown, which is a nice little town north of Austin.  I cruised around, looking for something to catch my eye.  I spent some time meandering around the campus of Southwestern University, taking some shots here and there.  Eventually I ended up driving out to Lake Georgetown.  I had never been out here before, but knew about it and found it using the GPS feature on my iPhone.  Boy does that feature come in handy sometimes!  Anyways, I saw a sign that said something like “scenic overlook” (I always try to follow those signs!) so I turned, parked, and started hiking around.  This photo is the first one I took, and literally this view of the sunset was the first thing I saw there.  Timing was really on my side since I caught the last rays of sun just before it dipped below the horizon.

This is a 6 exposure HDR taken at f/14, with exposures ranging from +2 to -3.  they were merged into an HDR in Photomatix and then I made some adjustments in PSE and Aperture.

A blue hour moment in Kansas City

My recent trip to Kansas City was quite a lot of fun from a photography perspective.  When I checked into the hotel, they said my room was on the 14th floor and had a city view, which immediately pleased me.  Isn’t that just pleasing to the ears?  “Ah yes, a city view from the 14th floor”.  Anyways, when I got there I dropped my stuff and immediately headed to the window to see what this view was all about.  Fortunately, it was a sliding glass door with a tiny balcony (big enough for two legs of a tripod, with the 3rd leg back in the room) and actually did give me quite a wonderful view of the city.  The next morning, when I awoke it was blue hour, which is such a fantastic time to shoot.  I threw open the sliding glass door, set up the tripod, and stood in awe for a moment before clicking away.  This is the view off to the right, with about half of the downtown area in the distance.  I have some additional shots of the entire city, and I also had a great view over Union Station too!  Basically, it was the perfect place to shoot Kansas City from!   I also got various shots of KC at night from my balcony, so be prepared for more HDR work from KC coming your way!

This is a 4 exposure HDR taken at f/14, with exposures from 0 to -3.  They were merged into an HDR in Photomatix and then I made some adjustments with PSE and Aperture.