One More Arch

OK, one more of the Arch from last summer's trip to St. Louis. Actually, this probably won't be the last you see of the Arch on here.

I like this picture because I get a sense of how big the Arch is. An architectural wonder!

Average Tree

Here is an average tree. There is nothing particularly special about this tree, but this was the tree I was looking for. And it gave me a little story, which is half of the fun.

As I mentioned in Quick Turnaround, I decided last Saturday to head out to Shawnee Mission Park, which is a large park on the Kansas side of the border. After driving around inside the park for a little seeing what the place had to offer, I found a nice spot that was relatively less crowded than the rest of the park. I grabbed my camera and tripod and hiked off into a grassy area off the beaten path. I took a few pictures here and there and then sat down in the shadow of this tree to get my tripod and camera all set up. After taking the photographs for this picture I looked down to see a tick crawling up my jeans!

In case you don't know; I hate ticks with a passion. Although it's been found that a protein in deer tick saliva interferes with the ability of the AIDS virus to attach to immune cells, and the same protein may help treat immune disorders like asthma and multiple sclerosis, I still hate ticks; they just bug me (Haa! Sorry..).

Anyway, I quickly jumped up and brushed the little guy off, only to see one or two others making their way up my pants in similar fashion. Quickly brushing them off, I began searching my legs for any more of the little buggers. Finding a few more, and what appeared to be a baby tick, or some sort of underdeveloped tick, I brushed them off, grabbed my camera and retreated to the concrete path to regroup. I did my best to search the rest of my clothes for ticks, and luckily my jeans were light colored, and I had a white t-shirt on, so it wasn't too hard. Finding no more I headed back to my car with my next destination in mind.

I'm not afraid of ticks by any means, and I've had many bites, so I can remove and dispatch them with ease. This was an ambush though and I was caught off guard. I would like to go back though; there were some nice hiking trails into the woods that I'd like to explore sometime. I also saw a number of deer while I was out there, just wandering around.

Lesson learned: Use my industrial strength tick spray (the stuff I use for work when I do fieldwork) on my clothes before I go to the park again.

Even though this is just an average tree you could see just about anywhere, I like this photo, and it gives me something to show for my battle with the ticks that day.



In other news, I took 3rd place in my category in the art show at work. Should have placed higher, but I lost to another HDR photo that was physically bigger than mine, and simply overpowered mine. There were numerous technical problems with his, but they didn't matter because it was big (this has been a developing trend with this art show). The thing that was in second place is pretty indescribable. Seems to be something created in Photoshop, but I'm not really sure what it was other than that.

Old Courthouse

Here is another photo from last summer's trip to St. Louis. The whole group of us were walking to the stadium from the Arch and I stopped to take a few photos of this building. I had never really though about what exactly this building was until now. Turns out it is the Old St. Louis County Courthouse. The dome was built during the Civil War, although the actual courthouse building was built before this. The Old Courthouse was actually the tallest building in St. Louis until 1896; hard to believe with all of the buildings towering over it today. It was relieved of its duties as a courthouse in 1930 when the Civil Courts Building was built and was abandoned for a few years until it was slowly renovated and turned into a monument.

Anyway, there was your history lesson for the day, and here is my photograph!

Quick Turnaround

I had been planning all week on getting out and taking some pictures this weekend and here is the first of a few that I like. I first went out to Shawnee Mission Park (more on this later), which is a pretty big place, and apparently the most visited park in Kansas. I found a spot I liked and got some pictures and then headed down south a bit further to a corporate park called Corporate Woods. I used to ride my bike through this area when I lived in Overland Park and knew it was a pretty area so I thought I'd see what I could come up with.

This was pretty much the fastest turnaround I've pulled off as far as taking photos, editing them, and considering them 'finished.' I guess that's the good thing about capturing what I was going for.. That and taking fundamentally good photos ;p



A quick note about this website: I changed the setting so that anyone can comment. Before you had to have a Google Account to comment, but I wanted to make it easier for everyone to comment (because I love to get comments!).

St. Louis Arch

One of my favorite things in a photo is a dramatic sky. I took this photo last summer in St. Louis when a bunch of the family met to go to a couple Cardinals baseball games. It was a nice day so we all walked down to the Arch before the game one afternoon to enjoy the weather and check out the flooded Mississippi River.

Millions of photos have been taken of the Arch so I thought I'd experiment with some angles that are probably less common. I really liked the outcome, and with a little post-processing work I pulled out the sky and colors to be a bit more dramatic.

Summer!

Well it's finally warming up around here, after what seemed like an eternity of winter. Although I enjoy the winter, I mostly enjoy it in Colorado while skiing. I much prefer the summer, so I'm pretty happy it's warming up. I'm fairly certain that I need to just move to somewhere in Florida. Somewhere in Florida that is Sarasota or one of the keys right there. Now all I have to do is win the lottery. If I was going to live there I doubt I'd want to do any actual real work.

There isn't much to explain about this photo or about anything I did in post-processing this photo because it is basically straight from the camera. I did a very little bit of color and exposure adjustment in Photoshop and I cropped it a bit, but other than that it's just how I took it. To me this photo exemplifies summer. A bright blue sky, bright green grass, and of course, the clothes line.

Substation

Well, it's been a while since my last update, but I've been busy lately, and I've been working on finishing up a few photos. I took this photo a couple of months ago somewhere north of Kansas City. I decided to just get in my car and drive up north until I found a good place to take some pictures. I had headed up there with a certain shot in mind, but stumbled upon this substation in a fairly deserted area, and decided to get some pictures of it instead.

I planned on trying out a post-processing method which would produce a High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo. To do this I took a total of 5 exposures from the exact same location. One exposure -2 stops, -1, +1, +2, and one exposed normally at 0. These 5 exposures are combined in a computer program and tweaked using tone mapping, which basically adjusts how the exposures are combined. When done right, I think this produces extraordinary pictures; in the wrong hands though, it can create disturbingly distorted images. I set out to do it right, and tried not to over do the processing. After combining the 5 exposures, I opened the result in Photoshop and tweaked the image a bit more until I liked the results.

I've tried to create HDR photos in the past, but could never get one to look like I thought it should -- until now. Something clicked this time, and I was able to create this image. I like it quite a bit, and decided to enter it into the art show I mentioned in Bean Ball! Regardless of how it does in the show, I'm happy with it. I don't think that I overdid the post-processing, and everyone who I have shown it to has agreed.



For the show, I had this printed at an online shop. After reading reviews I decided to spend a few extra dollars and have it printed on a metallic paper which supposedly looked very good. I was definitely not disappointed. The colors seem to 'pop' more, and with a photo like this, I think that only enhances the picture. Looking at it now, I'm wondering if viewing it on a computer monitor does it justice.