July, 2009

Something I pulled off my hard drives from back at the end of May on Memorial Day weekend at the Celebration at the Station concert, Union Station, Kansas City Missouri.

Saturday, June 20th at 8:30 pm. It was the day before the summer solstice.

I had wrapped up running around photographing in Wichita earlier that day, and I'd hit a few small towns after that, then wound up back at my grandma's in Stafford, blah blah blah. And with it being the solstice I had a lot of energy to burn (as well as some remaining free space on my memory card that day) so I ended up at the cemetery just outside of the town waiting for anything interesting to happen. Turned out the only thing interesting to happen that I was privy to was the sunset, at least in this existential realm we occupy, anyway.

Saturday, Fourth of July nightfall at the Missouri River at Kansas City.

My highlights are all blown out in the middle part of the fireworks explosion there. Meh.

This year's fourth seemed so... blah compared to most. Usually Kansas City is a fascinating place to be the night of the fourth due to the exhilarating way no one here, myself included in this city gives a rat's posterior about fireworks laws, and the way smoke and ordinance permeate the atmosphere much to all our fragrant, cardio-pulmonary delight.

Leading into late spring and summer I've had numerous ideas on things and places to go photograph, involving roadtrips or just retreadings to places I've long since vacated or all-out rid my associations thereof, or even “journalistic” documentation of some grain harvesting that tends to happen every year in the midwest. Problem is though that when time comes around for these things, you (read: I) have already mentally gadded beyond it and then revel aflutter of boarding mechanical falcons for trans-oceanic expeditions – all seemingly more exotic than my more pedestrian yet also immediately more attainable plans of putting on my motor vehicle and road-trekking.

So, there was the impromptu trip out to the middle of Kansas I took in June. Yes, when you're a man like Eric Bowers, central Kansas is indeed a vacation destination. But nevermind that for now, I've also had mind to drive to Warrensburg, Missouri, where I spent a decade's time in only two and a half years finishing my bachelor's degree. It would be one evening of photography of the campus of what is now called UCM, formerly called CMSU when I was there (It's a safe bet that to class up the sound of one's midwestern state university, switch around the words in the institution's title every few decades after things start getting stale).

Reportedly there's a town in Iowa with a “ghost train” that blows through on those dark spooky nights, delivering and picking up those of a murderous bent who stop in, wreak havoc in their wake, and leave never to be found again. These are all ideas that either I've had or suggestions people have given me that I liked. But the way not a damn thing ever seems certain, even on a short time frame of just a few weeks, seems to indicate that really I don't know what the hell I'll be photographing. I'm not totally jesting when I say that I could end up quitting photography just as soon as I get that new Canon f/2.8 L series wide angle lens and take about a thirty photos with it. You never now. I've felt more certain about other things in life than all this, for sure. The only constant in photography is that a lot of people involved in it have absurdly large egos. And the only honest response to a silly question like “Where do you see yourself in five years?” in a corporate job interview is to acknowledge humanity's own tendency towards hellbent idiocracy and admit that we don't actually know what the hell we'll be doing three weeks from now, let alone five years from now.

End Rant. Until tomorrow. Might be less rantful tomorrow.

A shot from this past Friday evening at July's First Friday event in the Crossroads District. Instead of having any "objet d'art" on any walls this month, I meandered around for an hour to pass the time. 

These Town Topic Hamburger signs are kind of "known" throughout the city in that they've been here for so long. I don't know how long, just that it's been a really long time. This is the 19th and Baltimore location - one of two as there's another a few paces west on Broadway and Southwest Boulevard.

The built environment of the Crossroads District leads northward to higher densities of the downtown loop, viewable farther up the street.

MORE -- I've draft queued this week's mess of photoblog postings, and incidentally went back and re-edited this shot to perform some minor tweaking in it with the Topaz Adjust plugin for Photoshop, which I'm running the thirty day trial version of. I'll be curious to find out what can be done with this software. I had initially began to experiment with the LucisArt plugin, but in all honesty was a but off-put by the crippleware, demo-only version that wouldn't even allow me to save anything, plus the seemingly exhorbitant pricetag of $359 for the LucisArt plugins. Admittedly though I don't know how to work any of these add-ons yet anyway. 

Truth be told though there are all kinds of photo enhancement plugins to be had, and I'd like to begin getting familiar with more of them, as I'm sure there will be one or two that may help a lot for a few shots occasionally. In this photo, I used Topaz Adjust for the first time to perform some noise reduction and some details enhancements, in addition to a very slight saturation increase.