January, 2010

This was the scene at 5:45 PM in downtown Kansas City on Saturday, January 2nd. It was a delightful eight-or-so degrees fahrenheit, although my physical annoyance with that temperature seemed to dissipate once I saw this steam coming from the manhole in the street and I began getting mah fancy executive image-making accoutrements prepared all in a tizzy for road-faring vehicles to come motoring past amid multi-second shutter openings. 

We have a MAX bus, a red pickup truck, and the afore-mentioned steam. 

As noted, since my camera was tripod mounted, I left it in the same position for several different exposures taken all within a couple minutes of each other. This photograph is actually the merger (note: non-HDR) of three different shots in Photoshop. My favorite shot of the MAX bus, my favorite shot of the steam coming from the street, and then another shot that had the motion blur of the red pickup truck. That's done by a relatively simple process of layer masks and use of the Brush Tool in Photoshop. 

Mercier St, or as us locals like to sometimes pronounce it, "Mair-see-ay," my street of old brick "Kansas City Colonnade" buildings. I believe these went up in the very early 1930s, according to maps of the city from the time. 

You know what my problem was here? It was Saturday night/early Sunday morning, and since it was snowing steadily, I wanted quick shutter speeds, which meant wider apertures, which I now see also meant a crappy depth of field looking down the sidewalk at the conifer. Such a simple tenet of basic photography and yet I overlooked it in an overly-complicated effort to evade snowflakes on my lens. 

Oh, and my lens. I used my telephoto Canon 100-400 L for this shot.  I often feel I neglect this wonderful apparatus in favor of my much beloved wide-angle lens, so I feel obligated to mention it when posting something from its view. 

One of my scenes of frigidity from January 2nd, downtown KCMO. The blur is a turning tour bus in town at this time of year for gawd-knows-what-reason making a turn into one of the hotels amid manhole steam from the middle of the street.  

I can't decide if I have too much contrast in this edit, but whatever. Sometimes it's hard to tell when you have so much contrast that you've rendered your entry amateurish and when there's a lack of contrast and the scene looks flat and uninteresting. Well anyway, the theme for my frame of mind these days is to stop getting in a big tizzy over these kind of things incessantly, so, that is that.

NOTE -- I'm in an ongoing effort to get the layout and structure of this site into something more logical. But of course not everything goes completely as hoped right away - such as the "Info" button at the bottom of my posts not being placed properly at present. Working on it. 

And the story is....

The Plaza Lights for 2009-2010 are still on for a few more days, until the night of Sunday January 17th, 2010, right before MLK Day. Self-assigned projects are the ultimate reckoning for many photographers, and I'm hoping to get as much material for potential stock use as I can up to our forthcoming Sunday night resumption into the normality of the year. 

Getting to this vantage point along Volker and Brookside Blvd however, reminded me so much of the things I hate about Kansas City. The damn autocentric kowtowing to the automobile, and the disregard for anyone walking around not wearing a frickin' car. The fact that none of the sidewalks had been bothered to be cleared, because everyone with any authority over them figures no one is on foot anyway. Disgusting. While getting my shots I witnessed an older wheelchair-bound man go by me in the street as I was over in the snow-packed sidewalk. Mind you this is where Main and Brookside Blvd merge on the southeast side of the Plaza, so it's not exactly the safest place to have to ride down the street. 

But I guess I keep photographing all of it, year after year, so there must be some endearment despite it all.