Author Archives: Rick

St. Charles Trolley Car

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I said one of my goals was to get a good picture of a New Orleans Trolley Car.  Here it is.

St. Charles Trolley

I am really happy with the way it came out.  While on the train coming home, I was watching a video and there was a small commercial for Topaz Impressions software plugin. It transforms images to make them look like impressionist paintings.  It turns out there are two similar packages, and I downloaded both and played with them. Here is what I got.

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It creates an interesting image, but it is almost insulting to real impressionist artists. To actually create impressionist art takes a great deal of skill and work. So, I am somewhat torn about this/

 

New Orleans 2

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I had to attend the LMCA meeting in New Orleans. This time Debbie came with me and we took the train.  That was a great experience.  It is so much better than flying or driving, although it does take a little longer. Because the train only runs each way three times a week, we had to go a day early, but that was great because it gave me a whole day to take pictures.  I had two goals – a good trolley picture, and a picture of Preservation Hall. I got those an a couple more.

Preservation Hall

Dr. Zombie's House of Voodoo 1

Cafe' Du Monde 1

I am going to discuss the Trolley pic in another post.

Dickens on The Strand 2014

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As always, we went to Dickens on The Strand. It has been interesting watching things change.  Although there were no major changes this year, there were a few things that have changed some.  There has been an increase in Steampunk related costumes (although how they relate to Victorian England I am not quite sure) and a decrease in Pirate related costumes. Here are a couple pics of the two

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We joined the Galveston Historic Foundation.  That allowed us access to view the parades from a balcony on The Strand.  So, the pics of the parade were a little different this year.

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Lone Star Rally 2014

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We went to Galveston last weekend for the Lone Star Rally.  We went to a new area along Seawall first and spent quite a bit of time there.  They have moved one of the stages there and that is the location for the custom bike sown. As in the past, there is a serious obsession with skulls.

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It tried to sprinkle a little, and the result was a pretty good rainbow.

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We then went downtown.  By the time we got there, the crowds were overwhelming, but we walked around.  I could not get as many shots of people as I have gotten in past years.   We were there late enough that the Triumph was leaving, and I got a nice shot of it.

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And a nice shot of Mechanic St. with the sun going down.

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Denton Guyer H.S. Silverados

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Audrey is in the Denton Guyer HS Dance Squad – The Silverados.  We went and watched them at halftime of a football game on Friday.  These are some of the pictures I got.

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SONY DSC

SONY DSC

Chicago

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When I was in High School, we hosted a foreign exchange student from Germany for a year.  Over the years, he kept in touch with us.  He has recently retired and wanted to come back and visit again.  So last weekend, I went to Chicago were we all visited.  Chicago was beautiful (as odd as that may seem).  The trees were spectacular.

Fall Colors

On Saturday, we went into the city. This was a fountain in the courtyard of the Chicago Art Institute.

Art Institute Fountain

We went to Grant Park. This is a shot of Buckingham Fountain.

Buckingham Fountain

One of the newest attractions is “The Bean” in Millennium Park.  This is a highly polished chrome sculpture shaped like a bean.  Everything reflects off its surface.  Here is a picture of “The Bean.”

The Bean

We went on a fantastic boat tour on the Chicago River where we could see all the various Chicago Architecture.  Towards the end of the tour, we went out to the mouth of the river and turned around.  Looking back, you can see the who skyline, and it was really quite impressive.

Chicago Skyline

Cameron Park Zoo

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I had a little spare time on Friday.  So, I ran over to the zoo.  I knew I did not have enough time to do the entire zoo, so I went to the Asia and Africa areas. The female orangutan gave birth not too long ago, and she and her baby were out.

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In the Africa exhibit, the flamingoes were all next to the water, and that made a nice reflection shot.

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Finally, right next tot he Flamingoes, there was a flock of Black Vultures in a tree.

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Spider

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For October, the Heart of Texas Professional Photographer’s Guild’s image competition subject was a black and white photograph of something in nature.  One morning while getting the newspaper, I saw there was a spider web on the front porch.  I thought maybe I could get a good macro image of it and convert that to black and white.  I tried a couple times during the day, but was never really happy with it. So, I decided to try at night.  When I went out to try, the spider was there. It was a pretty large orb-weaving spider and I started taking pictures of it.  I took several with my 90mm macro lens, but they weren’t what I was hoping for.  So, I used my 180mm macro lens and got some that were much better.  This was one of those.

Spider

I tried converting it to black and white, but I was never really happy with it. I entered another image instead and it didn’t do as well as I had hoped.  So, I wondered if I would have been better off with this one.

Football Game

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I took Joe and Mathias to see a football game in the new stadium last Saturday night.  I was able to get a couple good pictures from inside the stadium.  This one is from the very top of the upper deck seats.

Baylor Football

It is apparent it was an overcast night.  In fact, it rained quite hard when we were getting to the stadium.  As the night went on, though, the clouds opened, and I got this shot of the stadium with a quite prominent moon.

Moon over McLane