I had to go to New Orleans this past weekend for the AMCA Interim Board Meeting. I made sure I had some time take some pictures. This was a shop on Decatur St.
This was Jackson Square
And Cafe Du Monde.
New Orleans
Reply
Category Archives: Travel
Chicago
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.
On Saturday, we went into the city. This was a fountain in the courtyard of the Chicago Art Institute.
We went to Grant Park. This is a shot of 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.”
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.
Canada Cruise
We took another cruise last week. This one left from Montreal and went to Quebec City, Charlottetown, P.E.I., Halifax, N.S., Bar Harbor, ME, and Boston MA. This is a lighthouse in the harbor outside of Bar Harbor.
There were several really interesting places, but while we were in Halifax we went to “Peggy’s Cove.” I had never heard of it, but it turns out to be a place where many photographers have made some really good images. Peggy’s Cove is a small fishing village with probably not more than 20 houses. We were told the lighthouse there is the most photographed lighthouse in the world. When we got there, a piper was standing in full Scottish regalia. The picture I took had dozens of other people in it, but I managed to remove them in photoshop.
Galveston
I spent last weekend in Galveston and just about all I had to do was take pictures. I began at the harbor in my usual spot where the shrimp and fishing boats dock. I got some reasonable pictures of birds, but I got a pretty good environmental portrait of this fisherman mending his net.
That evening was Art Walk. After that, I waited until the sun was down and went to the beach. I wanted to get a night shot of the fishing pier. That mean a really long shutter speed which meant that as the waves came in, there was a sequential reflection of the pier’s light on the water.
Hwy 84
We took a small road trip a couple weeks ago to Nacogdoches. On the way home, we drove Hwy 84 most of the way. I stopped several places for some pictures, and ended up with some nice images.
I liked the contrast between the color of the shed and ramp and the surrounding winter vegetation here.
The way the overgrown vegetation was melding with this house was quite interesting. And, the two vultures on the roof were rather symbolic.
Chihuly museum
While in Seattle, we visited the museum dedicated to the glass sculptures of Chihuly. It is located right next to the space needle. 
The sculpts are in various rooms in the museum, but they are also in various garden settings. 
Pike Place Market
While in Seattle, we went to Pike Place Market. This was an amazing place.
All kinds of seafood and other stuff.
Seattle
I had the pleasure of spending a week in Seattle recently and was able to take lots of pictures.
This one shows their ferris wheel and the football and baseball stadiums.
This one is looking towards downtown from the top of the space needle.
This is the ferry across Puget Sound.
Marksville, LA
I have been attending meetings in Marksville, LA for the past few days. Before going, I looked at a map and found there are two wildlife refuges on either side of Marksville. Yesterday, I took some time to visit Gand Cote NWR. It didn’t have a great deal to offer, but I think it is rather early for migratory waterfowl. Anyway, I got a couple of good landscapes.
There was a rather substantial wetlands area. The nature trail led up to it, and then a bridge led to an observation platform over the water. These are two images taken from the bridge.
Producing an image
I want to write a longer post about what I went through to produce a specific image. When I was coming back to the car after I took the pictures of the “Wacotown” sign on the building at fourth and Franklin, I looked and saw the combination of the clock on the WISD’s Mae Jackson Building and the ALICO Building.
I used the exposure brackets in the camera to take three pictures – one correctly exposed, one under exposed and one over exposed, and used the HDR software to produce an HDR version of it.
I liked that, but, somehow the clock was giving me an art deco vibe, and that made me wonder how this would look as a black and white image. So, I took the HDR image and removed the color in Aperture.
That had a rather dark and brooding nature as a result of the HDR treatment. I decided to try something else, and used NIK effects Color Effects Pro on the HDR image to make a Black and White version.
That made it a little darker and even more broody. I tried Using NIK’s Silver Effects Pro on the HDR image and got this.
That was really dark and broody. It had almost an old horror movie feel to it, and it looked really grainy like it was shot on tri-X film and pushed. So, I wondered what it would look like with less treatment. I went back to the original, single image that was correctly exposed and used Silver Effects on it to get this.
This is much “cleaner.” I think I am going to make an 8×10 print of it, and put it in an 11×14 mat in a simple black frame.