Union Station - Nighttime

Saturday night I was out shooting around Kansas City's Union Station. Built in 1914 it was Kansas City's transportation hub until the end of the rail era.

Abandoned in the 1980's it had seriouly eroded by the mid-1990's. An effort to restore the station to it's original glory was completed in 1999. Now is serves as a community gathering and entertainment venue for the region.



My eye was attracted to the edges and reflections of the exterior lights on the facade and seeing the ceiling detail through the windows.

This is not an HDR, but it is a composite image. The longer exposure is the primary base of the image with a shorter exposure of the portico 'painted' in to balance the exposure of the outer lights with the light from within the building.

Nikon D7000, Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8. Processing in ACR 7.1 and CS6

Dragon Lanterns

We are spending time with family in the St. Louis area. When we arrived we heard about a special event. The Missouri Botanical Gardens are presenting a special exhibition this summer called Dragon Lanterns.

The exhibit is a group of silk-covered wire sculptures lit from within. Very pretty in the daylight, spectacular in the nighttime when lit. Here are a couple of examples:

You can see more images at this link: Dragon Lanterns

Nikon D7000 handheld, Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8, post in ACR for contrast, vibrance and crop.

Bond Bridge II

After posting my first images of  the Bond Bridge a couple of weeks ago I've been scouting angles for additional images.

The Bond bridge carries Interstate Highway 29 across the Missouri River just northeast of downtown Kansas City, MO. This view is from a small city park which provides a view of the north-bound approaches to the bridge.

At this location the camera is about a mile away from the center of the bridge.  The angle of this view is also from the opposite side of the bridge from the previous photos. In the previous photos from two weeks ago camera was set up just to the east of the bridge.  In those images the traffic passes through the arch tower from left to right. In this view we are on the west side of the tower and the traffic passes through the arch right to left.


Bond Bridge - South Approach

The disappointment: The additional lights on the tower and deck didn't come on this night, so the bridge tower is relatively dim versus the brighter street lighting on the highway approach.  The later photo from the previous set shows the decorative lighting and the brighter spotlights on the tower structure.

Photogeekiness:

- Capture: Nikon D7000 with 70-200mm VR f/2.8. This image was shot at 140mm, 10 seconds, f/16, ISO 200. The additional step was a two stop ND filter to lengthen the time the shutter was open to create longer auto trails.

- Post Processing: Conversion in ACR. In CS5 two curves layers: one to brighten the archway and bridge cables; one to dim the bright LCD signboard and reflected streetlighting in the lower left.

The Bond Bridge

Here in KC the state has just completed replacing the old I-29 bridge crossing the Missouri. The old bridge was a traditional suspension bridge. The new bridge is also a suspension bridge, but designed in a more modern style.

I have been scouting and test shooting angles and light around the bridge for most of the summer. Last evening I captured a couple of images that I wanted to share.

Bond Bridge - Sunset

Bond Bridge - Night

The first image is a 4s exposure taken about 25 minutes after sunset. The second is a 10s exposure taken about 20 minutes later.

Nikon D7000 & Nikkor 35-70mm f/2.8. Image aperture = f/16

Searching for the Milky Way

Updated 5/16/11: I'm home and have had a chance to process the images on my home computer. The images are greatly improved!

I am spending the week at my family home in Southwestern Nebraska. Something that I have been wanting to experiment with was star photos. I've been searching the web for sky and light tools and star photography techniques. I discovered that this week was at the end of a good "dark" cycle: the moon is rising and setting in synch with the sun. This provides for moonless "dark skies" that help make good star photos possible.

The other thing that I learned is that the Milky Way would be rising during the current dark sky period. Just like the moon and the constellations the Milky Way rises and sets. So I set out to take photos of this astronomical feature. Here are the results. The processes for capturing and post-processing I followed are after the images:

Milky Way - Northern Arm

Milky Way - Southern Arm

How did I do these:
- Camera: D7000 and Tamron 11-16mm f/2.8
- Settings: ISO 800, 30 second exposure, aperture f/2.8
- Post processing ACR and CS5

In ACR the images's exposure was boosted +1.0ev  +1.75ev along with applying Clarity and Vibrance adjustments.  Noise suppression was also done in ACR.  That converted image was then completed in Photoshop. There the image was built up as a composite of several layers of the same image and curves adjustments applied. The cropping was done in CS5.

I am very excited how these first efforts came out, with a degree of sadness about how difficult it is to find truly dark skies. I left the horizons in both of these photos to demonstrate how much light pollution there is in the night sky, even in rural Nebraska.  In the second processing I did crop out the village lights from "Southern Arm", but you can still see the effects of the light pollution.

I shot from near the top of the highest point in the county. The Northern Arm image is taken to the northeast, which to the naked eye is the darkest horizon. I also took advantage of the peak of the hill to try to block some nearer lights. But there is a large town, some 90 miles away, and a couple of smaller villages in that general direction. You can see the glow at the horizon.

The Southern Arm is the more dramatic section of the Milky Way, and to capture it I had to shoot to the southeast, in the general direction of a village and the farms in the valley. You can see how the glow actually prevents seeing the Milky Way all the way into the horizon.

I also want to call out the tools that helped me plan this outing:
- The Photographer's Ephemeris: this tool provides you with the times of the rising and setting of the Sun and Moon, as well as the various twilight times. It shows the locations of the Sun and Moon at the horizon and the elevation at different times of day. It also includes maps that allow you to plan when the sun will be striking a mountain or illuminating a valley
- SkyGazer: this is a astronomical star chart program. It will show you where the various stars, planets, galaxies, etc. will be in the sky at a given location and time.

Photo of the Week - The County Fair

Went out last evening to see what photographic opportunities the Platte County Fair might bring. It is a typical rural county fair. A small midway, lots of festival food (let's hear it for funnel cakes!). The one young lady wasn't so sure that they were having a good time... The big event going on last night was the tractor pull. If you don't know what a tractor pull is, well, I don't think I can explain it to you. Think smoke, noise, dirt, drag racing with tractors. It was so crowded that I couldn't get a shot of anything.