Sea World San Antonio - Bay of Play

Welcome back to my continuing my "Sea World Week" series! These photos are of the newest attraction at Sea World San Antonio, the Sesame Street themed "Bay of Play". I thought it was just a large playground area, but it turns out it is that..and a small water park...and a performing theater...and a carousel. It is primarily geared toward young children, but I saw plenty of "kids of all ages" playing in the water while I was switching to the wide angle lens to get a better shot of the water area!

The first photo is one of the entrances to the new area, I would guess that it is supposed to be the "main entrance". It is quite possibly the largest and most exquisite playground that I have ever seen. There are nets to climb, walkways to travel on, slides, a little bit of everything. It looks like it would be a lot of fun and I am sure that the Bay of Play is going to be a huge hit! (in fact, one of the Sea World employees near the climbing nets had a broken arm...I wonder how that happened? Haha!)

Bay of Play Entrance

The next shot is of the new carousel located in the Bay of Play. It is right next to the "Shamu Express", a very small roller coaster for young guests to the park (and anyone that is afraid to ride the Steel Eel or Great White). I honestly thought that the carousel was going to be a little larger than it was, but I did not expect it to be Sesame Street themed. I took several shots of this trying to determine which was the best mix of riders and characters on the top and ultimately decided on this shot, featuring Ernie and his rubber ducky and Grover (I admittedly do not know the names of the two female characters that you can see in the shot)

Carousel

The last photo came as a bit of a surprise to me. One would think with an area being called the "Bay of Play" that there would be water, but I didn't put two and two together until we walked around the playground area to get a shot of the carousel. This is probably going to be the most popular part of the attraction, especially as the temperature increases. It was almost 90 degrees yesterday, but it was still mostly overcast and a little chilly (comparatively speaking) when I took this shot. The hardest part about the shot was finding a spot where I could capture a lot of the water, but ensure my camera would stay dry. Thankfully it wasn't windy so once I found a spot all that I had to be concerned about was just getting the perspective that I wanted.

Water Park

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Please stop back again tomorrow as the series continues, this time focusing on the Sea Lion show "Cannery Row Caper"! Thanks for stopping by!

Sea World San Antonio - Animal Introductions

Welcome to the first in a several part series where I will be discussing photos that I took during our trip yesterday to Sea World San Antonio. It was a fairly busy day of shooting (1241 images to be exact!) and a lot of the photos came out much better than I expected, especially shots of the show "Cannery Row Caper" which I will be starting possibly tomorrow (likely on Wednesday though). This series is meant to give you a small taste of what it is like to visit the park. I have repeatedly said that the park is one of my favorite places to visit here in San Antonio, as there is so much to see and so much to do. I really don't think that you can take a bad shot in the park!

All of my posts this week will contain photos from yesterday's trip to Sea World, so if you are a fan of the park or know someone that is, please feel free to let them know about my blog series. It is going to be a fun week!

The first photo in today's series is a shot of one of the killer whales leaping from the water to touch the suspended "Believe" ball during the Believe show. Sea World offers several different shows every day and all of them are outstanding. I need to arrive at the stadium earlier to get a better seat so that I have better angles for shots the next time I visit. This is probably the only shot that I will post from "Believe" that we attended yesterday just because I am not totally happy with the angle that most of the shots were taken from.

Jumping Orca

The next photo is one of the last shots that I took yesterday, it is a closeup of a lorikeet inside of the lorikeet exhibit near Rocky Point Preserve (the sea lion interaction area). Yesterday was the first time that we had the opportunity to go inside of the feeding area (you can purchase a small cup of nectar to enter the area. Once inside the birds will land on you and eat right out of the cup, it is pretty interesting!). During our previous trips we arrived after the window of opportunity for feeding the lorikeets had closed, so it was nice to encounter something new that we had previously not encountered before. The area is kind of small, but all of the birds were very colorful and I am looking forward to getting higher quality shots the next time that I have the opportunity to take part in the interactive exhibit.

Lorikeet

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

An Example of Silver Efex Pro 2

When Nik Software released Silver Efex Pro 2 to the general public a few days ago, I posted a photo from the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy center which I processed using the "Selective Color" feature to my Facebook fan page (if you stop by, feel free to become a "fan"!). Yesterday's photo of the Steel Eeel coming down the first hill at Sea World San Antonio was also processed using Silver Efex Pro 2.

I wanted to work on a photo that I had not previously posted to demonstrate how wonderfully amazing Silver Efex Pro 2 is if anyone is debating purchasing this product or not. I took this photo back in December of the penguin exhibit which is sponsored by Southwest Airlines. There is not much lighting in the exhibit and I did not have my tripod with me, so the ISO is very high in this shot (6400 actually). I used the Tamron 28-300mm lens (focal length for this shot being 238mm) to get a good bit of zoom to capture just the two penguins and some of the background.

But the real "pop" from this shot comes from the post processing, mainly using Silver Efex Pro 2. I used a couple of presets (which I did not modify at all) and blended the results together to form this photo. There is also a very nice "border" feature in SEP2 which allows more flexibility for creating photos (for example, my Old-Fashioned Friday posts are going to benefit from the borders!). The Selective Color feature is great too, it does a good job processing color(s) in as small or as large of an area as you want. While you will sometimes get some bleeding, it is much easier to clean up a small portion manually than trying to do it all by hand. The total time to get the coloring in this shot took about 3 minutes, the other 12 or so minutes of processing was just trying to get the background and bordering exactly how I wanted it.

I am planning to visit Sea World today for several shots as soon as the rainy misty weather burns off (which should be around 11 or 12). I did not plan for this photo to be today's post, but I am so happy with the result it just ended up that way that it became the topic of today's blog post!

Pair of Penguins

Please feel free to leave comments/feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos!) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Sea World San Antonio Opening Day 2011

Today's post is in honor of the opening day for the 2011 season of Sea World San Antonio. I modified the shot of the Steel Eel descending down the first hill, I ended up working on it using Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 to isolate the color of the Steel Eel and passengers. The second shot is of the ride Journey to Atlantis that I posted about two months ago, through processing I was actually able to get a "3D" look from the shot. I consider the "Splashdown" shot to be one of the best that I have ever done, I am hoping to get a similar shot with more passengers on the ride but I am going to have to be really lucky to get the timing exactly right again!

I hope that you enjoy the photos today and if you are in the San Antonio area in the next year, stop by Sea World if you get a chance. In my opinion it is the best theme park in Texas!

Black and White Highlighted - Long Way Down!

Splashdown!

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Old-Fashioned Friday - Japanese Tea Garden Pagoda

Today's edition of Old-Fashioned Friday brings a shot from a place I visited back in September, the Japanese Tea Garden in San Antonio, Texas. I did a small write-up on the Japanese Tea Garden in a post from September. I don't want to recover much of the same topic that I wrote about back then, so I will talk a little about the processing of this shot. This is the first Old-Fashioned Friday post that I included a noticeable amount of coloring in the final shot. I did this because I wasn't quite satisfied with the coloring in the bushes in front until I added a little bit of color to them. I am looking forward to using Silver Efex Pro 2 in my future Old-Fashioned Friday posts. I experimented with the program a little bit last night (I posted a small entry on my Facebook fan page about it, located here) and am quite looking forward to using it in my future photo processing.

Old Fashioned Friday - Japanese Pagoda

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The 5th Level

Today's photo comes to you from the 5th level of the parking garage under the Grand Hyatt on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. I have used this facility as my parking area of choice when I go downtown to take photos because the $9.00 flat rate is pretty hard to beat and it is located adjacent to both the Riverwalk, HemisFair Park, and downtown San Antonio.

Normally I just drive down to the lowest level and park there, but for some reason the 4th level was fairly empty when I arrived so I chose to park on that level and decided to take the elevator down, and if the garage was empty I was going to get a few shots. Fortunately it was empty, so I took a few shots of the openness, then decided that I was going to take some through the gate of the "restricted" area of the garage. I don't recall ever seeing this side open, but I know there are a few areas that look like keycard entry points that I guess can be used by residents of "Alteza", the condos that are located on the upper levels of the Grand Hyatt. I "think" the area can also be used during special events to expand the parking at the hotel, but I am not certain of that.

I wanted this shot to have a dark feel to it (much darker than the shot actually was) and I used quite a bit of vignetting and black & white coloring to try to have a layered vignette, which I think draws the center of attention to photo much more effectively. If you view a larger version of the photo you can notice that the "Wrong Way" signs suspended from the roof and the "Level 5" sign next to the doors on the right of the shot (the sign is also the name of this post).

The 5th Level

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes ( I recommend you do for today's shot, as the larger versions allow you to see more detail in the shot! ). Thanks for stopping by!

Texas Tables on the Riverwalk

I am sorry about not posting a photo yesterday, I spent most of yesterday in the ER (they are pretty sure it was just a pinched nerve and a migraine) but after having a blood clot in my lung back in September it is better to be more cautious than I normally would be (for me that would mean popping a few Aleve and pressing on). Once I finally got home I was just exhausted and ended up getting about 14 hours of sleep yesterday. So although I already did have a photo prepared for posting, I just had no energy or desire to write up a post when I finally got home.

But enough with all that! Today's photo is of the Republic of Texas restaurant on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. I posted a photo similar to this back when I had to 18-55mm lens that came with my Canon T1i, and of course today's photo looks MUCH better than the original shot. Today's photo has more natural coloring to it, the lighting is better, and the field of view in this photo is much more comprehensive. In fact, you could only make out a portion of the writing above the tables, and the upper portion of the building (the part that says Royalty Coins) could not be seen at all. Unlike the previous shot though I decided against "cleaning" the Riverwalk (in the previous photo I added a blue-ish tint to the water to make it look cleaner). In some shots that looks ok, but at night I think it gave it to surreal of a look and I didn't want this photo to look like that. I am glad I finally made it back down to the Riverwalk and take some shots with the better lenses and camera. I hope you enjoy the photo!

Texas Tables

Not long after I started version

Remember that clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug, where you can view this and my other photos in various sizes. If you enjoy this photo please feel free to leave comments or feedback. Thanks for stopping by!

Washington Monument

Since today is President's Day here in the United States (for the non-US citizens reading this blog post that means most of us do not have to work and for one day only we get incredible deals on cars, mattresses, and electronics). I decided to look at the photos I took while in Washington D.C. back in October and found this shot of the Washington Monument that for some reason I never processed. I wanted to bring out the US flags and the monument itself more than normal, so I once again reverted to Nik Software's Silver Efex and onOne Software's Mask Pro to get rid of the "color" in everything else. I am quite pleased with how this photo came out, I especially like the color that the sun cast on the western facing of the monument.

Washington Monument

Please feel free to leave any comments and/or feedback. Also remember that clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this and my other photos in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by! (And take advantage of some of the awesome online electronics deals going on today too!!)

A Real Fixer-Upper

Today's photo is quite possibly the most interesting shot that I have ever posted. I have no idea what the backstory to the house is (I actually probably do not want to know) but the time that it took from looking like a "regular" house to the state that it is in today took about 10 days. That is a pretty rapid time frame for changes like this to happen, but the changes end up making it into a very interesting subject for a photo. I decided to take this shot partly because I thought it would make an interesting shot, but also partly because I was inspired by the demolition series this week over at Toad Hollow Photography. The very last photo is one of the most unique shots that I have ever seen, and the title of the post kind of reflects the "getting a new start" feeling that I got from viewing the series they posted this week.

This house is on the south side of San Antonio, near Lackland Air Force Base. The windows are smashed, there is graffiti all over the fence, house, and shed, and even a portion of the fence has been knocked down. However, it looks like the occupants (likely future occupants, I don't think the house is lived in any longer) will have the opportunity to inherit a DirecTV dish, which is nice.

As this is my second "urbex" shot, I learned from processing my first shot that it looks much neater to give the photo a vignetted look and make the overall shot slightly darker than it really would be. To make it even more "surreal" I actually applied one of the UV filters (tweaked a bit) to make the grass from the dormant brown color seen all over Texas to a mix of green and brown. I think it compliments the shot very well.

A Real Fixer-Upper

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this and my other photos that I have posted in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Save the Clock Tower

Today's photo is of a clock tower next to the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas. It also appears that the bottom portion of the clock tower is an elevator which shuttles occupants between street level and the Riverwalk. I had not seen this before until last night, it is not new by any stretch of the imagination, it is just a prime example of walking somewhere downtown that I had not been before to see what is there (in fact, this is about a block and a half away from the bridge that I took the "Looking Down The Riverwalk" shot from). One of the things that I really enjoy about photography is situations like this. I have been downtown hundreds of times, but turning right when I normally turn left opens up so many new potential photo opportunities that I had no idea existed!

I took this shot just as some clouds started to roll in, and I purposely took several faster shots in an effort to have a non blown-out moon in the photo, but I decided that I liked the look and ultimately decided on keeping it in the shot.

Since I titled the post as an homage to the "Back to the Future" trilogy, I debated staying around until 10:04 and and taking the shot, but I think I am going to wait on that for the summer and hopefully get one of the evening thunderstorms rolling through. I know that am going to have to be incredibly lucky to get a shot of lightning strikes and the clock tower reading 10:04. I could probably increase my chances of success if I was able to acquire a DeLorean too (To quote Doc: "Yes, the way I see it, if your gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?") but I don't want to get too greedy so I will just settle on trying to get a storm and the clock reading 10:04 in a shot (and if I am only able to get a lighting strike in the shot, I will probably cheat and Photoshop the clock face reading 10:04 into the lightning strike shot)

Save the Clock Tower

Please feel free to leave any comments and/or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Bloggers Note: The clock tower is not in any danger of being destroyed or torn down (that I know of). I just instantly though of Back to the Future when I saw it and decided to title the post accordingly.

Old-Fashioned Friday - Dolphin at Sea World

Welcome to the second installment of Old-Fashioned Friday. Today's photo is one that I took in August of a dolphin at Sea World San Antonio. One of the things you may be wondering is "Well Brian, why did you choose this photo?" To be totally honest, I don't really have a reason other than I have always liked this shot, and rather than work on something that has been done several times (like an old-style shot of the Alamo or of Ft. McHenry), I thought "when is the last time that I ever saw an old fashioned photo of a hungry dolphin"? And then I immediately answered my own question aloud with a firm "You have never seen that". (At that point people started to look at me strange for carrying on a conversation with myself, but oh well!). I love going to SeaWorld and shooting the different scenes there, and I believe it is going to open again in a few weeks. I need to get some closer shots of the killer whales, the penguins, and the shows, but there is just something about the dolphins that always draws me to shooting them!

Old-Fashioned Friday - Dolphin at Sea World

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug, where you can view this photo (and all of the others ones that I have posted) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Revisiting an old shot

After being teased with the possibility of a spectacular sunset the past few days only to have the clouds fade away as sunset approached, I decided to reprocess one of the shots that I took back in September the night before Hurricane (well, Tropical Storm) Hermine hit San Antonio. If you would like to see the original shots, you can view the post here.

I have come a long way since September, as all it will likely take is one look at the original shots and you will probably agree. I did notice processing this shot two distinct things, just how much of a difference a higher quality camera and lenses make, and what a difference small changes like getting the lighting and coloring right makes in a shot.

Tomorrow is going to be my 2nd Old Fashioned Friday post. I already have a pretty good idea of what the photo is going to be for that, so stay tuned! Please feel free to leave any comments/feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Revisiting an old shot

Topsy-Turvy

I felt like trying something totally new with today's photo from Hamilton Pool Nature Preserve. I was messing around with getting the reflection coloring just right for my sky and I flipped the shot vertically to get the sky lined up with the reflection to do a slight bit of blending. It was then that I noticed just how cool the shot looked upside down, so I decided to play with the Infrared film filters in Nik Color Efex Pro, and after some work I ended up with this photo. I added some extra vignetting around the photo to make it look a little more surreal, but all in all, through trying to fix the shot up a bit I think I might have ended up with a better shot than what I was working towards. Sometimes you find the neatest things totally by accident!

Hamilton Pool Nature Preserve - Topsy-Turvy

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Any bites?

Today's photo is the last of the three-part series of related shots that I took at the Medina River Natural Area. It took me about 5 minutes to unravel all of the fishing line, but I was able to "cast" (it was really more of a throw) the line far enough to create a scene that mostly resembled fishing. In true "fisherman" spirit, shortly after I took this photo I caught a 14 foot Great White Shark that happened to be swimming in the waters of the Medina River for whatever reason. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the shark though, you are just going to have to take my word for it.

Any bites?

As always, please feel free to leave any comments/feedback, and remember clicking on my photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Gone fishin'

Today's photo is the second in a series of photos I took Saturday at the Medina River Natural Area in southern San Antonio. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, the photo I posted contained something that will be featured in the post for today and the post for tomorrow. On the path on the right side of the photo, near the base of the larger tree that is still standing, you can make out what appears to be a stick. As it turns out, it is not just a single stick, there were two of them that already had quite a bit of fishing line, a sinker, a bobber, and a fish hook already fashioned to create very basic fishing poles. I don't know if they were left there on purpose, but since there were not many people in the park I obliged myself to take them down near the water and set up a couple of shots. (And just in case they were left there, I did return them after I was done taking the shots!)

I positioned the fishing poles along the bank of a small island in the river, then setup the camera fairly low to the ground to take this shot. I wanted the focus in this shot to be on the foreground (the fishing poles and the island itself) so I used AlienSkin Software's Bokeh 2 to selectively "blur" the rest of the background, while retaining the focus and detail that I wanted near the camera. The shot came out better than I had hoped when I was setting up the shot, as this is the first time that I have ever purposely placed "props" for a photo, but I am quite pleased with the result.

Gone fishin'

Please feel free to leave comments and/or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

If a tree falls....

Today's photo is one of several photos that I will be posting over the next few days that I took while at the Medina River Natural Area in southern San Antonio. Incredibly enough, this is a city park that is actually inside the San Antonio city boundary, but you would never know it from the scenery you encounter while walking along the many trails at the park. My visit yesterday was definitely during an "off" time, as I encountered a total of about 10 other people during my few hour visit to the park. I am planning to go back again in the near future (preferably on a partly cloudy day) and actually take some more shots along the Medina River and eventually farther back along the trails. There are plenty of signs to be aware of various wildlife that you can possibly encounter, but the only evidence I saw of any of that were the holes and dug up earth that were left by the elegant Texas feral pigs.

This photo was taken along the "Rio Medina Trail", which I believe, with my limited knowledge of Spanish, translates to "River Medina Trail" :) I have no idea how long this tree has been there, but it is by far one the the largest trees that I have seen during my tenure in Texas. I also am not certain if it made a noise, but judging from the looks of what remains of the stump, I think it made a really loud noise when it came down. I am not 100% happy with the sky in this shot, but since the star of this shot is the massive tree and not the sky, I am OK with the less than stellar sky. There is something in this photo that will be featured in the shots that I post on both Monday and Tuesday, but I will not give out any hints. (Except this one: You have to look VERY closely to see it, and unless you have visited the park recently (aka yesterday), you probably will not even notice it).

If a tree falls......

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Fun with Silver Efex Pro

Today's post is a bit different than my normal posts, as instead of the photos I am mainly going to talk about the tool that I used to create the shots. As long-time readers of my blog know, I had the opportunity during ImagingUSA (held here in San Antonio this year) to talk to the folks at Nik Software about their Silver Efex Pro product. I had been desaturating the colors in shots for about 6-8 weeks prior to being able to talk to them, using originally the saturation sliders in Photoshop CS5, then moving up to the black and white settings in Nik Color Efex Pro. I wasn't 100% satisfied with the results from either of those methods, but I was a bit leary about spending money on a product that I wasn't convinced would give me what I was looking for.

As it turns out, Silver Efex actually works on transferring the colors to a pure black and white coloring scheme, rather than grayscale conversion like most of the other products. I tried the product first on a shot of the Hays Street Bridge during a cloudy, foggy day and was floored by the result (the post is located here).

I took the product a step farther with today's images, I wanted some color to come through, but not all of it. In the first shot of the Riverwalk I just wanted the people in the photo to have color, with the rest of the shot being black and white. The second photo is the shot I posted on Thursday, except this time only the Tower Life Building, the sign on the side of the Hilton, and the light streaks from the river taxis are in color.

I am quite pleased with the results, I am still learning about Silver Efex Pro, but it is without a doubt one of my favorite tools to use when it comes to processing my photos. The black and white desaturation during normal shots is excellent, but it is also flexible and allows me to create shots like yesterday's "Old Fashioned Friday" photo, as well as photos like these.

A Scenic Riverwalk View - Mostly Black and White

Looking Down the Riverwalk - Mostly Black and White

Please feel free to leave any comments/feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view these (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Old-Fashioned Friday - Gwangju Korean Pavilion

I decided to change things up a bit and I think every week (well, the foreseeable future anyway) I am going to post an old-fashioned looking photo with the theme "Old-Fashioned Friday". If the theme is poorly received it may not last too long, but I like the idea and am going to see how it pans out.

Today's photo is another shot from the Gwangju Korean Pavilion, located at the Denman Estate Park in San Antonio. This shot, as you can tell from the photo, was taken from across the pond of the structure. I also added some texturing in to make the shot appear "old" as I was not 100% satisfied with the result from Nik Silver Efex (the coloring as perfect, but I wanted some "roughness" to the shot). I added just a touch of color to the photo to help bring out the features, but only a very slight bit. I really like the look of the shot and I think "Old-Fashioned Friday" is going to be a hit!

Please feel free to leave any comments below, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Old-Fashioned Friday - Gwangju Korean Pavilion

A Scenic Riverwalk View

Today's photo could have been titled "An Exercise in Patience" because I waited nearly an hour in one spot to get the "perfect" shot. It is also another shot that I found completely by accident. I was walking around downtown and ended up going back to my car, which was parked in the parking garage at the Grand Hyatt (it is only $9.00 a day to park there, MUCH cheaper than anywhere else that I have found downtown). I crossed Commerce Street in front of the RiverCenter Mall and while crossing this small walkway I noticed how perfectly the trees along the Riverwalk framed the Tower Life Building from this location, so I decided to take some shots shortly after sunset.

The reason I waited so long for this shot was I misjudged how long it would take the remaining light from the sunset to diminish enough to get the sky the way that I wanted it. I didn't want it to be too dark, as I wanted the sky to look blue-ish (I am told this is called "Blue Hour"). I ended up waiting about 45 minutes for the sky to darken enough to get the color that I wanted, but at least I know that for the next time I want to take a photo in the direction of the setting sun.

My patience paid off though, because during the brackets I managed to capture two of the River Taxi's passing in opposite directions, which led to the lights on the river. Because I waited so long I had several shots of a "clean" river, but I like the way the lights looked so I decided to keep them in the photo. In fact, I actually went back and processed the photo again from the very beginning to ensure the lights stood out and were as clean as possible, then blended that with the rest of the photo. I also used some new techniques to try to make the lighting on the Tower Life Building look more "realistic", as on longer exposures the lighting tended to be blown out slightly. It took a while and several different layer masks, but I was finally able to get the result that I was hoping for. I am planning to retake this shot later in the year as the trees and vegetation start to fill in, so it should look much greener the next time I take a run at getting this shot!

Please feel free to leave any comments, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

A Scenic Riverwalk View

Historic Urbex Graffiti

Today's photo I debated for some time what exactly to call it, and ultimately decided to go with the urban exploration theme as although it isn't truly "off-limits", it is in an area that is very rarely seen, and fencing has been erected to prevent additional graffiti left on the building.

Surprisingly enough, this shot is of the back of the Meyer-Halff House, located in HemisFair Park in downtown San Antonio, Texas. The house was built in 1893 for the Halff family, where they resided until around 1914. During the World's Fair the site served as the location of the "House of Sir John Falstaff" eatery. It has been vacant since the World's Fair.

I thought the front side of the house was interesting and attempted to take some shots through the windows, but I had no luck with that, so I wandered around to the back of the house. The entire area is fenced off (you can see the rolled up fencing on the ground, but I managed to avoid getting any of the standing fencing in the photo) likely to keep additional graffiti off of the walls of the historic site. Thanks to the swiveling LCD screen on the 60D I was able to preview the shots before I took them, as I had to lift my camera over the fencing to take any photos.

During processing I blurred the edges of the photo as well as highlighted the two slogans in purple in an effort to make them more eye-popping than the rest of the graffiti. It is a shame that such an old structure is defaced with graffiti, but I have to admit I think it makes a pretty impressive photo opportunity. I could probably have not revealed the location of this shot and it may have taken some time to find, as I think most people would not expect to find a scene like this on a historic and protected site.

As always, please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Historic Urbex Graffiti

St. Mary's Church

Today's photo is a shot of the interior of St. Mary's Church, located at 202 N. St. Mary's Street in San Antonio, Texas. For any new readers to my blog, this Saturday I spent a good 7 hours or so around the city taking photos. I quite literally came across this church by accident. I turned the wrong way on a street and noticed what looked like bell towers, but I did not remember seeing a church there before. I poked my head in and a wedding was going on, so I noted the time of the Mass on Saturday's (5:30 PM) and made an effort to return around 5:00PM. I took this shot at 5:13 so I do not have many church members in the photo, but I also wasn't blocking the center aisle for too long.

This church is located near the Riverwalk area (it is about 2 blocks away) but I think it is the most interesting looking church in San Antonio with the exception for St. Joseph's (photos of that can be seen here). I did change one thing about the processing of this photo, I made the center a little darker than the edges because I feel like that captured the scene more "naturally" than the result of the HDR processing. As you can see, there are lights on the sides, but nothing at all in the middle. I wanted the lower middle of the photo to look darker, partly to draw more attention there, but also because I think it enhances the overall shot in a nice fashion.

Please feel free to leave any comments below, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

St. Mary's Church

SAPD L.S.P.V.

Date: 7 February 2011

San Antonio (Fake News) - Today the city of San Antonio announced an innovative way to reduce costs incurred by replacing the entire fleet of squad cars currently used by the San Antonio Police Department with custom decorated "low-speed pursuit vehicles" (golf carts). The initiative is slated to save the city millions of dollars in the coming years and also has the benefit of drastically reducing the amount of gasoline used by the city.

According to this local non-expert criminal journalist, the crime rate in the city is expected to substantially increase as officers will take longer to respond to police calls placed by citizens, as the top speed of the carts is an estimated 15 mph. Ultimately, the slower speed will also reduce the number of speeding violations the SAPD will be able to enforce.

Even though the department is faced with so many drawbacks from switching to the new vehicles, the move is widely heralded by a certain former Vice-President obsessed with "global warming" as "a step in the right direction for America".

San Antonio Police Department Low-Speed Pursuit Vehicle

Editor's Note: I hope you enjoyed this light-hearted fake news release. I saw this parked in HemisFair Park on Saturday when I went downtown to take some photos and have been eagerly looking forward to writing up a fake article and sharing the photo since then! :)

Korean Pavilion - Denman Estate Park

Yesterday I had a little free time so I fired up the Gulfstream G650 and flew over to South Korea to take some photos.

Ok, so not really. I actually stayed here in San Antonio and visited the Denman Estate Park (near Loop 410 and I-10) to take some photos of the Korean Pavilion that is located on the grounds of the city park. I had no idea something like this even existed in the city, one of the local news channels did a small story on it the night before the city was paralyzed by a massive amount of snow and ice ("officially" a whopping 4/10 of one inch!). I made my way up there on Saturday and was able to take a few photos from different angles without that many people walking around (the entire time I was there I would estimate there were maybe 15 people total). The area is quite stunning, unless you know where it is or are able to find it you would have no idea that something this tranquil is so close to the city.

The Denman Estate Park does not appear to have an official website, but I was able to find some background on the "visitsanantonio.com" site that had a small story a few months ago about the official opening:

"The City of San Antonio invites the community to a special ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the completion of a Korean Pavilion at the new Denman Estate Park. The “Pavilion of Gwang-Ju” was gifted to the City of San Antonio by Mayor Kang Un Tae to represent the sister-city relationship with Gwang-Ju, Korea. A delegation representing the City of Gwang-Ju is planning to attend the special event, which will further strengthen business and cultural ties between the two cities and countries. A Korean choir group and dancers will take part in the ceremony and celebrations. The public is invited to stay after the ribbon-cutting to enjoy the park, which officially opens with this special celebration."

I am not certain what the wording on the rock is in the first shot, hopefully a reader will be able to translate that, as well as the phrase that is written on the Pavilion itself (they look like they are the exact same, but I am not 100% certain). The second shot I took very close with the ultra wide angle lens (10-22mm) to get a shot of the entire structure and surrounding area while venturing too far from the path. I hope you enjoy viewing the photos of a 100% authentic Korean Pavilion located right here in San Antonio!

As always, please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and other photos I have taken) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Path to the Korean Pavilion

Up close shot of the Korean Pavilion

PS: If anyone wants to "donate" a Gulfstream G650 (or even a flight on one) to this amateur photographer it would be greatly appreciated! :)

Fiesta Bay Boardwalk

SPOILER ALERT! Today's post consists of two photos. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to view the second!

Today's shot is of the "Fiesta Bay Boardwalk" located at Six Flags Fiesta Texas in San Antonio. I took this shot on New Year's Day when I visited to get some shots of the ferris wheel (which I am looking quite forward to shooting again when the park reopens!). Unfortunately, like several photos I sat down to process lately, I just wasn't quite happy with how the result was turning out.

So, I got creative again with the tools from Nik Software (have I mentioned how awesome their products are?) and settled on trying give the shot a very desaturated look with a fair amount of vignetting and a smidge of bokeh. As a result of applying these effects I ended up with the resulting photo, which I feel makes the shot look as if it is a very old photo, but without looking overly darkened. When I set up to take the shot I imagined a bright and vibrant result from processing, but I like the look of this photo much more!

As always, please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Fiesta Bay Boardwalk

And as an added bonus, here is another shot from the massive snow event San Antonio encountered yesterday. This is the bird bath in our backyard that is covered with snow and ice!

Snowy and Icy Bird Bath

Snow and Ice Blanket the Hyatt Hill Country Resort

I took this photo this morning just before sunrise from our backyard looking out across the 6th fairway of the Lakes course toward the 1st green of the Creeks course at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort in San Antonio, Texas. Starting at about 9:30 last night freezing rain/sleet started, followed by a very small amount of snow during the early morning hours. Some parts of the city have more snow than others, but our area was less fortunate and we have about 1/2" of ice that is very lightly covered by snow. I doubt many people will actually be golfing today at the Hyatt, but if they decide to brave the elements, this is what will they will face!

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view the photo in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Snow and Ice at the Hyatt Hill Country Resort

Colorful Riverwalk Waterfall

Today's photo is a shot I took in the middle of December of a multicolored pond and waterfall that was decorated for Christmas along the Museum Reach portion of the Riverwalk located in San Antonio, Texas. I've debated on how to process this shot ever since I took it, as I was happy with the shot itself, but no matter what I did, I was not quite satisfied with the result of processing until yesterday.

I decided to keep the "extra green" of the waterfall after being inspired by a series of photos of a neon green river in Canada (view the photos and story here), but I wasn't quite sure of the rest of the photo until I fired up the AlienSkin Bokeh 2 plugin and messed around with making the photo look as it if it was taken with a tilt-shift lens. I tried focusing on different areas until I got the result of this photo. I think it is pretty interesting, depending on how you focus on the photo, it can either appear as if the rock is very small, or it can appear very large. Which ever way you perceive it (hopefully you can see both perspectives), processing the shot finally produced a result that I am happy with!

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes, and all of my photo are available for purchase as well. If you have any questions please feel free to click the email me tab near the top of the page or leave a comment below with your contact information and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks for stopping by!

Colorful waterfall modified using Bokeh 2

Retro Mission Espada

Today's photo is another shot from my weekend trip to Mission Espada, this shot was taken from the "courtyard" near the well. I played around with some of the presets in Silver Efex Pro that I hadn't taken that much of a look at and decided to eventually to go with a slightly vignetted look to the photo. The more that I use the Nik software products in my post-processing the more than I like them. I highly recommend checking out their products if you have not already done so. Believe it or not, the hardest part about this shot was actually getting the angles just right to block the cars in the parking lot on the right side of the photo. It took me about 5 minutes to position myself perfectly, but once I did capturing the bracketed shots was easy. I got lucky with my timing of the photo, because about 30 seconds after the last shot a few vehicles pulled up with visitors/tourists viewing the Mission!

Please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery hosted over at smugmug where you can view this (and my other photos) in various sizes. If you really like a shot you can purchase it as well! Thanks for stopping by!

Retro Mission Espada

Inside Mission Espada

Today's photo is a reshoot I did over the weekend of the interior of Mission Espada, located just south of Loop 410 in San Antonio, Texas. I originally took this shot back in September, but I did not have my tripod with me so the image was a little blurry, as there is not as much light as I thought inside the mission. I took the shot from about 18" off the ground, as I like to try to include as much of the seating in the interior shots that I take from churches. I feel it gives the interior a larger "look"taken from a lower level.

I didn't do too much special with this shot except for replacing the blown-out windows on either side with a shot with a very short exposure time, so you can actually make out details looking through the windows. While the inside of Mission Espada certainly does not compare to the interior of St. Matthew's in Washington DC, I am definitely happy with how this photo turned out.

As always, please feel free to leave any comments or feedback, and remember clicking on the photo takes you to my online gallery at smugmug where you can view (and even purchase!) this and my other photos in various sizes. Thanks for stopping by!

Interior of Mission Espada