Category Archives: Fine Art Imagery

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.

Double Helix

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The Heart of Texas Professional Photographer’s Guild holds monthly competitions.  For August, the theme for one of the competitions was “Around in Circles.” Bryant Stanton is a local artist who works in metal and glass.  He was commissioned to do a chandelier and a sculpture for the new Science Building at the Community College.  His sculpture was in interpretation of the Double Helix.  I decided to work that up as my entry for the competition.  This was my final product, and it won the competition.

Double Helix

Sunflowers

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Friday, Debbie drove her mother up to Iowa.  When she got there, she texted me that there was a field of sunflowers on I35 in Itasca that were amazing.  So, Saturday morning I drove up there.  There were actually several fields on both sides of the highway.

Itasca Sunflowers

Galveston

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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.

After The Catch

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.

61st St. Fishing Pier

Images of Waco – The 25th St. Theater

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I am in the process of capturing various Waco “Landmarks.”  One of those is the 25th St. Theater.  When they were in High School and after, the kids used to go there frequently. Later, of course, it has called into disrepair, although there are efforts to revive it.

25th St. Theater

And a Black and White image as well.

25th St Theater 2 B&W

Images of Waco – East Waco

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When leaving Sam’s the other day, I noticed the junk yard on the other side of the street, and thought the rusting old truck between two railroad cars made a pretty good image of contrasting colors.

Junk Yard

I then drove up Elm Avenue again and saw an old, abandoned fast station that I thought would also make a good image.

1128 Elm

Decades ago, there was an all Black college in that part of town called Paul Quinn College. There are still buildings that remain, and many of them have been renovated for use as schools.  But this one had not.

William Johnson Hall

February Image Competition

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Another image of mine received a second place in the Associate’s category of the Heart of Texas Professional Photographers Guild image competition on February 11. This is the original version.

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However, in order to improve it for competition, I removed some of the distracting elements.  The speaker, Mark McCall did a critique of all the images and suggested a couple of small additional changes.  He also said that images should always have a border.  So, that said, this is the final version of the image.

Rolling Stock Tunnel

News and Awards

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I entered this image into the January Heart of Texas Professional Photographers’ Guild image contest. I took second place in the Associate Member category.

Additionally, I received notification from ViewBug. They have a system of tallying the comments and responses and then produce a year-end summary.  They said I scored in the top 20% of all users on their site.

Oak Leaf

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While looking out the window, I noticed how the sun was shining on an oak leaf and thought it might make an interesting picture.

SONY DSCI used an 85mm f/1.4 lens to control depth of field so I could throw everything but the leaf out of focus.

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