Marathon Update

The first photoshoot was with the Houston Photowalk Meet Up Group at the Antique Center of Texas. It went extremely well. Janet and I used to enjoy going to the center and she, some years ago, made a couple of purchases. Lately we just went for entertainment.

I spent almost three hours walking in circles looking for what I thought was interesting light on interesting objects. As expected the lighting was all fluorescent and mixed at that. I shot everything in incandescent white balance and really like the green color that I was seeing on the LCD. I did correct some of them in post processing but many of them I left with the color cast. As usual I seemed to have come home with many photographs that were of religious or patriotic in nature. They had some very nice Christmas items and I shot a lot of those. I looked mostly for light so I took many photographs of lighted table lamps and the objects sitting under them. I also shot a lot of objects that were in lighted display cases.I always enjoy shooting in mixed light situations. Yes I know the color if off but color is an emotional component of a photographs so I really don't care. It is a lot like one of my favorite sayings, any fool can tell the truth it takes a man of some learning to know how to lie well. To paraphrase, any photographer can shoot a document it take a photographer of some learning to know how to use color.

I like dark photographs and rich, deep color so that is what I process to achieve. I occasionally will do a photograph that does not include a lot of black or at least very dark colors, but not very often. So I have a lot of very dark photographs from this photoshoot.

I rushed home to download the images off of my media cards to prepare for the to afternoon shoots. I had taken so many photographs that it took a very long time to do the download. As a result I left late for the second shoot with the Northwest Houston Photo Club at Discovery Green. The weatherman had forecast rain. It never rained where I was but there were from heavy drizzles.

I could not remember where parking is free downtown on Saturday or not so after wasting time trying to decide I drove south to find free parking convenient to where I could Metro back to Discovery Green.

In the process I was very near one of the locations for the evening photoshoot and decided to check it out. On the way I discovered that Sparkey's was open. I had been trying to get a Sparkey's hamburger for four months and since I was there I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I also went across the street to visit with Miss Vickie at the Clutch City Convenience Store.

I was going to drive and eat but there was no way. There must have been at least three quarters of a pound of meat on that hamburger if not more. I found a place to pull of and finish it. By the time I had done all of that it was much too late to Metro back to Discovery Green and still make the skyline photoshoot with Houston Photography Club of Texas so I decided to skip the Discovery Green shoot. I convenienced myself that the light was pretty dull anyway. Instead I drove around the area near the first location for the skyline shoot.

Around six o'clock people started arriving. I was a little surprised because the 2600 block of Roanoke is not anyplace where I would like to wander far from the car by myself but there were a number of the female members of the club wandering about with their camera equipment. I managed to find a route across a muddy field to get to the bank of Buffalo Bayou. Almost everyone stopped at the railroad track but me and a couple more went on to the Bayou. As usual I wandered on past where everyone else was comfortable and got some unique shots. From the location you were getting a lot of very blank foreground. By going all the way to the bayou I could fill the bottom of the frame with some houses on the far bank. Made a much better foreground. The arranged meetup time was 7pm. I had photographed everything that I wanted to well before that time.

Some of the people where not impressed with the skyline from that angle and since I had already been to the second location, I wasn't impressed with the possibilities there. The third location was the standard everybody does it Sabine Street Bridge. They had hoped to get permission to shoot from the top level of the Sabine Loft's parking garage. I had already determined that I would not go to the third location unless we would be shooting from the garage, which we weren't going to be able to. So I headed home not long after the proposed start time. Besides that I was anxious to start processing the shots from the Antique Center.

In all the day did not work out exactly as planned but few do. I got some really good shots in the morning and some so so's from the evening. Unfortunately I made a mistake and formatted the media card before I downloaded the skyline shots. The first thing I always do is to download the card as soon as I come in from a shoot. I did not do that with the skyline photos and the next morning when I saw the card on the desk by the computer I stuck it in the camera and formatted it. It was a couple hours later before I realized what I had done, but I wasn't too upset, they weren't all that good anyway.