I recently signed up for a meetup to go on a Photo walk in the West Bottoms of Kansas City. That place is awesome and I was stoked to attend. The buildings in the area are run down warehouses, factories and all kinds of HDR friendly. The West Bottoms are almost post apocalyptic looking, you really feel like you are in a Fallout game when you are strolling through there.
So the email came through for this meetup and the time said 7am-9am. I was thinking, “holy crap that is early for a Saturday, but here goes nothing”, and I clicked RSVP. I got to the West Bottoms at 655 and to my surprise there was no one there when 40 were scheduled to attend. I whipped out my handy dandy Smart Phone and found that the meetup didn’t START until 9 am. For some reason meetup does this to me all the time. It says in the initial email that it is from 7am – 9 am. Look here is a screenshot:
Meetup.com got me good! I sent the wife a few expletives that I may or may not be proud of and stormed away from the West Bottoms. I figured I had already driven 25 miles to Kansas City anyway, I may as well redeem myself from last week. So I went over the 12th street to shoot the Foxx Equipment pano that was an epic failure last week. I got creative with it and busted out ye ol’ Fishe Eye, and boy am I glad I did, the perspective is something to be desired. The fish eye doesn’t always create the best results but this one worked very well. I went a little against the grain from my normal processing on this one, but the colors deserve the attention!
After that I strolled over to Union Station after Ketih Moyer suggested it last time we shot together at the Kauffman Center. Now I made it to Union Station at about 735 AM. I had the whole place to myself! I have never been there in the afternoon or at night, but it seems as if this place gets pretty poppin! Driving through KC at 735 on a Saturday morning is pretty awesome, there is nobody anywhere. I felt like I owned a chunk of the city, like I could call a part of it mine, have you ever felt that way? I have been to almost every major city in America and I must say, it is a tough battle between Seattle and Kansas City for me. I love this city!
I dug into my old bag of tricks and turned Union Station into what I was imagining as I was shooting it. The old steam engines and architecture made me wish the photos I was taking were 100 years or older. So naturally I Photoshopped it using the Stieglitz Action in the Tidbits of Awesomeness action package for sale in the EverydayHDR Store.
Photo Tip For The Week:
There is always time for redemption! When a scheduled shoot doesn’t go as planned, don’t sweat it! Take my Dad’s advise, “Have your little pity party then get over it!” There is always time for redemption, find a spot you shot a while ago and revisit it, shoot it in a new light. The one thing you do not want to do is go home angry. You allotted that time for shooting photos, don’t pout and go home, take some photos elsewhere!
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
Cool shots! Glad you were able to make use of the extra time!
Oh yeah, I wasn’t about to let it get me down! I had an agenda!
Great post Blake. I had a similar issue. I was out of town on Meetup day so I had to make it up on my own. Boy! Did I!! Headed out to Atkinson to take a look around. Ended up shooting Victorian mansions all morning, then heading N To St Joseph and shootin a lot more. In the end, instead of missing a 2-3 hour meetup shoot, I ended up with a 8 hour photo safari, 700 shots, and enough ideas and places to hit to fill up my next 3 trips.
I am going to do one thing different: Slow down. I was so excited I didn’t use the tripod, shutter release or mirror lockup once> I didn’t do a single HDR series, and I just blazed away. Now I know whats there, so I can slow down, take my time, and do some deliberate shooting just like your excellent union station series.
A lot of times that is what it takes, a blaze of glory to set the path for the future. I cannot tell you how many times I did that in California, but then again I revisited all of those places on separate little trips to make up for the blaze. Things happen for a reason, I am glad that Photwalk failed me, although, I really want to hit the West Bottoms. Are you down for our own Photowalk down there?