Let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven...

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I took this the same night I took the Houston Panorama. I was fascinated by the orange glow of the  JPMorgan Chase Building, so I stowed my 24-105mm and whipped out the 70-300mm for a close-up shot before I left.

JPMorgan Chase Building is a 37-story 130 m (430 ft) Art Deco skyscraper in downtown Houston, Texas. Completed in 1929, it remained the tallest building in Houston until 1963, when the Exxon Building surpassed it in height. The building is the Houston headquarters of JPMorgan Chase Bank, and was formerly the headquarters of Texas Commerce Bank.

The title quote is from the Book of Genesis, 11 verse 4, concerning the tower of Babel.

Night on the town

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Here we have a panoramic photo of Down town Houston. It's roughly 180 degrees. Made up of 12 portrait HDR shots. To see it in all its glory click here: http://gigapan.com/gigapans/128389.

I got lucky that the Astros were playing that night, adds something to the scene I think. I had mad this trip to get some sunset shots with the Houston skyline but I didn't leave the house early enough.

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out

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This is a composite of 5 separate 30sec exposures taken as a cruise ship eased it's way down Lady Bird Lake in Austin Texas.

I was heading back to my car and I saw that a restaurant/cruise ship had left out of it's dock so I hurried down along the shore of the lake to see if maybe they were going to turn around and head back this way. And to my luck they did. So I sat there and waited patiently for them to make there way into my line of sight to take these shots.

Technically not the whole photo is a composite. The buildings and water are a composite of the last 4 of the 5 photos. I did this because after looking at the photos on the computer screen, I realized that the first photo was blurry, so I only used the light trail from that photo. Also the sky is a single photo, I used photomatix's natural/fusion to do the composting but I didn't like how gritty the sky looked so I selected the sky of one of the original photos. This is also how I took only the streak from the first photo, once I had an initial composite of the 4 photos, I used that composite and the blurry first photo in the photomatix process again and selected all but the streak and use the orirginal compsoite and
voila...

Title from "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien.

How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.

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Took a trip to Austin, Texas the other night. I had planned on getting some star photography from atop Mount Bonnel(great view of downtown Austin and it's pitch-black at night). But mother nature thought otherwise; it was thick with clouds all weekend.

But I persevered and after getting some decent long exposures at Mt. Bonnel I proceeded down to Auditorium Shores and walked along Lady Bird Lake up to the South Congress Ave Bridge and got the shot you see here.

At the end of the street, where the light trails seem to emanate from, is the Texas State Capitol Building.

Title quote is from The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.

Sam Houston Park

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Here we have another from Sam Houston Park in Downtown Houston, Texas. Took this a couple months ago with the old Sony Cyber-Shot. This is another stitched panoramic made up of about 7 or so portrait HDRed shots. I love this shot but I don't think the Cyber-Shot was up to the dynamic range of this scene, there was a lot of noise in the dark areas of the statue. I'll have to take another walk through the park and see what the 5D can make of this scene. 

Wlliams Tower at night

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Williams Tower in Uptown near the Houston Galleria shopping mall in Houston, Texas. This is a 30sec long exposure with some lightroom tweaking.

What does a mirror look at?

I had some free time between work and class so I hopped over to the south side of I 10 and beltway 8 here in Houston and snapped a few of the Memorial Plaza buildings. Beautiful, highly reflective buildings they are, basically mirrors. There were some great clouds in the sky, just like I like it. In the first photo you can see the reflection of Herman Memorial Hospital, another beautiful building.

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