I Didn’t Even Know What a Nuclear Panner Plant Was

No, this isn’t a nuclear power plant, but that is a really funny line from the classic The Simpsons episode “Homer’s Enemy” featuring Frank ‘Grimey’ Grimes.  What this photograph actually depicts is a power plant located in the River Market District of downtown Kansas City where I used to live.  I was never exactly sure what this plant was, what kind of fuel it burned (I guess I knew it burned coal, since there’s a huge coal pile attached to the facility), and what exactly it powered.  There was no way I was just going to go around all willy-nilly posting pictures featuring buildings I didn’t fully understand.

I set out on trying to figure out what this power plant was all about with a single name I had gotten from a sign hanging on the building.  It wasn’t easy, but I eventually tracked down the parent company and the official name of this generating station, and found an obscure article that made a reference to this power plant.  It’s called the Grand Boulevard Generating Station, and it turns out it burns both coal and natural gas to create super heated steam, which is piped under the city to various buildings downtown for heating.  I didn’t even know that was a thing until I read that article.

This is a hand held 5 shot HDR, with a some sweet post-processing work done after I did the HDR.

Arbitrary Gate

I’ve gone into the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains a few times now and I’ve found some really pretty areas. A major part of this forest was recently involved in some wild fires, possibly set by arson, and as you can see, this part of the forest and mountains is pretty burned out. All of the plants are charred, and there is a ton of ash on the ground. So this area is maybe not the prettiest around, but does offer some interesting features, such as this gate I found. I couldn’t imagine why this gate was necessary; directly in front of the gate was a large berm that was pretty established. As you can see, directly under the gate is a large hole, with some strange rock formations. I can’t speculate as to what these rocks mean, but I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of Wiccan thing. Yeah, that’s probably what it is. 

Regardless, this gate is ridiculous. There isn’t a road, or even a trail, in front of it or behind it, and there is no fence on the sides of it. Even if there was a road, any vehicle that first made it over the large berm would then get stopped by this big hole under the fence. Any person wanting to walk into the property could just simply walk around the gate. On top of its general uselessness, the gate is actually locked; just in case someone wanted to prove me wrong and open the gate and drive a dirt bike through there or something.

Technically speaking, this is a single exposure, with (naturally) some post-processing work. This was such a gray and dull scene I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get something that I liked, but I enjoy this photo.

Edit: Wait a minute; this isn't just a single exposure.  I did this one like I did the Mountain Sun photo.  I used one exposure of the sky and one exposure of the rest of the scene.

Steamboat Panorama

This is a picture I took with my old Canon PowerShot A70.  It is actually 5 pictures stitched together to form this panoramic view of the scene.  I took this at the Steamboat ski resort in Colorado in 2006 over spring break.  It’s a pretty cool ski area with lots of trails and lots of lifts that can keep you skiing on new trails all day.  The problem with Steamboat is how far from I-70 it is located (although this may make it less crowded than ski areas that are closer to I-70).  It was a good trip and Steamboat is a good place to go if you’ve got a special reason to go there, or really don’t mind driving the extra hours, but there are plenty of excellent ski areas closer to I-70.

Anyway, enjoy the picture.  I stitched this together shortly after I took it, but I re-did it recently because I wanted to show more detail in the snow in the foreground; in my original it was blown out and just showed up as white.

Mountain Sun

As I alluded to in my previous post, there was a huge change in my life recently.  That change was that I have moved to the Los Angeles area.  I moved for work to help out on a project out here, and although it is a great opportunity career-wise (I’m actually managing others instead of doing all the work myself), I think the biggest bonus to moving out here is the opportunity for photography!

Take this picture for example; this was just a short drive out of town!  Any direction I go I can see opportunity for great pictures; beaches, the ocean, deserts, mountains, and urban environments.

I took this picture in the Angeles National Forest in the San Bernardino Mountains.  This is an interesting picture because of the way I put it together.  Technically, this is two exposures that I manually combined in Photoshop.  I took one photograph to properly expose the foreground and the mountains, and I took one photograph to properly expose the sky, and get the cool rays of light from the setting sun.  This was really the first time I’ve tried this technique.  I had originally planned on trying an HDR of this scene, but I didn’t really like the results, so I opted to try something new.

Sweet Plane, Man

Well life has been pretty hectic lately; hectic but exciting.  Some of you already know about this, but I’ll save the story for the rest of you until I have photographic evidence to back my story.  This excitement in my life may be good in general, but it hasn’t been good for my website since I’ve (obviously) been neglecting my updating duties.  Anyway, I seem to be in a writing mood tonight, so hang on, this could go anywhere (I’ll try to keep it on point).

For the second year in a row, I headed to the Downtown Kansas City Airport Air Show; this time though, I had some friends to go with!  Had I gone alone again, I probably would have just stood outside the show in the same location I stood last year.  I would have gotten some good shots, but I wouldn’t have gotten this shot because the airplanes weren’t sitting out on the freeway.

Now, you don’t need to know this, and it’s not at all important to anything, but as the words rolled off my fingers just then, they decided I was going to post a different picture than I was originally planning on posting.  See, I told you this could get crazy!  Hang on folks.

Like I was saying, my friends wanted to go into the air show and see things up close and personal.  I was happy to do this, because I too wanted to go in, and I’m glad I did.  There were all sorts of airplanes and helicopters sitting around on the tarmac, and you’d better believe I got lots of pictures of all the interesting ones.  
(Editor’s Note:  I went back and read my American Chopper post to see how much I talked about going back to the air show in that one, and I pretty much just wrote the same thing I wrote in that post in this post’s second paragraph and this paragraph.  Sorry about the duplication, but I’m not going to delete it, so I guess I’m not really that sorry.)

This airplane is a T-45 Goshawk; a Navy trainer aircraft.  This also happens to be my dream aircraft; you know, for when I buy a jet and learn how to fly it.  I originally wanted a T-38 Talon, which I first saw at the Kansas Cosmosphere (which is an awesome place; you should go there sometime).  The T-38 however is capable of reaching supersonic speeds, so really, that would probably be overkill; I mean, come on.

I gave this single exposure photo a good helping of some sweet post-processing, and I really enjoy the results.  Hopefully you do too!

Also, today happens to be Veterans Day, so thank you to all of you who have served!  I hadn't necessarily planned to post a military related photograph on Veterans Day, but things turned out quite nicely in those regards.