Temple Square Early Morning (Stop 2, first with photos's worth posting!)

OK, here comes something fun, so get a good firm hold on your socks!

I decided to undertake a self imposed project/opportunity to go on Photo Safari. I gave myself 24 to 36 hours to take a minimum of 12 good photos (12-24-36 get the progression?) Not just OK, but GOOD photos. Now as you look at this and subsequent posts you will find that there are more than 12 Photos, well, I haven't decided on my top 12 yet. What I have done here is post the best of what I got. I will then spend some time deciding which ones I like best and then get back to you. Or you can vote if you want, I would love that!

So anyway I took a couple of days off of work, and started planning. Best areas for good shots and interesting places I haven't been in a while etc... and I ended up with an itinerary that looked like this:

1) Masonic Temple, Salt Lake City, UT Simply because I have never photographed it, and I thought it would be interesting, having worked next door for a year once upon a time. (Alas I got nothing good there. zip. NADA. Zilch.)

2) Temple Square, Salt Lake City, UT Because I will never pass up an opportunity to take pictures there.

3) Streets between my buddy's house (Where I parked my Truck) and the Frontrunner station, basically through the Gateway shopping area in SLC.

4) Ogden Union Station, Ogden, UT Trains, Classic Cars, Guns.... What more could a guy want?

5) Tour of Utah Prologue @ The Utah State Capitol Building, Salt Lake City, UT a chance to meet up with some other Pentax users and play with sports type shooting.

6) Uinta Mountains at night for Star Trails been wanting to forever, didn't happen due to exhaustion and cloud cover.

7) Next day, Tour of Utah 1st stage cuz I wanted to!

Yeah, I was a little overscheduled but I really wanted to immerse myself in photography for a day. I hope you the viewer will like what I got, and maybe even let me know which ones you think are really good. Now, On with the show!!

Here is Temple Square Utah: Sigma 10-20

Small flower with Cosmicar 70-200

Stone Lions on the Hotel Utah, Cosmicar 70-200

Reflecting Pool and the Salt Lake Temple, I used my 30+ year old Pentax 28mm f3.5 Manual Focus lens for this shot. I think the color rendering is just superb with this lens.

This is a wider angle shot taken with my Sigma 17-70

Cathedral of the Madeline

Alrighty, after Temple Square I headed to The Cathedral of the Madeline, which celebrated it's 100 year birthday/building day.... whatever. I had e-mailed ahead and found out that it is open at 9:00 after morning mass. I have long wanted to visit it, I enjoyed cathedraling almost as much as castling when I lived in Scotland. Mainly because old things impress me, and Scotland is blessed with a wealth of old things... Castles.... Cathedrals....

Anyway, here a just a few shots to show the flavor of the building. Sigma 10-20

Gargoyles. I LOVE gargoyles, I love just saying the name. Try it, let it roll around on your tongue, and savor the syllables. It's just cool man! Cosmicar 70-200.

Sigma 10-20

Pools of light cast by the stained glass illuminate the altar and flowers lending an ethereal glow to the marble. Sigma 17-70

Sigma 17-70

Sigma 17-70
The symmetry of the paintings on the buttresses and their shape excite me, it truly is a beautiful sight. Sigma 17-70

Cosmicar 70-200

Walking

After leaving Downtown, I parked at a friends house off the street, and started my walk down to the rail station. I have been wanting to do more street shooting, but really suck at it. Here are two examples. Pentax K-28mm f3.5

IN case you couldn't guess this is the reflection of a building in a puddle. Walked right past it and had to backtrack when it finally registered. Also Pentax K-28mm f3.5

Utah State Railroad Museum, Ogden, UT

So after my stroll I arrived at the FrontRunner commuter rail station. (No pictures a guard appeared out of nowhere and moderately politely asked me to cease and desist.) I then boarded for a fairly slow train ride to Ogden. Disembarking I headed south back along the tracks to here, the historic Ogden Union Station. Quite a fun old building, I contains the Railroad Museum, the Classic Car Museum, and the John M. Browning Gun Museum. You will notice that I took no pictures of the gun museum. If the car museum was poorly lit, this thing is a dark hole in Calcutta. Just looked and enjoyed.

Sigma 17-70

Out back/down south of the Museum is the actual train area, there are some cool trains, and some quite old and decrepit trains, and a lot of stuff inbetween. I had fun wandering in, around and between the trains. My intent was to produce images that are striking and NOT what the average tourist would take. I did take a few of those for my own reference but will not be posting them here. On with the show:

This was converted to B&W simply because it was fairly monochromatic to begin with. The shapes and massiveness of the engineering just boggle my mind. Sigma 17-70

This is heavily processed to achieve the look I wanted. Don't know if I was too heavy handed, what do you think? Pentax K-135 f2.5

Pentax K-28mm f3.5

Pentax K-50mm f1.4

Sigma 17-70

Sigma 17-70

Sigma 17-70

Sigma 17-70

I think I went the craziest processing this one, but I shot it with that intent in mind. There are some folks on the forums I go to that really do some interesting processing, I wanted to see what I could come up with. Sigma 17-70

The Browning-Kimball Classic Car Museum

So after bidding adieu to the trains, I headed inside to find A/C and some other fun stuff. Like Cars. There are just a few of these classic cars in the museum, but they are kind of fun to see, you can get quite close and they are well preserved. The main problem with photographing this exhibit is the lighting. It is quite dim and I had opted to NOT take my tripod.... sigh.... will I never learn! So I pulled out my two fastest lenses (135mm f2.5, and 50mm f1.4) pumped up the ISO and tried to be real still. I didn't get as many shots as I would have liked, I will need to go back one day with a tripod and try it again.

Anyway, these are my best shots, you will notice a similarity in that I really don't try to show the whole car, but more details of the car, Hood Ornaments the most. I REALLY wish they still did those kind of touches. Beautiful beasties, nothing like a classic hood ornament to really demonstrate some style. All taken with Pentax K-50 f1.4

Not quite a self portrait, but again the shape and distortion drew me in.

Pity the poor bug that gets in this guys way!

Ah...... they just don't make them the way they used to... Can you imagine this lasting long parked on the main drag in town?

Is that a gunsight or a radiator cap?

Tour of Utah Part 1 (Aug 18, 2009)

At this point in the day I moved up to the Utah State Capitol (which I photographed earlier this year, take a peek at my archive for March) for the Prologue to the Tour of Utah. This shoot was a fitting end to a long and invigorating day of photograpy. I had two major aims coming out of this.... well three really....

1) practice with, and gain experience in, Focus Trapping. (A technique where you use the "Catch In Focus" setting on the camera with a manual focus lens to have the shutter fire only when the camera confirms that the selected focus point actually has something in focus)

2) get a few decent shots of elite level cyclists "Frozen" in the moment.

3) have fun with a couple of fellow Pentaxians while playing with our cameras.

I think I achieved all three aims! ;-) ON with the show!

I tended to reject shots with heads down, but this guy's leg is too beautiful to not include.

This is Intensity.

I really liked both the juxtaposition of riders going both directions, as well as this guys expression.

I can just feel this riders concentration.

Is this guy a brother of the guy above? They look alike, but with different teams.

Full out effort, going flat out...

Man I'm tired.....

Tour of Utah Part 2 (Aug 19, 2009)

This part of the Tour of Utah took place on the road from East Canyon towards the pass that leads to Emigration Canyon I used my Sigma 17-70 exclusively, I was interested in lower wider angles. Though funnily enough I didn't keep very many from that angle. I wonder if I should have used the Sigma 10-20 that I borrowed and gone wider still..... Hmmm......

My main criteria with selecting these shots was sharpness and interesting expressions on the riders faces.
This was a great shot, except that I cut off his head.... Not really all that important to keep attached is it?

I don't know if he was laughing at me crouched down at the side of the road, or just in relief to have the really long uphill almost done!

Yes I was kind of in the way, and yes I did get out of the way... eventually......

Just.... about..... now.....
The dude in the middle has just the meanest looking facial hair. Not often you can honestly say that you have seen a cyclist that you WOULD NOT want to meet in a dark alley.