Uploads from telwink, tagged eos

85 Years of North Downtown Houston

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:42:03 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

The Library of Congress photo archive has a number of historic panoramic photographs of downtown Houston. These photos were mostly taken by reputable panographers of the era, such as Haines Photo Co., Cecil Thomson Studios, Texas Litterst Commercial Photo Co., and my personal favorite, F. J. Schlueter.

I wanted to take this shot from the exact same place (Keystone Building, which is now the Keystone Lofts), but my requests to Keystone's management fell on deaf ears more than once. No soup for them!!! In any case, I got on top of a parking garage a few blocks from the original spot, so the effect is at least a resemblance of what I had in mind.

Kudos to the Library of Congress' historic photo archive for hosting these beautiful historic Houston photographs.

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East Houston Light Show

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:57:33 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

Tonight was easy-mode for lightning photography. By the time I found a spot and set of my gear, I only caught the tail end of tonight's spectacular lightning exhibition. I'm certain some of my flickr buddies came through with some remarkable lightning photos. I can't wait to see them!

1893 Kiam Building in Houston, TX

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:47:32 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

Edward Kiam, the owner of a clothing retailer, built this five-story brick building on Main Street in 1893. The Kiam Building is said to have had the first electric elevator in Houston! The building still has its original colors.

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This photo was a bit of an experiment. If you have any interest, the process went something like this.

I shot this photo as a hand-held HDR, 3 brackets at -2,/0/+2. I imported the files into Photomatix to tone map the composite. I liked the sky, but I didn't care for the lack of sharpness in the building. I guess I moved ever-so-slightly when shooting it. No ghosting, but not much sharpness in the architecture. So since I liked the sky but I wanted sharp architecture to go with it, I saved the processed tone-mapping file as HandHeld.TIF, and embarked on a quest for sharper architecture....

This next step is the best way I've found to get a razor-sharp HDR images with *zero* movement. So next, I went back to my original 3 bracketed shots. I found my most evenly exposed one of the set, and imported it into Photoshop's Camera Raw utility. Now here's the trick --> in Camera Raw I increased the clarity by 50%, and increased the sharpness by 50%. I then saved 5 versions of the image FROM Camera Raw. The five images I created were variable exposure images ... so I changed the exposure in camera raw to -2 / -1 / 0 / +1 / and +2, saving in-between each change.

When I imported this batch of artificially bracketed shots into Photomatix for HDR tone-mapping, the building looked great, but the sky was blown out. So I simply opened both my original HDR composite, as well as the blown-out sky artificial exposure composite, as two separate layers in photoshop. With the artificially exposed photo on top (sharp building photo), I just blended out the undesirably blown-out sky from the photo, did some minor tweaking, and called it quits.

Houston History Magazine

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 13:50:30 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

I recently had the honor of being asked by the editor of Houston History Magazine, if they could use a photograph of mine for an article on Houston architecture preservation & the old Humble Oil building. This is the first time I've had one of my photos in a print publication, so I'm pretty happy about that.

On a side note, I'm almost ashamed to admit, I didn't know this magazine existed until I was contacted for the use of this photo (the one on the right, not the Dome shot.) Anyhow, I'll definitely be subscribing, as this kind of thing is right up my alley.

On another side note, pardon that cover shot. Anything next to it would look good. I understand it was taken in the 70s, but still. Not a flatternig shot, in my opinion.

Paris, Las Vegas

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 21:02:03 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

The sun beginning to set against Paris Hotel & Casino, in Las Vegas. On the left side of the photograph is the outer extremity of the Bellaigo fountain.

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Taken with my Large and In Charge 10-22 Canon f/3.5
Hand-held HDR - 3 stops, f/8 (Av) @ ISO200
[-2. 0. +2]

Rocket Fuel

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Mon, 25 May 2009 18:21:19 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

Otherwise known as, "quadruple grande cappuccino."

Houston Heights Mansion - 1135 Heights Blvd @ 11th Street

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:30:13 -0800

telwink posted a photo:

A nifty Houston Heights mansion with a witches hat roof. This home is just north of 11th street and Heights, on the West side of Heights. The head-on photo doesn't do the size of this place justice - it's pretty huge. It must be one of the larger homes on Heights. Absolutely beautiful in person.

UPDATE This gorgeous home burned down on January 3rd, 2011 :(

www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/7363390.html

HOUSTON — Houston firefighters have found the body of one person killed in a house fire and are searching for a possible second victim.

The Houston Fire Department says the fire in Houston's historic Heights neighborhood erupted early Monday. One firefighter was taken to the hospital with moderate burns.

The Victorian-style home has been featured in an annual Christmas light tour in the neighborhood.

The department has not identified the victim. They say there is a second "unaccounted for" person they are looking for in the rubble.

Arson investigators are probing the cause of the blaze.

- Chron.com

Main at Preston

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 20:31:44 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

I originally posted this for constructive criticism, because I'm having it printed, but I can't bring myself to remove it from my photostream. I like the black borders, so it stays. I'll just have to shoot more to shove it down the stream :]

And here it was all just a dream

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 22:20:07 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

Sunset behind Downtown Houston

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 21:06:29 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

This is a throwback to Feb. 2008, when I was just beginning to understand what I was doing. I haven't done a lot of shooting the past few weeks. Looking through my old photos is an interesting thing to do. So much has happened since I started shooting.

While I'm certainly better at controlling technical aspects of my exposure, HDR, panos, etc, there's so much of my early work that I love, that I used to do by accident - driven by pure curiosity and passion for shooting. While I still love the hobby, I'd love to re-discover the early magic.

Magnolia Hotel

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:49:48 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

Once the tallest building in Houston, the 22-story, 1926 Houston Post Building is now the beautiful, upscale Magnolia Hotel.

Planet Downtown Houston - Stereographic Panorama

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:52:35 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

This is a stereographic panorama, taken from the Heritage Society's Sam Houston Park.

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The Gang

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 14:22:06 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

WEDGE International Tower & it's posse are not to be messed with.

Liftoff

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:32:49 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

I was walking back from shooting photos today, and a group of kids asked me if I would shoot some photos of them. I went ahead and shot a few, before the skate kids were run off of the library property. Good times!

Dallas Street Panorama

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:04:00 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

This was taken facing South, along Dallas Street (running East and West across the photo). Front and center is the Houston Pavilions. Today was tough to beat as far as photography natural light/weather is concerned.

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Humble Oil Company

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:04:46 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

The back-side of Humble Tower / Residence Inn Marriott / Courtyard Marriott. At one time, the Main St. entrance was the primary entrance for Humble Oil Company. I linked a photo below (comments) of this building in the 1920s, very shortly after it was built [in 1921].

Although it wouldn't have been visible in the historic photo below, the "tower" piece of the Humble Oil Company wasn't built until 1936. The historical photo was taken from the same angle, but at street level. This was also the first office building in Houston to have air conditioning (installed ~ 1932). Needless to say, I'm glad that's become the norm since then ;-)

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nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:33:24 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

Zenith

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:40:07 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

A view straight up, from the corner of Capitol & Travis, in Houston, TX.

Minute Maid Park

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:08:48 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

This is a non-HDR version of the Astros Season Opener photo. Cool thing about this one is, it has a few more baseball fans on the right-hand side of the image.

Also, I formatted this set of photos into a zoomable interactive panorama

Houston Astros Season Opener

nobody@flickr.com (telwink) — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:09:46 -0700

telwink posted a photo:

This is a panorama of the North side of Downtown Houston, on April 6, 2009. The Houston Astros Season Opener at Minute Maid Park. It was an absolutely beautiful day. One of the nicest thus far in 2009.

Pretty neat viewed on black