I went downtown on Sunday night to work on some new drawings, and I was pretty sure that the gray clouds would not be conducive to shooting. But then, just as the sun dipped below the horizon, it tore through the city with bright pinks for about 10 minutes. I sped over to the other side of the Colorado River and jumped out for a quick shot. Luckily, I always keep the D3X in my car with me in case of a photo emergency like this.
In other news, I finally did that 25 Things thing that has been bouncing around Facebook. If you don't have a Facebook account, I copied the 25 Things here to the site...
From Trey Ratcliff at www.stuckincustoms.com
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I went down on Saturday evening to do some shooting around Austin and caught the capitol around sunset. There are all kinds of interesting things about the Texas capitol, like this cool underground Illuminati chamber you can see here, but the one thing that all Texans seem to know is that our capitol is 14 feet taller than the one in D.C. This is a source of pride for Texans, along with the cool and trivial fact that we maintain, in our state constitution, the right to secede from the Union.
The capitol is made out of this pink granite, and it gets a little pinker at night at soon as they turn on the lights, especially against the blue sky.
from the blog at www.stuckincustoms.com
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We have these amazing trees in front of our house, and they explode in color right around this time of year. I took Ethan out front to pose under the tree while I set up across the street to try to capture the mood.
I live in the Hill Country of Texas, just 20 mins (no traffic!) to downtown Austin. I don't think this photo has captured how hilly it is (or how much pain I feel when I jog up this hill in front of the house!) But, at least you can see the sprinkles of red as the first of the trees turn for winter.
from the blog at www.stuckincustoms.com
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If you want to see how I made this (and how you can too!), visit my HDR Tutorial. I hope it gives you some new tricks! I have over 21,000 unread flickr emails - sorry but I am too swamped - but most of you ask questions that are answered in that tutorial, so there it is! :)
As for the process, it was a tough night because I was on the edge of a bridge that was rumbling as cars went across. The evening was very windy, and there was a light driving rain right into my lens. I had to wipe down the lens after every few exposures and try to cup my hands over the top during the shot.
from my daily photo blog at www.stuckincustoms.com
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This is one of the most famous old hotels in downtown Austin on 6th street. About this time of year, you can always find a bunch of lighted horse-drawn carriages throughout the streets.
I would appreciate your vote for the 2008 Bloggies! I hope you vote for www.stuckincustoms.com in the "best photography of a weblog" category! :)
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