Category Archives: Photography

Pictures I have taken.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything. ~John Steinbeck

Bridge and Jail

Posted on by Bill Chance

Another night, long exposure, a different zoom from the same spot, the abandoned parking garage, I shot from earlier. The white and red bars are the cars going by on the Interstate – smeared out in time. The buildings are part of the Dallas jail complex with the Calatrava designed Margaret Hunt Hill bridge in the background.

Dallas Jail complex with the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge in the background. (click to enlarge)

Dallas Jail complex with the Margaret Hunt Hill bridge in the background.
(click to enlarge)

The crossing between the parking lot you see and the building to the right is what I call, “the saddest spot in the world.” When you drive by there early in the morning on the weekends you see a crowd of families crossing from the lot to get in to bail their loved ones out of jail.

I’ve never been in there, but when I was younger I would occasionally get a desperate call to go down there and bail somebody out. After paying the clerk and waiting around for everything to process they would shuffle out. On the way to the car I would ask, “Well, what is is like in there?”

Nobody ever answered.

The jail complex is the Lew Sterrett Justice Center.

We all know how nasty the reviews on Yelp can be – but Lew Sterrett gets some intersting press there.

From Yelp:

I had a delightful time at Lew. The industrial vibe of the accommodations, combined with the summer camp atmosphere among the guests, somehow managed to be both sophisticated and good old-fashioned fun. The noise level was high, like the best hipster restaurants. And the complementary proctological exam was a nice surprise. Big D, little A, double L, A, YES!

this guy had something to say:

Wow this is the crappiest place on earth. I have been here twice(last time was November 06, and I would like to say the accomodations were dirty, dingy and downright disgusting. The staff seem like former Walmart employees or even criminals themselves(not to say that all inmates are convicted criminals because they are not). One word of advice…as soon as you get in, grab the nearest toilet paper roll(they are like gold in here) eat a couple of bologna sandwhiches, drink some fake cool aid, and live for the moment because you never know what the hell is about to happen around or too you.

Taking a Picture of a Hood Ornament

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The photographer is an armed version of the solitary walker reconnoitering, stalking, cruising the urban inferno, the voyeuristic stroller who discovers the city as a landscape of voluptuous extremes. Adept of the joys of watching, connoisseur of empathy, the flâneur finds the world ‘picturesque.”
― Susan Sontag, On Photography

Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”
― Susan Sontag, On Photography

Expanded Couple

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The sky grew darker, painted blue on blue, one stroke at a time, into deeper and deeper shades of night.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

Now that I’ve figured out how to carry my tripod on my bike, I’ve been experimenting with long exposures at night. Here’s a shot of a couple watching the Expanded Cinema show on the Omni Hotel in Downtown Dallas.

Couple watching the show. Dallas, Texas. Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the background.

Couple watching the show. Dallas, Texas. The Calatrava designed Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge in the background.
(click to enlarge)

“May I kiss you then? On this miserable paper? I might as well open the window and kiss the night air.”
― Franz Kafka

It’s a long exposure – look at the long, red lines that represent cars driving by in the parking lot. The bright white bar across the center of the photo are the headlights on Interstate Highway 35.

This is what it looked like live.

expanded_couple1

“When the Deep Purple falls,
Over sleepy garden walls,
And the stars begin to flicker in the sky,
Thru the mist of a memory
You wander back to me,
Breathing my name with a sigh.

In the still of the night,
Once again I hold you tight,
Tho’ you’re gone, your love lives on
When moonlight beams.

And as long as my heart will beat
Lover, we’ll always meet
Here in my Deep Purple dreams.”

—-Parish Mitchell, Deep Purple

Fireworks from Reunion Tower

Posted on by Bill Chance
My old commuter bicycle with Reunion Tower in the background

My old commuter bicycle with Reunion Tower in the background
(click to enlarge)

I remember the first time I saw it – in 1979 (it was only a year old) and driving from Kansas to Padre Island. We took the I35 Route through Dallas (instead of I35W through Fort Worth) and there was Reunion Tower, looming up next to the highway. Unexpected, it was pretty impressive.

Not long after, I saw the tower in a little seen science fiction film on PBS – The Lathe of Heaven. Reunion Tower was part of an enormous “dream machine” that warped reality. Then, after I moved here – every now and then I’d take people up to the bar in the ball. The view from up there is pretty cool.

Now they have rebuilt and remodeled the Observation Deck on the tower. After I drove my bike downtown and watched the video show on the side of the Omni Hotel, I moved over to watch the fireworks show that was supposed to go down. I chatted with the photographers, cops, and general gawkers up there – nobody knew any details. We all assumed the fireworks would be fired from the big empty field that sits where Reunion Arena used to be.

Finally, the show started. The fireworks were fired directly from the tower itself. It was amazing – probably the best fireworks show I’ve ever seen.

I had my camera set up on a tripod. I stood there with the infrared remote, clicking the shutter open and closed. Here’s what came up.

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Fireworks from Reunion Tower, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

Renos

Posted on by Bill Chance

“On my tombstone they will carve, “IT NEVER GOT FAST ENOUGH FOR ME.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child in the Final Days of the American Century

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas (click to enlarge)

Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)

“Sometimes it’s a little better to travel than to arrive”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Dallas Skyline Old and New

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Artists use frauds to make human beings seem more wonderful than they really are. Dancers show us human beings who move much more gracefully than human beings really move. Films and books and plays show us people talking much more entertainingly than people really talk, make paltry human enterprises seem important. Singers and musicians show us human beings making sounds far more lovely than human beings really make. Architects give us temples in which something marvelous is obviously going on. Actually, practically nothing is going on.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons

Dallas Skyline, Arts District

Dallas Skyline, Arts District

Old and New – El Cathedral Guadalupe and the Eye of Sauron.

I like photographs that I take because I can look at them and they will bring back the sensations and emotions I felt in the instant that I pressed the shutter. In this one I can feel the summer heat still coming off the sidewalk as the evening cools off. I can see the bright “magic hour” preternaturally colored light bouncing off the buildings all around me making the shapes and angles sharper than they otherwise are. I can hear the honking of the Friday evening traffic – office drones desperately trying to get home, delivery trucks dropping off the last loads of the day, the opera patrons heading for the parking garage. I smell the diesel exhaust mixing with the cooking wafting from the local, sidewalk-level restaurants, gearing up for the dinner crowd. I remember the feel of the rough sidewalk under my feet.

I remember the excitement of the workday being over and the anticipation of hearing some live music. I remember the layering of memories as I walked down a familiar street that had changed drastically, completely, since the first day I had set foot – changed almost as much as I had. I remember the slight smile on my face.

Without this photo, these memories are lost in time.

I’ve… seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those… moments… will be lost in time, like tears… in… rain. Time… to die…
—-Rutger Hauer, Blade Runner

It Is Finished

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Someday the old shack we call the world will fall apart. How, we don’t know, and we don’t really care either. Since nothing has real substance, and life is a twirl in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.”
― Emil Cioran, Tears and Saints

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas. This is attached to a "Rat Rod" - that looks like it might still be incomplete.

Car Show, Deep Ellum, Dallas, Texas. This is attached to a “Rat Rod” – that looks like it might still be incomplete.

“A half-read book is a half-finished love affair.”
― David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

Car Cooler

Posted on by Bill Chance

When I first saw one of these it was over forty years ago and although I was only, maybe ten years old, I remember it like it was yesterday. It was in the parking lot of the McDonald’s at Fourth and Walnut in Hutchinson, Kansas. There is still one there, but it looks completely different of course. In 1967, the place still was more of a shack with those giant yellow arches. I think its “sold” sign was still in the millions. Once, I saw a guy actually fetching a bag of real potatoes from an outbuilding to cut into fries.

That was a long time ago.

At any rate, there was a car in the parking lot with this galvanized steel contraption attached to its window. I looked at it closely, with the kind of curiosity only a nerdy ten-year-old boy has. It was a big metal tube, closed off at the back, with a coarse screen on the front, and a vent that went through the partially opened window into the interior of the car. I was able to guess its purpose, though it seemed pretty odd.

My father confirmed that it was a crude air-conditioner. You dumped a five pound bag of ice into the tube and when you drove, the air was forced over the ice and into the car. Ordinary air-conditioning was still rare in automobiles, but I have no idea how common this sort of contraption was.

So now I see another one, sort of, at a car show. This one is not as crude as the one in my memory (I’m pretty sure that one was home-made) and, instead of ice, it’s an evaporative cooler – better known in these parts as a swamp cooler. It’s known as a Car Cooler or a Thermador.

Maybe that’s how the one in my memory worked… but I seem to remember a place for ice. No matter, neither one would really work very well. I think I’ll stick with Freon.

Car Cooler

Car Cooler