On Thursday, I spotted an event that was going on down at Klyde Warren Park at eight in the evening. There was a free concert by Paul Thorn. I checked out his youtube page and thought it might be interesting. It wasn’t really my type of music – but he seemed to be a talented and interesting songwriter.
After work, I was way too tired – but I didn’t want to waste another evening flopping around the house, so I pulled myself together and went down to the train station.
Unfortunately, the music was not to my liking – live, with his full band it was way too country-rock for me. I had hoped it would be more in the vein of acoustic songwriter country folk-rock – but this was full on boot-scooting country pop-rock – probably my least favorite genre of music.
I stuck for awhile, then set off walking. After stopping by the reading area and looking through an art book of odd and disturbing (I liked them) paintings by Balthus (the streetlights are almost bright enough for reading) I cruised by the food trucks (right now, we are especially broke, so I ate leftovers before going downtown) and then turned to walk back to the train station.
I had my camera and, on a whim, did some shots of traffic and people by resting my camera on a concrete pillar or whatnot – and adjusting the f-stop for long exposures.
The results were a happy surprise. I came up with a half-dozen that I liked (I’ll put them up here over time – sorry to subject y’all to my experiments). More importantly, It is a technique that shows some promise. Now, I need to work on some spots and do the shots with a tripod and remote release – to get a bit more flexibility in the shot and sharpness in the background. Maybe I can add some models, some added light, or possibly some stacked shots.
So, despite the music not being to my taste, the evening wasn’t wasted.
Time Exposure, Night, Downtown Dallas, Ross and Pearl
While I had my camera sitting on a low concrete wall in front of the Chase Tower in Downtown Dallas, a saw a family of three crossing at the light, coming toward me. I pointed the camera toward the street and triggered the shutter into a long exposure as they passed.
Bill Chance 