Downtown Dallas, Texas
Downtown Dallas
Fractured and Faceted Facade
Downtown Dallas, Texas
Downtown Dallas
Tag Archives: reflection
Dancers on the Reflecting Pool
From the Patio Sessions a couple of weeks ago.
Arts District, Dallas
Dancers, Arts District, Dallas
Dancers, Arts District, Dallas
Grids in the Pool
Reflecting Pool, Arts District, Dallas, Texas
(Click To Enlarge)
Reflecting Pool, Arts District, Dallas, Texas
(Click To Enlarge)
The shallow pool is so still that it becomes a perfect mirror, especially on a calm day. Until someone runs by, children’s little feet, stirring up the water in a series of overlapping sets of concentric ripples, mixing and refracting each other until the image blurs and breaks up. It doesn’t take long to settle down and everything is sharp again. Back to normal. Or… what is normal? surely not the clear reflection. Maybe the confusion of little feet is the normal – only through great effort by the designers, constructors, and maintainors of the vast black stone slab with its thin slip of water… is the illusion of clarity created.
Reflecting Pool, Dallas, Texas
(Click To Enlarge)
Awning stretching out from the Opera House, Arts District, Dallas, Texas
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This thing is a lot bigger… and a lot higher up in the air than it looks in the photo. During the heat of the day the gigantic aluminum louvers provide relief from the deadly Texas sun. Toward sunset, once the firey orb has descended below the level of the shade… well, it’s just plain cool to look at.
Kids on the Pool
One of my favorite things to do in the city, the Patio Sessions, has started up again. These are small free concerts held on Thursday evenings, in front of the Winspear Opera House in the Arts District. I’ve been to a few of these and written about them before.
The performer sets up at the corner of a large rectangular reflecting pool. The water flows slowly over a field of perfectly level and even black stone – at a depth of maybe a quarter of an inch. The spectators sit on grassy areas, paved sections, or concrete steps around this pool to watch and listen. High overhead, giant aluminum louvers provide some shade from the sun before it falls below. There’s a pop-up bar, food trucks, and a new coffee pavilion. With the surrounding buildings glowing in the setting sun (there are five Pritzker Prize winning architects represented here) it is an amazingly picturesque spot.
The only downside is that expanse of wafer-thin water is a magnet for little kids. Now, I like kids as much as the next guy, but they are noisy and distracting. The pack of rugrats cavorting on the reflecting pool diverts attention from the music. Plus I am bothered by their parents that wander around with that smug, “look at my spawn” half-smile of pride. This would all be cool – except that there is a concert going on.
But, I will admit, they are pretty cute.
Kids on the reflecting pool at the Patio Sessions, Dallas, Texas
(click to enlarge)
Waiting for the Gig
In front of the Winspear Opera House, Arts District, Dallas, Texas
“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock ‘n’ roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance
“We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone.”
― Patti Smith, Just Kids
I’ve taken pictures here before and before… and now I’ve done it again and again.
“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it; that surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.”
― William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Plane in the Pool
I like taking photographs of reflections, I like photographs of planes landing over downtown Dallas, I like reflections of planes landing over Downtown Dallas, I like the reflecting pool in front of the Winspear Opera House, I like the high metal sunscreen in front of the Winspear, sometimes I like black and white reflections.
Here’s all of it.
Reflected Trees With Chihuly Red Reeds, redux
Trees reflected in a pond, inverted, with Chihuly, Red Reeds
A second version of a photograph I did the other day. One of my most overused and trite photographic techniques – taking a photograph of a reflection and then inverting it. This is one of trees reflected in the pond of Chihuly’s Red Reeds, at the Dallas Arboretum. So overused… I’ve done it again.
I think I like this one better, though I like the floating leaves in the other.
Chihuly, Red Reeds
Reflected Trees With Chihuly Red Reeds
Trees reflected in a pond, inverted, with Chihuly, Red Reeds
One of my most overused and trite photographic techniques – taking a photograph of a reflection and then inverting it. Here is a favorite of mine. Here is another. And a third. This is one of trees reflected in the pond of Chihuly’s Red Reeds, at the Dallas Arboretum.
Chihuly, Red Reeds
Mirage
Self Portrait
I have always been stupidly fascinated by the reflection in Campbell Centre from the DART Red Line train.
Red Line DART Train reflected in the gold mirror of Campbell Centre at Northwest Highway and 75.
Bill Chance 