Tag Archives: street photography

Aurora Dallas

Posted on by Bill Chance

I first heard about Aurora last time it happened, but was out of town that weekend and couldn’t make it. Then, on the way to a play at the Wyly theater, I saw a preview of Aurora – specifically an installation of giant red floating jellyfish.

So, as Aurora 2013 approached, I circled my calendar. Then, I found that Bike Friendly Cedars, along with other Dallas cycling groups, had a a ride planned. The idea was to put lights on your bicycle, then meet up at Main Street Gardens Park and ride down together.

The last few weeks have been very busy and stressful for me and I didn’t have time (or money) to properly decorate my bike. This sort of thing is, especially right now, beyond my abilities or resources. It was stressing me out a little bit. The only thing I could do is to go to the Dollar Store with a five and a one clutched in my sweaty fist. I bought a couple LED lightsabers, a little lighted pumpkin, and some packages of glowy bracelets.

I gathered up everything in my house with a battery powered light and roll of duct tape, and, after work rode down to Lee Harvey’s – where I taped everything to my bike in a pretty much random fashion. I felt like an idiot – but it worked. Especially the lightsabers. I might try and find a way to more permanently hold those on my bike – they would be useful to increase the visibility for night rides.

Nothing like big, glowing, flashing, green cylinders to get the attention of motorists after dark.

Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia

Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia

Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia

Lighted Bicycles at Aurora Ciclovia

Everybody met up and we set off in a glowing, flashing mass – down around downtown
Dallas, into Deep Ellum, then back into the Arts District.

I was immediately surprised and shocked by the crowds. The original idea was to ride through Aurora as a group, but the streets were packed with thick throngs of people and we were immediately split up. I locked my bike up and began to explore.

Aurora was amazing. I kept thinking, “Is this really Dallas?” There were hundreds of artists and installations covering the entire spectrum spread across the vast area from One Arts Plaza, down Flora Street past and including the concert halls and museums, across to Klyde Warren Park and even down towards the Perot. That’s about two square miles of area.

Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

Klyde Warren Park, Aurora Dallas 2013

Klyde Warren Park, Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

Not all the exhibits were big - tiny men climbing a column at the Symphony Hall

Not all the exhibits were big – tiny men climbing a column at the Symphony Hall

The crowd was huge. I was so glad I had ridden in on a bike and had a DART pass in my pocket. People were calling in on cell phones – the traffic across the city was at a standstill and there was no parking to be found anywhere.

I spent hours walking around. There is no way to see even a fraction of everything that was offered up, but there were a few items I really wanted to take in.

First, the dancers that I had seen at the Patio Sessions on Thursday were performing on a little grass patch between the Opera House and the Symphony Hall. Through dumb luck I arrived a couple minutes before they started and talked to a parent of one – I told him of their enthusiasm and skill that I had seen the evening before.

The description of their performance:

Ruddy Udder Dance by Claire Ashley
This performance uses a large-scale, painted inflatable sculpture as a prop worn by twelve dancers. A choreographed sequence unfolds. Ashley is interested in both the high-brow aesthetic pleasure found in the painterly abstraction and monumentality of the object itself, and the absurdly low-brow, playful, high-energy, ecstatic dancing experience and pop culture references that ensue as the object moves in space. Directed by Linda James and Kate Walker and performed by the Repertory Dance Company II from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

Dancers and Inflatable Cow.

Dancers and Inflatable Cow.

The dancers were arranged as the “feet” or maybe the “udders” of a stylized giant inflatable cow-balloon and danced to a country music tune – throwing the enormous bovine around as handlers held guy ropes and a bank of black lights made the scene glow. It was pretty cool.

Next, I wanted to see the Wyly Theater. I had seen a preview and knew I had to check out the real thing. Several banks of incredibly powerful video projectors were trained on the wall of the Borg Cube – shaped Wyly. The genius is that the program started with an image of the Wyly projected on itself, which then was moved, shifted, deconstructed, and modified until the thing was transformed into a giant 2001-style cube monolith – “It’s full of Stars.”

I found a spot and sat and watched the cycle. Then I realized that viewing it at an oblique angle was even better, so I watched it again. Really cool stuff.

Finally, I wanted to see something inside the Dallas City Performance Hall. Shane Pennington is a local artist that I have been a huge fan of ever since I spent a few days going down to the arts district to watch his ice sculptural exhibition melt into nothingness, releasing the stones contained within. I had read about the screen, a transparent curtain, he made for the Performance Hall – with consists of a grid of computer controlled lights that illustrate shapes moving across the mouth of the theater.

Inside the theater they had the screen up and running. People walking, riding bikes, or pushing carts moved across the screen in a ghostly crowd. Behind the screen a jazz trio performed retro music – a beautiful contrast to the high-tech images they were immersed in.

Shane Pennington's screen inside the Dallas City Performance Hall, with Jazz Trio.

Shane Pennington’s screen inside the Dallas City Performance Hall, with Jazz Trio.

Midnight approached, and I had to leave – I was a long way from home and I didn’t want to miss the last train.

I did have one last discovery. I didn’t do enough research before Aurora about the nature of the Ciclovia that I was a part of. I didn’t realize that the lighted bike ride was actually a part of the Aurora itself and the ride even had a plaque that spelled that out.

Seeing Aurora, I wondered what it would be like… how cool would that be?.. to actually be a part of it – to be an artist in the event itself, no matter how small or insignificant. Until I found that plaque, I didn’t realize that for the small effort of six bucks and a trip to the dollar store – I was one.

Bike Friendly Cedars and Aurora Ciclovia

Bike Friendly Cedars and Aurora Ciclovia

Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

Aurora Dallas 2013

The reflecting pool by the Winspear. Aurora Dallas 2013

The reflecting pool by the Winspear. Aurora Dallas 2013

Milk Crate Bicycle

Posted on by Bill Chance

I’m working on DIY solutions for storage on my bicycle. Looking around at useful stuff I see, one of the most common, hipster, useful, cheap, and crunchy things to do is to simply bungee a plastic milk crate on to your rear rack.

Milk Crate Bike in the reading area in Klyde Warren Park.

Milk Crate Bike in the reading area in Klyde Warren Park.
(click to enlarge)

The Dallas Morning News Reading & Games Room area in Klyde Warren Park is one of my favorite spots in the city. It is a quiet, leafy, relaxing spot, with games and stuff to look at. I was there for a few minutes to catch my breath. The powers that be came by and made this woman move her bike (it was leaning against a tree) – but she didn’t seem to be too bothered by it all. I’m afraid that I had already given in to The Man and had my bike locked up on the official bike racks.

So sue me.

Bicycle Ride and Seek

Posted on by Bill Chance
The fountain in back of the Richardson Library. (click to enlarge)

The fountain in back of the Richardson Library.
(click to enlarge)

Bike Friendly Richardson has organized a bicycle photo scavenger hunt for October. The idea is to ride a bike around the city and take photos of sculptures or fountains (with your bike in them – to prove you really did it, I guess). There is a list of fourteen sculptures and a map to help you out.

This is a lot of fun and right up my alley. I’ve already taken photos of my bike in front of a lot (maybe most) of these already, though I’ll do it again in October. I rode around the other day and grabbed a few – now I’m working on post-processing the photos… uploaded a few to my Flickr page.

The cylinder sculptures at the Block.

The cylinder sculptures at the Block.

I sort of wanted to use my old Raleigh Technium for the photos – it’s a bit more photogenic than my crunchy commuter bike. But I don’t want to pack my camera crap into a backpack and lug it around the city. I’ve pretty much worked out how to carry my camera in a pannier and my tripod bungee corded to the rack in the back of my commuter bike.

So it’s the commuter in the photos. Which is cool too.

The sculpture in the outdoor reading area at the library.

The sculpture in the outdoor reading area at the library.

A couple older photos I had on here of the Richardson fountain.

weather1

weather2

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

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

Painted Column Through an Opening in an Artwork

Posted on by Bill Chance

“As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.”

― Emil Cioran, The Trouble with Being Born

Deep Ellum Art Park, Dallas, Texas (Click to Enlarge)

Deep Ellum Art Park, Dallas, Texas
(Click to Enlarge)

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