The Dallas Farmers Market

Dallas Farmers Market

In the last few days I have made several trips to downtown Dallas around sunset. Sometimes I feel the Weather Gods see me coming with my camera. I don't know how many times conditions are looking quite promising only to have the light and the clouds fizzle out instead of offering a glorious pink sky. That's OK though! I'm getting to where I like shooting the night lights long after that pink sky would have faded anyway. I've heard it called "The Blue Hour" but it sure doesn't last for an hour. I might call it "The Blue 30 Minutes" at best. That rich blue sky is hard to get until it starts getting fairly dark but then you seem to lose it after it gets too dark. 

Downtown Dallas From Ruibal's

It's surprising how quiet it is down by the Dallas Farmers Market in the evening, even during a weekday. You are so close to so much rush hour traffic but most of it bypasses this area. It makes it a pleasant experience for me as a photographer, especially when I need to run across a street to get a different view of something.

Chase Tower

The top two images were shot on my first trip to the Farmers Market last week. The timing and the light were fairly close on both. It was amazing to me that I could get a shot of the flowers at Ruibal's and keep it free of poles and wires that are so hard to keep out of other views of the skyline from this area. The "Chase Tower" was shot on a different night on the other side of downtown from the Farmers Market.  The electric blue accent lighting on the building is fairly new. It sure adds a nice touch to photographs of the building.

Reflections of the Mercantile Tower

This last image was made yesterday evening. While looking at some of the images from my first visit to the Farmers Market last week, I noticed that the Mercantile Tower would reflect on the side of the Comerica Bank Tower. I had taken that image with a much wider angle but yesterday I put on my 180 mm macro. It is made to do its best at close range but it also does a great job on farther away subjects. I am quickly becoming convinced that it will give me a sharper image than my 100-400 mm would have if zoomed out to the same focal length.