The Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge

Last week I spent an afternoon at the Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge. It was my first visit to the 3,621 acre facility. It was also nice, considering it was the last day of January, that I could hike around in a short sleeve shirt and get familiar with part of the 20 miles of hiking trails. I will definitely have to plan another visit so I can explore some more. The image below was taken on the marsh boardwalk.

Searching for Photos in Oak Cliff!

Hunt Oil Building

 Yesterdays Dallas Morning News had an article about how 20 local photographers were going to document the changes on Fort Worth Avenue, an area just southwest of downtown. I decided to go check the area out and see what it had to offer. While driving that way I decided to make a quick stop downtown and photograph the Hunt Building. This late in the day would have sunlight on the front of the building. I like the results. The front of the building isn't flat and curves as you see it in the photo.

Alamo Courts

 After shooting the Hunt Building I made my way to Fort Worth Avenue. The Alamo Courts attracted me the most and I got the above image. It has a fence around it and is set for demolition. I would have loved to have taken this shot after dark with the lights on. I really didn't feel that was going to happen so I moved on. I took some pictures at another old motel and also found a great spot to shoot a skyline of downtown. The skyline shot will be better when some construction cranes are removed though.

The Texas Theater

 My plan was to go by the Texas Theater on nearby W Jefferson Blvd. if I wasn't delayed by something else that caught my eye. Well, I ended up there. This is the theater where they caught Lee Harvey Oswald years ago. No cars out front and nothing going on at the theater last night, but at 6pm the lights were still off. I took some shots anyway and do like the processing I used which gave the place a vintage look. It was actually a lot darker than it appears in this image.

 The image below was taken Saturday night. We ate dinner at a place called The Original Mexican Food. The window out front says the best Tex-Mex on the planet. Hmmmm... I 'm trying to think who I would award "the best" to. I think I have tried everywhere though. This is a picture of the front of the restaurant after I had some fun with Photoshop's liquify tool.

The Party Room

An evening in Fort Worth!

Water Gardens

Fridays rain had stopped and it looked like we may have some nice light and clouds around sunset as I headed to Grand Prairie to pick up Gary yesterday. When I got to his house I could see that a line of cloud cover was already over Fort Worth and overcast skies was the kind of light we were going to have for our shoot this evening. We got some good shots from the Water Gardens and the Modern Art Museum but I do think a deep blue sky might have improved our images.

Omni Hotel

The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Spending a little time in Fort Worth!

I spent Saturday over in nearby Fort Worth looking at the Amon Carter Museum and the Modern Art Museum. Before driving home we looked at an old theater and several old gas stations. My friend, Dan Meredith and I decided to come back Sunday evening and shoot several of the locations. The first two images were taken at a business which has several restored gravity pumps out front. It also has a metal fence around the whole place and you can barely fit a lens through the openings. It limited the compositions we could shoot because you had to shoot straight ahead from each opening. I took the top image with my 24 mm tilt-shift lens. It was also multiple images combined in Photomatix Pro.
We stopped at this bottom location twice. The evening light came in nicely on this station and I was able to get this shot. I like the red and green that repeats itself on the doors. Our theater location didn't have any lights on so we stopped back here while driving back to Big D after sunset. The only light on was the globe of the pump. We just kept driving. Oh well.