The Flooded Trinity River!

MHH Bridge Reflected in the Trinity River

My wife thinks I am obsessed with photographing the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge. I do have a desire to photograph it under a variety of conditions. There is about a million different ways to shoot the bridge and I am only about half way there. I also have a separate gallery of photos of it now on my web site.
Monday night and Tuesday morning we had well over 4 inches of rain. I knew this would flood the Trinity River and provide an opportunity to photograph the bridge reflected in its swollen waters. Tuesday and Wednesday evening found me doing just that. I was more pleased with the second nights efforts. I liked the compositions better and the sky also seemed to put on a better show.
 The top image was shot first. The bottom image was shot about 6 minutes later and is a good example of why I sit in one spot and shoot different compositions as the light changes. The Bank One Tower (green building) had just turned its lights on. That is the main reason it wasn't included in the previous shot. The scene had also become darker and I needed 4 bracketed exposures to create the second version. The most interesting change was the color of the clouds. It was now 25 minutes after sunset and there was heavy cloud cover to the west, which is behind me. Within 3 minutes the clouds picked up a dull pinkish look which wasn't there just a few minutes earlier. I might be inclined to think it was some very late sunset color but I really think it was the lights of the city starting to reflect off the clouds. Thirty minutes later when it was completely dark, the clouds still had some of that color in them.

Flooded River Reflections

The last image was shot after all the deep blue had left the sky.  This was from a spot I had not shot from before. I think it made a nice addition to my collection.

MHH Bridge Arch and Cables at Night

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.