Off to South Texas!

A friend of mine said I was a superman for having 24 shows on my schedule this year so I thought I would post this picture of me busting through a steel wall. Actually, this was taken on my way to my show in South Padre Island, Texas. Thursday I took all day to make the drive, stopping numerous times to take some pictures. My first stop was at a place called the Car Connection. I had noticed this place just north of Waco off of I 35. It looked like they had some old cars and signs so I stopped and asked if I could take some pictures. They said OK and proceeded to show me a garage full of old signs. They had an old Coca Cola sign and a Miller Beer sign. The neon still worked on both. They also had this old Superman busting through the wall. Cool! Behind the place was more than 100 old cars. I could have stayed there much longer than I did. The image below was taken through the missing back window of an old vehicle. I shot five different exposures which were combined and tone mapped with Photomatix Pro. I also did a few other layer tricks to give it a more surreal look than I usually go for.
After leaving the Car Connection, I headed to San Marcus to check out Dick's Classic Garage. This is the newly opened museum of 60 classic cars owned and refurbished by businessman Dick Burdick. All are painted and polished like new, including a 1929 Duesenberg. He also started the Central Texas Museum of Automobile History in Rozansky where he has more than 130 vehicles. The image below is the hood ornament of one of the DCG vehicles.
I was hoping to spend the night in Harlingen so I needed to keep driving. While passing through Three Rivers around dusk I stopped to take this image of the Valero Refinery. The whole place is fenced off and I felt that surely someone would come ask me what I was doing. Places like this are real paranoid about pictures being taken. The funny thing is, I would learn more about the place by looking at it on Google Earth if I was up to no good.

This last one is my booth at the Beachcombers Art Show in South Padre Island. Good thing I took this Friday after setting up because many of them have now headed for new homes in South Texas.

Images from Omaha trip!

You would think that images shot when I went to Omaha would be shown before images I took while on my Rockport trip. Well, it seems that I am editing things a little out of order and just now sat down and took a good look at the work from the Omaha trip. The top image was taken at a run down Car Museum in northern Oklahoma. It is full of neat old cars but they are dusty and the building needs some work. I almost wish it had fewer cars with more room to work and photograph around each one. Not much light either, but that can be a good thing at times. The image below was found in another small town in the area. This old truck is just about to be completely covered up with vines.

After the first day of the Omaha show ended on Friday evening, I decided to stop and look at the Thomas Mangelsen Gallery. It is located right behind a parking garage where I had left my vehicle all day. Some pretty cool nature and wildlife photography. I also noticed The Diner which was in the same block. I decided to shoot it after the show was over on Saturday night. I tried to get there before it was completely dark and shot five exposures which were combined with Photomatix Pro. The bottom image was taken in Galena, Kansas which is just west of Joplin, Missouri. It was about 10:00pm when I took this and any light from sunset was long gone. I shot numerous compositions with a variety of exposures. During the long exposures I used some flash and even some colored gels with some of the flash. After looking at what I had shot, I decided that I liked a natural look the best.