As most young boy’s, I was fascinated by trains when I was little. I still am to a small degree. Add lots of bright lights, reflections, a fast moving scale train and I am in heaven. This shot was taken at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens Garden Lights exhibit. It was probably one of the most difficult to take. There were so many people working their way around the scene that I had to dodge the pedestrians to get a few shots. Well worth the fight though.
Over my lifetime, I have witnessed the need to institute safety measures for many things. One of those has been the installation of fences along most of the bridges that cross major highways in the Atlanta area. I really don’t have an opinion one way or the other about them. However, they are truly inconvenient when you want to take photos of traffic and there is no opening for a camera.
Another shot from my short walk around midtown Atlanta. One of my favorite types of photos are the light trails from vehicle tail lights. I hope that the city of Atlanta put a camera size hole in the fence on the south side of the 17th street bridge. There is a great angle to get the Atlanta skyline. Until then, this will have to suffice for that location. I will have to share the shots of the building near the middle that looks like two sails bending toward each other sometime soon.
This statue is in front of the Boys and Girls Club of America headquarters on Peachtree Street in Atlanta. I was having tons of fun taking photos around this area and ran across this one. I had to wait a couple minutes for my turn, but I think it was worth it. This status is only a few feet tall, so I had to lay down to get this angle. I got a few odd looks for it. It’s all in a days work.
Visual proof that if you work hard there is no limit to what you can do. Even making it on top of the world.
So, I am finally back after weathering the perfect storm. Last week, I discovered that the site had bee infected by one of the “Pharma” hacks. I set aside time for fixing it last week, was successful, and then spend the weekend with my wife. Round two…
Sunday morning, I had a hard drive failure. Not just any hard drive, the one with my last years worth of photos. NOT good… In fact, really, really, BAD. I have spent the last week in recovery mode.
At least it was not a hardware failure. It was just a write error, CRC for anyone that knows. Of the approximately 100,000 photos from the last year, I only lost about 2000. Most of those were from two different time lapses that I had finished working on and exported. It just kinda bites that I will not be able to go back and adjust anything in them now.
Lesson 1 – 10: BACK-UP everything and frequently. I now have several hard drives that I am going to be keeping synced.
Last weekend, prior to the crash, I went to Midtown Atlanta for some nighttime skyline shots. My plan was to shoot from the 17th street bridge south. Unfortunately, that side of the bridge was closed for construction work and I could not get what I wanted. I did get this shot from the Atlantic Station side of the bridge. The 11 is on the side of Atlanta Fire Department Station 11. I’m gonna wait a couple months and hope that the construction is gone and try again.
I am still mesmerized by the photos from my visit to the Garden Lights exhibit. Not only are there many different beautiful scenes, but virtually every path is lined by lights of all colors. This was about halfway through our walk in the gardens and it had just begun to rain and started making some good reflections off the pavement.
This was my third favorite photo from my trip through the Garden Lights display. I waited until the very end to take it. I had been taking photos of a couple Admiring the Tree and then through out the Green and Blue Twinkling Terrace. It started raining fairly descent and my family took shelter on the porch of the Day Hall. This shot was from just under the overhang.
Another shot from the Garden Lights exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. We were fortunate that, until just before this shot, there was almost no rain. The rain made the last 30 minutes or so a little uncomfortable, but it was not unbearable. It is interesting to see peoples reactions when they run across someone taking a photo. Their first reaction is to stop and remain out of the line of the camera so that they will not be in the photo. It took a little encouragement to get them to walk in front of the camera. During this shot, there were at least 5 – 10 people that walked across. I guess they thought I did not have the camera on.
This is another shot from the Garden Lights exhibit at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. I was intrigued by the multitude of lights that were used to make this light tree. The pole holding the lights up was in the middle of a fountain and the lights were attached to the edges. I liked the patterns of the reflections in the water. I don’t know why the green ones made shapes and the purple ones did not. Kinda strange if you ask me.
There are several areas of the Atlanta Botanical Gardens that I thought were pretty neat. Well, all of it was neat. I took this shot from the Twinkling Terrace, but you can see one of the great trees and the Orchestral Orbs in the background. The rain was just right and left just enough water on the ground for the reflections.
