End of day is only another beginning of the blackish essence of nightness. End of day, end of light, end of sight, ending now. Though I love the sun in bright mid day, something about the light on the horizon as it sinks into the west, warms my innards.
Gibberish? Quite so!
Wish you could have been there. If you love blues, that is. Just another, and my last for now, shot from the 1997 St Louis Blues Heritage Festival. I decided to keep this one in color. That beautiful instrument made color a must.
Processing: The original color transparency was scanned and worked in Adobe Photoshop to bring out more of the details and balance colors.
Equipment used: During the festival, I used a couple of Nikon n90s bodies with a 28-70mm f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8 and a 20-35mm f/3.5-f/4.5.
The original St. Louis Blues Heritage Festival moved from Laclede’s Landing to Buder Park in southwest St. Louis County after a run on the Landing that began in 1991. The move was an attendance disaster and that festival was replaced by the Big Muddy Blues & Roots Festival back on the Landing sponsored by the Laclede’s Landing Merchant’s Association. And it’s been very successful. That’s on the Mississippi River for those not familiar with that beautiful city.
But, just my luck, I was hired to do photography for that Buder Park blunder. Needless to say, I have a few hundred color slides from the event that were never used (purchased) and I, being a little more trusting than now, worked on a verbal agreement. Live and learn. 
The talented blues man above is Robert Lockwood Jr. He was one of the blues veterans at the festival along with a few others including Jerry Lee Lewis. Yes, the Big Bopper is in his senior years but could still perform.
Photographically speaking, I framed this shot as more of an environmental portrait because of the very nice de-focused background. I’ve included the color version below. I must admit, I really enjoy working these older images in black and white. It’s something about the context. I’ll be sharing more for the next few days.
Processing: The original color transparency was scanned and worked in Adobe Photoshop to bring out more of the details. The black and white version was produced using Image > Adjustments > Black & White where I adjusted the sliders for red, yellow and blue to draw attention to Mr Lockwood and his beautiful Guild 12 string electric guitar.
Equipment used: During the festival, I used a couple of Nikon n90s bodies with a 28-70mm f/2.8, 80-200 f/2.8 and a 20-35mm f/3.5-f/4.0.
This image is from way back when digital cameras were still trying to win the favor of the professional community. At that time, my camera of choice was a trusty Nikon n90. This color slide image (probably some kind of Fujifilm product) shows the beauty and limitations of those great little transparencies. Though I loved working with the different films, I doubt that I will ever go back except for an occasional fun fling with my old rangefinders.
Adobe Photoshop was my favorite darkroom then as now.
Taking a break from HDR today to present one of my oldie favorites. Many, many, many years ago, this volcanic residue was streaming into the Pacific ocean off the coast of what we now call the island of Oahu in the state of Hawaii. And this photo was taken only many years ago while I was living there.
I’m not sure about camera or lens since I was using a variety of Nikon bodies and every Nikkor prime lens from 20mm to 135mm. Most zooms were still pretty soft back then.
My color slide film of choice was Kodachrome . . . with all those nice bright colors that make all the world a sunny day. (hmmm!) To get an idea of the magnitude of this dry magma flow, you can see a railing with cars parked in the upper right of the image.