On Location With Rick Lee: January 2008

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Big Boy Monument?

I was driving on Kanawha Boulevard the other day and I was surprised to see this being constructed on a vacant lot. It's a vacant lot where a bowling alley was recently demolished. Before the bowling alley, there was a Shoney's restaurant. The very first Shoney's Big Boy drive-in. Is this a monument to that restaurant? A monument to Alex Schoenbaum? I'm just guessing.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

A great story...

... about a digital camera, some good people, and a mystery. Click here to read.

Six Towers

Hat Trick

Seen in the Subway. I never saw anybody carry their cell-phone like this. Do people do this a lot?

Saturday, January 19, 2008

Friday, January 18, 2008

Ssssmmokin'!

I've been meaning to try some smoke photography ever since I saw it here.

There are some great instructions at that link if you're interested. It looked like a lot of fun. I was messing around in the studio today and I realized that I had a black background already set up and I had incense and everything else I needed right at hand so I had a go at it. It's simultaneously a blast and very frustrating. The smoke does all sorts of wonderful stuff and the flash freezes the incredible shapes, but holy cow is it hard to get it in focus. It hurts to see that you captured some unbelievable shape only to find that it's not in focus. Getting the stuff in focus is very, very difficult. Click on the photos to see more detail.

These first three shots are just straight photos of smoke. The color is natural, but I goosed the saturation up some in Photoshop.

The following shots have the color "inverted"... that is, they are actually negatives of the originals. The color has been played with a little bit using the "Hue" control in Photoshop.

All in all I'd say it was a pretty successful afternoon's tinkering. I'm totally fascinated with the shapes created by air currents. I'm sure I'll do some more of these. The results are so beautiful I think they'd make good art for the walls at home.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Sunrise over the Kanawha - Part 6

Here we go again. The sun came up nicely this morning. When I came out of the front door, there were some fantastic pink clouds but they disappeared before I could get a shot of them. But I got this on the way to work. Click here for more of these.