After leaving Fredericksburg, which was a bit of a disappointment, we made our way back to Austin. The day before we read about the state park, but we put it on the maybe list… Then we saw the sign on the street, and spontaniously decided to visit the park, even if it was just for 30 minutes (it was getting dark fast). It is a pretty rock to hike, but it is at least 1h drive from Fredericksburg, even if the maps make it look less.

We stumbled more or less through a happy accident onto the Benini Sculpture Ranch in/near Johnson City, TX. We were walking though Johnson City on Sunday afternoon, found only one art gallery open, chatted with the owner who strongly suggested that we try to get to the sculpture ranch as long as there is some daylight left. We drove about 6 miles through ranch land including cattle grates, and found the ranch, which was a really nice equivalent to Stormking, a sculpture park 2h north of NYC. It was the end of an “Arts Encounter” and it was really nice to meet a handful of the artists who are exhibiting on the ranch, including the Benini’s themselfs, who were most generous and tremendously nice people. The interesting bit about the Benini Ranch is that it was Lyndon B Johnsons ranch before, where he had 3 trailers to write his memoirs. The trailers got then later replaced with a real house by the next owners, and then Benini bought it in the 70s, and made it a sculpture park with his works, and tons of other great artists. If you are in Austin, try to make the 1h drive to the ranch, it is really worth the time.

Here are the views from the top of the mountain:

Bettye is currently exhibiting a couple of her metal sculptures at the Benini Sculpture Ranch in/near Johnson City, TX, including two of her magnificent Texas Long Horns. One of them you can see right next to the highway, the other one (see below) is in the ranch, some 5 miles off the highway. I personally think that they would make great pieces on a NYC penthouse, or would look great at Stormking.

Johnson City looked like a small Texas town during the day, but transformed itself after sunset into a christmas light spectacular, with everybody competing who has the most lights out, and the obvious winner was of course the local utility company, who decorated a whole grove of trees with lights, Hill County Style…

On our road trip through Texas we landed in Austin and spent one and a half day, barely enough to get a good impression of the city. I had the feeling that we had not enough time and everything felt a bit rushed, but at least I managed to shoot some panoramas.

Of course I had to walk around and find strange abandoned/deserted places that would look interesting in a panorama, like this Kettle Restaurant. Especially the juxtaposition between “Always Open” and the restaurant closed for the afternoon/night was hard to resist:

One of the fascinating aspects of Houston was the clustering of well known staples, like Starbucks, Wafflehouse etc. This panorama is an attempt of a panorama… I wanted to capture the handful of large signs, but I should have probably spent more time to get it right.

It was just a very curious evening, and we decided to simply walk around and see how Baytown looks at night, and see if there is anything interesting to photograph. I have to admit that this might not be the most successful panorama that I have ever taken.

The oil and chemical industry is all over Houston, particularly in the south, and the sites look fabulosly at night, much nicer than the handful of installations in NJ. If you happen to own one of these, or work for one, please contact me, I would love to photograph some more of these for your company.

I finally got around to post a test panorama exposed with my Arduino Bracketmeister. For those interested, the base exposure for the relatively dark backyard was 15s at ISO800/f5.6 and brackets at +-3 and +-1.5EV (2, 6, 15, 40, 120sec). Exposure fused directly in PTgui.

Last night at 8.30 local time was Earth Hour, and 4000 cities world wide participated and turned off their lights for one hour, with great results. New York City on the other hand was a big disappointment… sure, some of the larger structures turned off (Empire State Building and the Citi Corp Building, but over all not many cared about it, and especially Times Square was the biggest disappointment… 4(!) out of 50+ large signs were turned off, and none of the retailers participated. What a drag…

NY skyline before Earth Hour:

NY skyline during Earth Hour:

Times Square during Earth Hour:

(pan around with your mouse, shift or apple/command to zoom, right click for fullscreen)

In order to bring some order into my websites (about 4 of them now), I am trying to separate the commercial aspect from the fine art aspect. Visit joergengeerds.com for my commercial photography, luminous-newyork.com for my fine art photography, or continue reading here on newyorkpanorama.com. One thing that will also change here on this website is that I will start blogging about other things, probably mostly art and photography and related stuff, since I do believe that 2 personal websites about your own work is enough.

Ever since I shot the pano in April, I was unhappy about it (the second one), and decided to reshoot it (the first one), with more coverage to the left, and a bit more resolution.
About 400 megapixel.

I went to the 2007 Macy’s Parade balloon setup staging area around the American Museum of Natural History, which is quite a spectacle for everybody. Starting around midnight, I worked all night, up to the moment the parade actually leaves the staging area. I shot so many panoramas that I am still not finished editing them. If you are interested buying a regular print (i.e. 20-30in), or if you want to license or use them for something, send me an email. (Given the nature of the parade, I do not have any model releases for those). Let me know which ones you like

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Peg, who I met at the last day of the Tabla Rasa Show, was so kind to offer her rooftop for this great panorama. I think this is so far the nicest ESB panorama. What do you think?.
Digital, about 1 gigapixel.

I did another Wall Street panorama set upon request from Der Spiegel, but unfortunately they did not wanted to use it (yet). So, if you are interested licensing them, contact me.

Many many megapixel.

This panorama is a little bit an experiment… I wanted to get as much supreme court as possible into one photo. Hopefully I can get a panorama from the inside one day, since the hallway alone looks very promising.
Digital, about 400 megapixel.

I am continuing to work on my Chinatown series. It has become a bit difficult, since I really want to photograph a bit more of the street life, but none of the store owners want to speak english (anybody speaking some form of chinese and wants to help me convincing store owners?) Never the less, Chinatown has a fuzzy border in New York, and merges easily into the court quarter around Centre Street and this is a very nice example of one of those fuzzy borders.
Digital, about 550 megapixel.

It’s very interesting to see just how many rooftops are out there, and how they are used in the Upper West Side.
Digital, about 600 megapixel.

Astroland has closed it’s doors officially on September 7, 2008. The Albert family sold the property to Thor Equity in 2006, who will be redeveloping the area into a $1.5b resort. (With the current economy, that plan might take a bit longer.) According to wiki, the Alberts agreed to maintain the Cyclone roller coaster, and will probably relocate some of the landmarks like the tower. The parachute jump is already a landmark, but the Wonderwheel will probably become history. Together with the Coney Island shots from last year, here and below is my homage to THE New York amusement park:

Edit: I guess in a couple of years of legal back and forth between the city and the developers we will know if Coney Island will look like this abandoned South Korean amusement park, or more like Las Vegas.

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The lights and colors of this area were really attractive. I did try this panorama last week, but my memory card died on me, so I had to reshoot, and fortunately it turned out much better. The waiters of both restaurants were a bit curious to see what I was up to, but didn’t say anything. The moon over the Statue of Liberty was just a quick 7 panel panorama, nothing special, but I left the orange/yellow sky over New jersey as it really was. The moon was dark yellow, about 4 year old Gauda cheese. I did dial the orange down in the first/large panorama, because it was just a bit too much.
Digital, about 650 megapixel.

Alice in Wonderland (José de Creeft) was commissioned by George Delacorte for his wife in 1959 and is said to be the most beloved statue in Central Park. It is certainly, together with Hans Christian Anderson, the most approachable statue, almost like a playground piece.

About 500 megapixel