Add this place to your “List of Things To Do” when you visit Austin. The new race track in southeast Austin is worth the trip. Built in 2012 to be America’s new home for F1, you feel like you’re in another country or world, where the only thing that matters is speed. There is literally nothing else for miles, as you can see from a few pictures below. Miles of Texas countryside and then a massive racetrack with a very well-designed main tower. Not only does the race track host auto events, but there are concerts there now too! A few friends and I had the opportunity to go to the afternoon trials before the Grand Am a few months ago.
At the time, I didn’t own a telephoto lens, but I decided to rent one from Precision Camera, an awesome local camera store here in Austin. Unfortunately, the one I wanted to rent was already checked out, but one of the employees (who wanted to go but had to work) cut me a deal and allowed me to rent a better lens for the price of the original one, as long as I sent him some of my pictures. See below.
It’s been awesome getting to know Vanessa and Jimmy over the last few years, and we had an amazing time taking their engagement pictures and soon-to-be family pictures earlier this month. They’re so much fun! Thankfully, it didn’t get too hot this afternoon, and we were able to enjoy Butler Park without completely melting. First, we did some family pictures, then split off from the kids for the engagement shots. We were so excited to hear about their engagement and can’t wait to photograph the wedding too. Congrats!
It’s been a while since I’ve done any HDR photography (which is simply a method of combining multiple bracketed images to create one image with a larger dynamic range than a normal photograph), but I just couldn’t help myself a few nights ago. As I’ve mentioned previously, I can’t stand when people use HDR to create some ridiculously phony looking picture (Google it), but that’s just personal preference. I like to utilize it in a minimal way to effectively re-create the image as I remember my eyes seeing it, since our eyes have significantly higher dynamic range than our cameras. Hopefully I was able to do that here. This is the Pennybacker Bridge – the portion of Capital of Texas Highway 360 that spans Lake Austin. You can see the skyscrapers of the Austin skyline peeking out over the horizon just to the left of the bridge in each photo. Enjoy!