Brussels – Day 1

We’ve arrived in Brussels without incident. The plane ride went smooth and we easily sorted getting the train from the airport to Central Station for a mere €2.80 a piece and and before you know it, we were checking into our hotel which is literally across the street from Central Station.

I was amused to see a coke machine in the train station featuring Manekkin Pis.

Manneken Pis Coke Machine

It’s cold here. VERY cold. High today was right around freezing. But the sun is out! I’ll take it!

Grand Place

One of our first stops was Leonidas to get some chocolate.

Leonidas Chocolate

We did a little walking around but were were pretty exhausted so went back to the hotel to take a nap.

After sleeping for a few hours we headed back out. The sun was down and we wanted to see the light show in the Grand Place. It was really something to see. Moving lights set to music.

Light show in Grand Place

I’ll post a video later.

I’ll say this, swapping lenses and shooting with a tripod in this cold is not the most fun. But I am determined.

Now it’s off to bed to sleep in earnest. More tomorrow.

Landscape Lighting

I am not the handiest guy around. I can manage the technical stuff, but when it comes to home maintenance and improvement I like to “leave it to the professionals.”

I’ve been wanting some landscape lighting for awhile now. For decorative as well as security purposes. I decided I would go to Lowe’s and check out my options. It took some time to sort it out, but I bought some lights, some cable and a timer enabled power converter and worked all day last Saturday installing it. There’s been a few tweaks over this past week and the above picture is the end result of my efforts. The pic doesn’t do it justice. It’s really something to see in person and I am quite proud of myself.

Studio Work

I was contacted recently by my friend, Henry Davis, the brilliant graphic artist about a project. He’d been retained by Allen “King Of The Oldies” Hill to produce a holiday card for Allen Hill Entertainment and he needed a photographer to assist in the project. Apparently he couldn’t find one, so he came to me.

Allen wanted a card that depicted himself ice skating on the reflection pool in front of Houston City Hall.

Since it rarely gets below freezing in these parts, much less does it ever snow, this was going to be a studio project combined with digital chicanery. We arranged to meet up at the Houston Chronicle to “borrow” their photography studio and staged what we needed and Henry did the rest in Photoshop.

It was my first time in a studio with the new flash. I think it came out pretty well.

Exodus

View On Black

Traffic is thick everywhere as Houston drivers who normally avoid the freeway use it to avoid congested surface streets with non-functioning traffic lights.

As a EZ-TAG card carrying user of the Houston toll system, I am personally frustrated with the fact that Houston has opened up the toll roads to all traffic for free. This has caused congestion on my main means of getting in and out of town. I am counting the minutes till Saturday when the tolls are once again enforced and the riff-raff is relegated to the FREE-ways.