How was your week? I’m glad the work week is over…. Happy thoughts the rest of the weekend is my only goal. This photo represents a past happy moment when Blair and I were hanging out at the Point State Park taking photos and just talking. If you look close, we’re the two people in front of the fountain.
Layers Of Water
I took this photo a few months ago during sunrise at the Point State Park. The water fountain at the “point” can make for some great photo opportunities throughout the day. Plus, you have the river in the background, which adds another layer of depth to the photo.
Sunrise Point
Brad, Blair and I met way, way, way too early this morning (my sleep will be messed up for a week) to photograph the sunrise in downtown Pittsburgh. For those of you who don’t know, there is a Pennsylvania state park positioned where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers come together to form the Ohio River in the heart of the city. The park’s name is Point State Park for obvious reasons.
Anyway, at the “point” in the park where the rivers come together is a large water fountain. They turn it on right after sunrise each day. We wanted to capture the sunrise reflection in the water of the fountain. Fortunately, it worked out since I’ve failed to capture this a few times in the past. We finally got a nice sunrise and sky, which made this image powerful.
Point Fountain
MJ, Blair and I worked in the yard all day and now I feel like I could go to bed immediately (it’s only 7pm). But I’ll probably stay up a couple more hours, otherwise I’ll be awake at 4am staring at the ceiling. Anyway, due to my physical exhaustion, I will keep this short.
Here is a photo I took with my drone looking at downtown Pittsburgh. On this morning, Blair and I tried to catch a nice sunrise that didn’t happen. We got this cloudy morning instead.
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The Point from Above 2
Here is the follow up video from my last blog post. I created this with my drone. Blair and I are standing at the point within the Point State Park very early in the morning…..
The Point from Above
Yesterday, Blair and I got up early in an attempt to catch the sunrise at The Point State Park. Unfortunately, we had two events happen that prevented our planned photo. First, the Fountain was turned on when it was supposed to be turned off. Second, the sunrise was a bust!! So, we made the best with what we were given. I captured this photo as part of this excursion.
Come back in a day or so to see the next blog post, which will be a drone video from this spot.
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Melk Abbey
This Benedictine abbey in the town of Melk Austria sits upon a hill top overlooking the Melk village and the Danube river in the Wachau valley. The abbey was started in 1089. The abbey started the monastic school in the 12th century and today has over 900 students. This building was built starting in 1702 and finished in 1736. I took this photo inside an internal courtyard.
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Trevi
We’re heading to Europe again this year and I can’t wait. We’ll be traveling down the Danube River on one of the river boats. It should be great, assuming the river levels are not too high or low….. Apparently, that’s a potential real problem with river cruises…..
Anyway, tonight’s post from a previous Europe trip. I love Trevi Fountain.
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Trevi Fountain
I’ve posted photos from this spot a few times in the past. And I’ll probably post a few more in the future, because it is easily my favorite fountain in the world…. At least at this point. As you probably know, this fountain is in the Trevi district of Rome Italy. It is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most famous fountains in the world. They started renovations on the fountain to make it more grand in 1732 and finished the job in 1762. It was refurbished in 1988, 1998 and again in 2014. Thankfully the renovations just involved cleaning, repair and replacement of light. It’s hard to imagine they could improve the 1732 design.
To view a larger version, click HERE.
Interestingly, like many famous tourist sites, it is covered with hundreds (maybe thousands depending on the time of day) tourists. So, getting a shot without people in the way is tough. Below is a behind the scene photo to give you an idea of what I mean.
Behind the scene shot….. to many tourist!
Trevi
I took a ton of photos of the Trevi Fountain, during our short visit to this great site. Unfortunately, I didn’t get many great photos. I struggled to get good composition with the tourist basically standing shoulder to shoulder in the area around the fountain. It was tough to find an angle without people in the way or even get to the spot I wanted.
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Trevi Fountain
During our trip to Europe, one of our many stops was in Rome. No trip to Rome would be complete without a stop at the Trevi Fountain….at least that’s my opinion. The fountain was designed by Italian architect Nicola Salvi. The construction started in 1732 and was completed in 1762. What an amazing location…..its a must see!!
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Stuntman or Just Crazy??
Last night I met up with Dave and Brad Truxell (the amazing
father/son photography team) to shoot some pictures of the new and improved
water fountains at Point State Park in downtown Pittsburgh. This park is the point of the city
where the Monongahela River and Allegheny River come together to form the Ohio
River. The fountain hasn’t worked
in over four years. They just
renovated it and turned it back on this summer. I’ll post some pictures of that in the future.
While we where down there (after the cops left) a young man named Joseph Gill from Sharpsville PA, started jumping his bike off the high (over 6 feet tall) columns down onto the sidewalk in front of the foundaton. We got his permission to photograph him and took some pictures while he jumped.
This is a series of pictures I took of him merged together so you can see his flight path through the air as he leaves the column, spins in the air and lands backward. Now on this specific run, he crashed. I saw him land it a number of times before this, so I don’t want you to think he couldn’t do it. But I just liked this specific ending because I thought it was more interesting.
So you have some idea of scale, Joseph is at least 6 feet tall. That should help give you an idea of the size of this jump, his skill and the technical difficulty of this activity. I started this by asking if it was a stuntman or whether he was just crazy. In the end, I think it’s both. It was cool meeting Joseph and awesome watching him perform. Thanks to Joseph for the show.
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