Taken by Kevin Buchanan. View larger on Flickr.

Cafe Modern at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. This is a three-exposure HDR image tone mapped in Photomatix Pro, taken with a Canon Digital EOS Rebel XT. I took this HDR image handheld, without a tripod. I’m not a big fan of super-processed HDR images, so I always try for a more realistic appearance – I think I’ve achieved that on this image.

Thought y’all might like to see.

Just after the news of the Pour House planning to close and leave their now-XTO-owned building comes news that XTO is planning a new building on downtown’s east side. The building would replace the vacant lot at 7th & Calhoun the company was planning on using for parking for their Binyon O’Keefe Warehouse restoration across the street. If you’re curious, I’ve got more at sister site Fort Worthology.

The building that’s pure perfection.

What is now the downtown FedEx Kinko’s was at one point Hogan Office Supplies, run by Ben Hogan’s brother. When Kinko’s moved in, they never bothered to remove this awning, and a sign on the rear of the building.

Carter + Burgess Plaza rises over the Embassy Suites downtown.

For those of you who don’t read both West & Clear and my other little baby, Fort Worthology, here’s a summary of what you missed whilst cruelly stomping on my heart with your steel-toed Ignore Boots. C’mon, baby – Fort Worthology loves you like a kitten, too.

• A link to an old ’70s plan to extend the Leonard’s/Tandy Center subway
• A note that the Museum Place development marches onwards with the closing and imminent demolition of J & J’s Hideaway
• A post about Agricultural Urbanism – techniques for integrating food-growing into a dense, walkable environment
• A video from the CNU showing how walkable neighborhoods help reduce energy use and pollution
• Another one of my laments (collect the whole set) about the closed and decaying Heritage Park downtown
• Some updated site plans for the West 7th development
• A note about the Downtown Design Review Board’s half-approval of new lighting for the Texas & Pacific train station/lofts
• A request for information on vacant lots for sale in Fairmount

It’s been a while since the last time I did one of these big development roundups, so let’s do another one, covering the current hotbed of activity – the 7th Street corridor between downtown and the museums. A lot has changed since the last time I wrote about these developments, so let’s dive right in.

Museum Place is really making significant strides in construction these days. The area around the development is a world of torn-up pavement, orange cones, fences, and cranes as work steadily moves from the big 7th/University/Camp Bowie/Bailey intersection back into the neighborhood.

Above, the big building of the development, One Museum Place, is getting more glass installed as its facade installation continues. This building will be home to ground-level retail, office space, and condos on the upper two floors.

[Read more]

Speculation has been running around ever since Chesapeake Energy announced their purchase of the Pier 1 Place skyscraper from Pier 1 Imports that the gas drilling company would relight the building’s distinctive night lighting system, which has been turned off for months due to money troubles at Pier 1 (I took the above photo on February 11, 2007, at which point the lights were still on).

Now, a fairly strong rumor is running around that Chesapeake will be holding an event of some sort on June 9th to relight the tower. Love them or hate them, it looks like the lights of Pier 1 Place (or should that be Chesapeake Plaza?) will once again be shining into the night sky over downtown Fort Worth.

We’ll let y’all know as we learn more.

HDR – High Dynamic Range – Photography involves a bit more work than just aiming and pressing the shutter button. For the uninitiated, HDR photography is the technique of taking multiple photos of a subject with different exposures (allowing different amounts of light onto the camera’s sensor), then blending those separate exposures with a computer to get one photo with a much higher range of definition in light and shadow than is possible with a single photo. A camera can’t see as wide a range of light at once as the human eye – so, if done realistically, these blended exposures can get photography closer to what the eye sees. In effect, you’re making areas of the photo that would otherwise be under or over exposed look correct. You can also go really nuts and make very unreal looking images, but I’ve gone for realism.

It can be a little tricky – significant moving objects tend to fluster the HDR blending software, and a tripod is pretty much essential, since each exposure must be from an identical angle and position for the technique to work.

Here are seven HDR photos I’ve taken in downtown Fort Worth. All were taken with my Canon PowerShot G9, and all are the result of three exposures blended in a piece of software called Photomatix Pro. Click on each for a bigger view.

It’s been another busy week at West & Clear’s sister site Fort Worthology, so here’s some of what’s been going on since last Thursday:

• SoSeven’s rolling along on the Shops & Lofts.
• I took my usual architecture nerd’s perspective in examining a new-construction home of traditional architecture in Fairmount.
• Rumors are afoot – Is the United Way Building coming down? And what might replace it?
• I took another perspective on the Susan Alanis hiring.
• I rolled out a bunch of HDR photos of downtown.
• Finally, I wrote up a huge post today going into detail on the neighborhoods of the Trinity Uptown plan.