Category Archives: Downtown

Armadillo World Headquarters, Austin, Cityscapes, Downtown, Photography, Zilker Park

Discovering My Long-Lost Time Capsule

July 27, 2013 Gregg 15 Comments

Last Sunday, I was rummaging around in one of our storage closets, where I had remembered seeing a box of old shorts that had become too big to wear. I was now tired of my size 36″ waist shorts being too tight, so I had succumbed to the disgusting reality that I now needed to get out those old size 38″ shorts again. After I got onto our short step ladder, I saw that there was a small box on top of the box labeled “Shorts – 38”, so I took that box down and opened the lid to see what the heck other useless junk we’d been saving around here.

What I found made me immediately start to tremble with excitement! This wasn’t a box of junk. This was a box I had been looking for for years. This was my box of 35mm slides!

After I put all of the “big boy” shorts into the washing machine, I sat down at the kitchen table and sorted out my new found treasure. Fortunately, inside the box I also had a GAF Pana-Vue 1 Lighted 2×2 Slide Viewer. Today, I am absolutely shocked to see that B&H still sells the exact same model that I have!

I was thankful that I never installed the size C batteries, as I was certain that they would have been corroded and ruin the electrical contacts. Instead, I just plugged in the AC adapter into the wall, pushed down on the light bar, and instant glow! The light bulb still worked, but man, was it ever dusty inside of this thing. A few blasts of air from my Rocket Blower, and I was all set to find out what sort of photos that I would find.

There was only one specific box of slides that I had been looking for, and it contained photos that I had taken inside of a famous local nightclub / concert hall just a few nights before it closed its doors forever. Those photos will definitely be used sometime soon for a blog post, as I am sure that they will be of interest to many other longtime Austinites!

That box of photos was plainly marked “AWHQ 12-27-80”, but only a few of the other 11 boxes were labeled in any way whatsoever. One said “Cats Jan. 1982”, one said “Fireworks Fujichrome 50”, and the others said “Zilker Gardens”, “Foreigner 4 1-17-1982, Cars 1-24-82”, “Lake Travis 3-81”, “Good Shots 1” and “Good Shots 2”.

Obviously, I didn’t know anything about proper library management of photos 30 years ago! Even after I went fully digital in 2004, and right up until sometime in mid-2008, everything, and I mean everything that was worth keeping, ended up in a photo album. There are about 20 of these behemoths on a couple of bookshelves in one of our spare bedrooms. I listed the range of dates inside the front cover for the time span that was contained within that album, but rarely did I write any descriptions about who was in the photo, or where it was taken.

I got my first “real camera” in 1980. It was a Canon AE-1, and I got it with a 50mm f/1.8 lens. A year or so later I bought two more used Canon FD lenses from and advertisement in the newspaper. One was a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens that came with an extension tube. The other was a 200mm f/2.8 that came with a 2x extender.

I mention that because I know for certain that this is all of the camera equipment that I had when all of the slides in this box were taken. Well, yes, I also had a Canon flash and an inexpensive Manfrotto tripod… And about 1987 or 1988 I replaced my camera body with a used Canon A-1 and also bought a 28mm lens. There wasn’t any Image Stabilzation back then – that’s what a tripod was for. The lenses were all manual focus back then, too. There weren’t any High ISO sensors, either. I am rather certain that the highest sensitivity slide film that I ever used was ASA (ISO) 64. (Now I also shot a lot of ASA 400 print film, but slides were slow. Very slow.)

So I sat at the kitchen table for nearly 3 hours last Sunday trying to figure out what I had. I got through 10 of the 12 boxes. I took yesterday off of work as a vacation day and used that time to go back through, from the beginning, and document what was in each box. 5 hours later, I had finished that task.

The photo above was the first slide in the box labeled “Zilker Park”, and so I can only say that this view of downtown Austin was taken from Zilker Park, or somewhere very near to there, like Barton Hills Dr. What I do know, is that this photo was taken in the spring of 1981, and I was using Ektachrome slide film, which I mailed to Kodak for development. I’d guess that it was ASA 64 film.

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

The photo below was also taken during the spring or summer of 1981, also on Ektachrome. This was a few months after the Armadillo World Headquarters had closed its doors.

Yesterday evening was the very first time in my life that I have ever scanned a slide into my computer. I am using an Epson V500 scanner, with the Epson Scan software. I played around with the settings in the histogram area for several attempts before I got something close to what I could work with. I’m not sure exactly what Digital ICE does, but it does seem to remove most of the smaller dust spots. (I have cleaned the glass surfaces with a lens cleaner, and blown the dust away from the scanner and the slide using my Rocket Blower.) I can get a pretty decent TIFF file from the Epson software, but thank God that Lightroom 5 can take it from there. Add a little Exposure, a little Clarity, bring down the Blacks, and it’s pretty much done.

This next photo was the very next photo in Box #9 after the Armadillo sign photo. I must have gone about 1 block over to Auditorium shores and taken this photo of downtown Austin.

I hope that these photos look decent enough when you view them from my blog post. I scanned them at 4800 dpi, and honestly, when I zoomed in for my first 100% pixel-peeping view, I was very surprised, and disappointed by all of the graininess that I saw. These photos are in some serious need of sharpening, but so far my attempts to do that only bring out the graininess even more. I have played around with the Luminance Noise Reduction slider, and that helps. I have also used the Masking slider for the Sharpening amount, and that helps some too. My inspection of these 1200 pixel wide JPGs that I am putting here look surprisingly good, considering what I saw on the full resolution versions. I’ve been at this for less than 24 hours so far, so hopefully I will get a better with some more practice!

This next photo should interest a few of you. This was taken on July 4th of 1981 (I think). I was on the north shore of Auditorium Shores along Town Lake (as it was known then), and the rounded top building behind the crowd on the south shore is the no-longer-existing Palmer Auditorium. This is the facility that my high school graduation took place in. That building was demolished years ago, and this is where the Long Center is located today!

Even though I still have to use this very low-tech Pana-Vue slide viewer to see what “treasures” I have uncovered, I am very glad that I have a modern scanner, attached to a modern computer, running modern software that allows me to bring these photo to an acceptable digital state.

Contrast that to a photo that I took some time in late 1981 or very early 1982. I was still in electrical engineering school at The University of Texas here in Austin. This was my desk where I spent countless hours doing my studies. On the left was my “computer”.

Oh, it was a real computer, alright. A Radio Shack Color Computer 2. The monitor was a 19″ Motorola Quasar TV. To the right of my monitor sits a little tape deck that was used for storage. That was before the 3.5″ floppy disk was widely accepted. This was about 3 years before I spent $2000 on the very first Apple Macintosh computer (in 1984)!

Maybe now you can realize what I realized as I viewed these 12 boxes of slides. It was like opening up a time capsule that I had buried more than half of my lifetime ago. Austin had changed. Technology has changed. I have changed!

Thank you for stopping by and visiting my blog today.

Architecture, Austin, Cityscapes, Downtown, Photography, Texas, Travel, Uncategorized

The Old and The New on Congress Avenue

June 17, 2013 Gregg 2 Comments

A couple of weekends ago, we had a lot of rain here in Austin. We were all constrained to indoor activities on Friday, Saturday, through Sunday morning, June 2^nd, 2013. Nobody complained, as we are always grateful when it rains in Austin, especially in the summer months.

When the rain stopped, and the clouds had parted, I decided to head out and take some photos. I was somewhat tired of the macro photos of the flowers in my neighborhood, so I decided to head to downtown Austin. It was almost 2:00 PM when I parked my CR-V on Willie Nelson Blvd (2nd Street), just east of Congress Avenue.

That put me just south of the construction site of the J. W. Marriot luxury hotel, and 1 block east of The Austonian (seen in the opening photo, which is currently the tallest building in the City of Austin at 56 stories – 683 feet (208 m) tall.

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, and my WhiBal card. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery. Absentmindedly, I left my hat in the car.

I crossed Congress Avenue to get to the west side of the street and started heading north.

Reminder: You can always view any photo at a larger size by just clicking on it. You will then need to use your browser’s “Back Button” to return to my story.

Now I must mention here that the photo above isn’t really how my camera captured the image. I used the new Upright feature in Lightroom 5’s Develop Module to remove most of the perspective distortion that you get when looking up with a wide angle lens. Not bad for a one-click correction!

I was pleased to see that the overcast sky had pretty much dissipated into the partially cloudy sky.

Here is a photo looking up the side of The Frost Bank Tower, which is 33 stories – 515 feet (157 m) tall.

I always find it interesting how the new architecture and the old architecture co-exist within this relatively small area.

But “old” in Austin, Texas isn’t really very old, as compared to most large cities. Even though Austin is now the 11^th most populous city in the United States, it did not even exist before 1839.

Even the iconic Littlefield Building (see with the American flag on top) didn’t start construction until 1910, and was completed in 1912. This 8 story building became the financial center of Austin, and was the height of opulence when it opened.

Here is the out-of-focus One American Center building behind an interesting business sign.

At 6^th and Congress, I paused to take this photo looking south.

This is the only other photo that “straightened-up” by using the new Upright feature in Lightroom 5.

I continued heading north until I reached 8^th Street, and then I turned around. Between 7^th and 8^th Streets, the historic Paramount Theatre (1915) sits just to the south (right) of the Stateside Theater (1935).

There isn’t very much traffic in downtown Austin during the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

I crossed over to the west side of Congress Avenue when I got to 7^th Street.

At the corner of 6^th Street, at the base of the Littlefield building, I had a nice view of the Austonian, 4 blocks to the south.

I was standing at the same corner with this iconic clock.

Looking across the street, I thought that this view of the base of One American Center was interesting enough to spend a minute to capture a few photos of it.

Here’s another one of those “old meets new” images that seem to be everywhere along this stretch of Congress Avenue.

At the entrance to The Frost Bank Tower, I noticed three or four of these large succulent plants.

Now I know that this is not a particularly pretty picture, but I included it just to give you some context for the setting of the next photo, which is part of the same plant, just from the opposite side.

It was getting pretty darn warm, and I had forgotten to bring my hat. I was glad that it was only a 2 block walk back to my car. As I got to the construction site of the new J. W. Marriot hotel, I couldn’t help but look up and take this photo of the three cranes.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

6th Street, Austin, Downtown, Photography, Texas, Travel

A Short Walk on East 6th Street

April 17, 2013 Gregg 4 Comments

This post is really the tail end of my previous post. Sunday, April 7, 2013, was an overcast day, but I was tired of being in the house. I decided to go somewhere that I seldom go – downtown Austin. I ended up walking south on Congress Avenue from the Texas State Capitol down to 2nd Street, where I turned around and headed back north – until I got to 6th Street.

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, and my X-Rite ColorChecker Passport. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery or a hat.

The truth is, I was just trying to get back to where I parked my car, which was three blocks east of Congress Avenue, on Trinity Street between and East 8th and East 9th Streets. I thought that 6th Street might be a “more scenic” route than 7th or 8th Street.

Within the first block after turning east on 6th Street, on the north side of the street sits the very historic Driskill Hotel, which has very recently been purchased by the Hyatt

I had my lens zoomed to as wide as it would go, which was 12mm (24mm equivalent), and even then I couldn’t get the entire front of the hotel into the frame. This is the only photo that I took that day where I wish I had some different equipment with me. My Canon 5D Mark II with the 24mm Tilt-Shift lens would have allowed me to capture the same photo – and not have the hotel seeming to be falling backwards (due to the perspective distortion). On the other hand, this would have been the ONLY photo that I would have wanted to be lugging that Canon camera (and a bag with at least one extra lens). Instead, this is “as good as I could do, with what I had with me”…

At the very first corner, which is Brazos Street, this is the view looking northeast along East 6th Street. Most Austinites do not see this scene at 4:00 PM on a Sunday afternoon. Actually most Austinites never see this scene, as East 6th Street is a one-way street, with traffic coming straight towards you in this next photo.

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I really don’t have much more of a story to tell. I only walked 2 more blocks along the south side of East 6th Street before I turned north on Trinity Street to get back to my car. Even though I don’t have much of a verbal story to tell, I did capture several photos within those 2 blocks that I would like to share with you!

People from all over the country (the world?) that come to visit Austin and ask “What’s there to do in this town?” are told about East 6th Street as one of the first suggestions. Obviously then, there are several businesses that cater to those who are visiting Austin.

Everyone who lives in Austin has heard or seen the slogan “Keep Austin Weird”. Most find it amusing, but nobody finds it offensive. This web site claims to be the origin of this slogan. I don’t really care, I just liked the tie-dyed T-shirt one vendor had hanging outside their front door.

And while you’re out partying on 6th Street, maybe you’ll have your thought processed altered enough that you might think that this is a good idea. 🙂

But really, the reason people come to East 6th Street is to drink and to listen to live music. I’ve never been to the Chuggin’ Monkey, but I like their sign….

After crossing San Jacinto Blvd, here’s another view looking northeast toward Trinity Street. Note that there really are not any modern buildings on East 6th Street, like there were back on Congress Avenue.

On the southeast corner of East 6th Street and Trinity Street sits Maggie Mae’s. I always thought that it was named after an old (but great) Rod Stewart song called Maggie May, but evidently the real story behind the name of this bar can be found here.

This little blackboard sign was in front of Maggie Mae’s, and I thought it was funny enough to photograph it.

OK, now that I was at Trinity Street, I needed to head north for two blocks to get back to my car. While still standing right outside of Maggie Mae’s, I looked back to the west, towards Congress Avenue, where you can see the modern buildings along Congress Avenue towering over the older buildings along East 6th Street.

Look closer at the photo above, and see if you can see the pair of cowboy boots dangling above the street…

It was just a quick, rather uneventful 2 block walk back to my trusty Honda CR-V.

Even though I had only been walking for 1 hour and 20 minutes, the time had just flown by, and I was certainly glad that I had left the house, despite the overcast and dreary sky that had been so prevalent earlier in the day.

It just goes to show you that sometimes you just need to get out there, and make the best of what you can of it.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Architecture, Austin, Colorful, Downtown, Photography, Travel

Walk on Congress Avenue

April 14, 2013 Gregg 6 Comments

Last Sunday, April 7, 2013, was an overcast day, but I was tired of being in the house. I needed to get out and walk around with my camera. I needed to go somewhere where a gray sky wouldn’t affect me and my photography too negatively. I decided to go somewhere that I seldom go – downtown Austin. During my 25 minute drive to get downtown, I noticed that the overcast sky was beginning to break up into a partly cloudy sky.

I drove up and down Congress Avenue, and even at 2:45 PM on a Sunday afternoon, there are no parking spaces available. I ended up parking three blocks east of Congress Avenue, on Trinity Street between and East 8th and East 9th Streets.

I thought that I would head towards the Texas State Capitol Building, which is located at 11th and Congress. As I walked west on East 10th Street, just west of San Jacinto Blvd., I noticed this building with reflections of both a Catholic Church and the Texas State Capitol building.

At the corner of Brazos St. and East 10th, I just looked up at the Texas Department of Transportation building and took this simple photo.

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I was pleased to see that the overcast sky had pretty much dissipated into the partially cloudy sky.

This next photo was taken while standing in the center of the crosswalk on Congress Avenue at 10th St.

I really didn’t have a plan, other than to just walk south on Congress all the way to 1st or 2nd Street and then come back up Congress Avenue on the other side of the road.

There are many, many building along Congress Avenue that have been designated as historical landmarks. It makes for a very interesting mixture of old buildings and modern buildings.

Just south of 7th Street, on the west side of Congress Avenue is this interesting statue of Angelina Eberly.

The plaque at the base of this statue tells this fascinating story: “In 1842 Texas was an independent nation, and Austin was its capital. Sam Houston, the president of the Republic of Texas, regarded Austin as a vulnerable and unsuitable location for the seat of the government and waged an unsuccessful campaign to have it moved to his namesake city (Houston). As a last resort, the President sent a military detachment to Austin to remove the government archives. When an innkeeper named Angelina Eberly discovered the men loading their wagons, she rushed to the corner of what is now Sixth and Congress and fired the town cannon, blowing a hole in the Land Office building and rousing the populace. The citizens chased down Houston’s men, recovered the archives, and gave them to Mrs. Eberly for safekeeping. This statue honors a bold woman whose vigilance and short temper preserved Austin as the capital of Texas. It was presented to the citizens of Austin on September 26, 2004, by Capital Area Statues, Inc.”

There’s no doubt where I took this next photo from. 🙂

I’ve seen Kirk Tuck show this same photo on his blog before, so I thought I’d just put my blatant copy here on my blog….

Looking southeast, one sees the Frost Bank Tower, which is located between 4th and 5th Streets, on the east side of Congress Avenue.

At 422 Congress Avenue is Shiner’s Saloon. I’ve never been there, but I like their sign our front!

We are now down to 3rd Street.

Just north of 2nd Street sits The Austonian, which is a residential building. A t 683 feet (208 m) tall with 56 floors, this is the tallest building in Austin.

At the base of the Austonian, is the little coffee shop Caffé Medici.

I thought that I would get myself a cup of coffee and do stake out a place for some relaxed people watching, but as I poked my head inside, I was surprised at how small, and crowded this place was. I guess it must be very good, because there were at least 15 people in line there to get coffee at 3:30 PM on a Sunday afternoon. Someday I’d like to give it a try, though.

So I crossed Congress at 2nd Street, and took a few photos of one of the Austin GuitarTown guitars, named Twinkle Twinkle Lonestar.

Back in 2007, there were 32 of these guitars scattered around Austin for public display before being auctioned off to help a charity. Dad and I located all of them, and photographed them wherever they happened to be located. You can see them all here. It’s hard to believe that was 6 years ago…

Just north of 2nd Street, there is huge construction site, with three very large cranes. This is future site of the 1000 room J.W. Marriot Hotel.

As I passed that construction site, here’s an interesting view of both old and new buildings in downtown Austin.

Out front of the Frost Bank Tower, sits one of my favorite Austin GuitarTown guitars, named Vibrancy. I guess just like colorful things, and this one uses it very creatively!

A couple blocks north, I turned east on the semi-famous East 6th Street. The photos that I took there will be the subject of my next blog post.

So, the day started out being what I considered pretty crappy for going out and making photographs, but it certainly didn’t turn out that way. It just goes to show you that sometimes you just need to get out there, and make the best of what you’re dealt.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Austin, Cityscapes, Colorful, Downtown, Events, Photography, Sports, Zilker Park

Zilker Kite Festival

March 7, 2013 Gregg 7 Comments

Last Sunday, March 3, 2013, was the 85th annual Kite Festival held at Zilker Park here in Austin, TX. Barb had an engagement with one of her friends for that afternoon. Since the weatherman said it was going to be a spectacular spring day, I headed downtown to catch the shuttle.

I was travelling light. I brought only my Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera, with the Olympus 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 lens, a circular polarizer, and my hat. No camera bag, no tripod, not even a spare battery.

I only had to stand in line for 45 minutes before boarding the yellow school bus. The ride to Zilker Park took more than 30 minutes, in what would normally be a 10 minute ride at 1:00 PM on any other Sunday afternoon. I took the photo above just moments after I got off of that school bus. Even though the trees still haven’t yet leafed out, it definitely felt like springtime, and it was a great day to be outside!

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My first reaction was to get close and try to photograph some of the more interesting kites.

Zilker Park is just across the Colorado River (and slightly west) of downtown Austin. As you can see, there were a lot of people and a lot of kites!

It was definitely a warm, springtime day. The TV news and the newspaper both reported that 20,000 people made it out to the park that afternoon.

The circular polarizer can make the blue sky a unnaturally dark. I usually tried to rotate is so that the sky wouldn’t appear that way, but sometimes the action just happened so fast….

There were hundreds, if not a thousand kites in the air simultaneously. With that many kites in close proximity, there were bound to be some entanglements.

Some kites just never seemed to get off of the ground – it was usually the ones without a tail that didn’t seem to take right off.

Note the condition of the grass in that previous photo. While I wouldn’t say that dust was a problem for the people, but with all of the wind, the dust that was in the air was quickly accumulating all over my camera – and especially the front of the polarizer. I kept blowing it off. I was glad that this camera and lens combination is supposed to be weatherproof. I was also glad that I had only brought one lens, as there was no way that I was going to be changing lenses under these conditions.

This tree seemed to be a very popular final resting place for many of the kites. I was wondering just how many Charlie Browns came out to the park today.

After a while, I found the official Kite Contest Field, where people would enter into actual kite flying contest. I think they have different contests for smallest kite, steepest angle of flight, a 50 yard dash (where you kite must remain in the air). When I got there, they were about to start the contest for the largest kite.

I positioned myself with the downtown buildings as my backdrop and waited for that black “balloon kite” to take off. This is as high as I saw it get.

While I was standing there watching that black blob of a “puffer fish”, I noticed another animal was watching me. The owner told me that this is an African Grey Parrot.

Everyone was watching that black balloon kite roll around in the dusty field, including this other kite!

After an hour and a half, I decided to start heading out of there. But first, just one more look northeast towards the downtown buildings, with all of the kites up in the air.

During my one hour wait in line to get back onto the shuttle bus, I took this parting shot looking to the northwest.

It was certainly fun to get out and enjoy the weather, photographing something completely new to me.

Thank you for visiting my blog!

Gregg Mack Photography

Category Archives: Downtown

Discovering My Long-Lost Time Capsule

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The Old and The New on Congress Avenue

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A Short Walk on East 6th Street

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Walk on Congress Avenue

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Zilker Kite Festival

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Austin, Texas USA

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