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Looking across a high flowing Willamette River towards downtown Portland.
February 3, 1997
[35MM Print Film]
Portland Skyline from OMSI
This is my favorite spot from which to take photos of the Portland Skyline. I have been wanting to take a sunrise picture for a while. I religiously watched the weather forecast every weekend for the last few weeks. Last weekend's forecast was perfect (so I thought!). Sunrise was at 6:15 AM, and the forecast was for clear skies. When I woke up, I even went outside to check the sky. It was clear no doubt. However, upon reaching the other side of the hills, the sky was completely different--it was cloudy and there was no color. Oh well, I miss summer already here in Oregon!
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Portland
Dranouter Festival 2018
3-AUG-2018
Jente Pironet Vocals & Guitar
Sarah Pepels Vocals and Keyboartd
Gill Princen Keyboards
Arno De Bock Drums
© Patrick Van Vlerken 2018
Note: I chose this as my "photo of the day" for Dec 10, 2013
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Virtually everyone in America, as well as millions of other people around the world, know that Thanksgiving is one of the main occasions for organizing a huge parade.
It’s especially true in New York City, where I live — hundreds of parade workers converge on a one-block stretch between Columbus Avenue and Central Park West on 77th Street on the night before Thanksgiving to assemble the floats, and pump the huge balloons full of helium, so they’ll be ready to go the next morning. The parade itself lasts for hours, and stretches all the way down Central Park West and Broadway, and ultimately through Herald Square and past the main entrance to Macy’s on 34th Street. The whole thing is televised for the benefit of viewers all around the world, with TV commentators and an endless procession of marching bands, baton-twirlers, singers, dancers, jugglers, magicians, Broadway actors, and other forms of entertainment…
While New York City may be the only example of a Thanksgiving-Day parade that people around the world actually see on their TV screen, it’s definitely not the only such parade that takes place in this country. I’m sure that every big city has its own version of the turkey-day parade, as do most of the medium-size cities, and quite a few smaller towns and villages, too. They may not be visible on television, but a lot of local citizens and visitors turn out to watch such parades, if only because their sons and daughters are typically marching in the high-school bands that form a big part of the event.
On this particular occasion — in November of 2013 — I happened to be in one such medium-size city, where the parade took place on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. It was in Portland, Oregon where we were spending the holiday period with one of our sons and his family; the parade took place in the “Pearl District” of downtown Portland … and, to our amazement, we were able to park our car about a block from the parade route, and walk right up to the corner (at Davis St and NW Park, if you want to track it down on Google Maps) where all of the bands and floats and costumed marchers walked by. In fact, I was able to take the “parade experience” even one step further: the people were friendly enough, and the security was light enough, that I was able to walk right out into the middle of the street with my camera, to photograph the floats and bands and marchers as they approached me … scampering out of the way only at the last moment.
Admittedly, Portland is a much bigger city than a tiny village of a thousand people somewhere in the midwest … but it still felt like “small town America” to me, and it was a great spectacle to watch. I got the impression that many of the visitors and observers standing along the street actually knew the people marching past them … and in any case, the marchers laughed and smiled and walked right up to us, handing out little pieces of candy to all of the children. Maybe next year I’ll go looking for a really small Thanksgiving parade in one of those tiny midwest-America villages, before retreating back to the Big Apple to watch the spectacle of thousands of marchers parading past millions of observers, and a TV audience of tens of millions …
I wish that I had taken some video clips of the parade, because the sounds and the music and the motion were a big part of what we experienced. But for better or worse, all I took was a bunch of traditional still photos. Actually, I took a LOT of still photos — nearly a thousand, altogether — but I’ve winnowed the collection down to 50 “keepers” that I hope will give you a sense of what Thanksgiving is all about…
Actually, if you live anywhere besides New York City here in the U S of A, you already know what Thanksgiving is all about, at least to the extent that it’s symbolized by the parade. But for those of us who spend most our time in New York City, it was a very pleasant experience indeed. After an hour, it was all over; we walked back to our car a block away, and drove back to our son’s house … and a day later, we were back in New York City. And thus ended another Thanksgiving holiday, at least until 2014.
Portland is haunted, but at least they don't have zombies walking around like we do in Anchorage. Not to mention the vampire problem during winter!
Portland, OR
This is another mega HDR Panorama image and the processing of this version is very similar to the previous ones, except for the following one key difference!
In my quest to find the best HDR software that produces a natural looking tone mapping, I downloaded a trial version of HDR Expose3 last night. I processed a couple of images so far and the results are as advertised. This software produced very sharp and natural looking images so far. I was very impressed with its de-ghosting abilities. It also produced clean edges without any halos. The software interface is intuitive and simple enough that I was able to pick it up rather quickly. I plan on doing some more processing in the next few days to see if the results continue to be good.
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