Tempe’s old railroad bridge
Yes, it’s man-made, so it’s not exactly awesome, but we do have a lake in the middle of the Valley called Tempe Town Lake. It’s actually the Salt River, but a dam has been built to make it a recreational area. We hit this spot for our latest photowalk on June 10th. Spanning the lake are quite a few bridges and there is also a new pedestrian bridge being built that will demand to be photographed whenever it’s completed. Has a cool looking design, so I can’t wait to see it done. But anyways, in the heart of the lake [...]
Downtown Tempe Photowalk – June 10th
It’s time for another photowalk…this time we’re bailing on downtown Phoenix and hitting up downtown Tempe, the Mill Avenue Bridges, the Light Rail and Tempe Town Lake! A gorgeous place to shoot, I’m really hoping we get some clouds at sunset because that can be pretty spectacular. I took the photos in this post on December 29th, 2009. Both back in my overprocessing HDR days, but they hold some fond memories for me. I mean, I just left the house to go shoot that night, it had been planned a week before, and when I arrived at this little parking [...]
The Light Rail Bridge over Tempe Town Lake
I guess I’m not done with stuff I shot in Tempe a few weekends ago. I had some issues with this photo but I worked them out and finally got around to posting it. This bridge is for the public transit system we call “the light rail” here in Phoenix. It’s kind of slow, it has to stop for traffic lights, cost a lot of money and time, but it’s actually pretty cool that we finally have something like this here in town. This particular bridge goes over Tempe Town Lake and the underneath of it changes colors randomly. I [...]
Hayden Ferry Lakeside
This is a photo of the office complex and high-rise apartments that are all part of Hayden Ferry Lakeside. It sits just south of the Tempe Town Lake, which is where it gets its name obviously. I was wandering through here and just liked the kind of “opening” this water feature made and the structure of the buildings framing the shot. My only regret is that the water fountain is apparently shut off at night, otherwise it probably would have added something great to this shot. This is probably the final shot from my Tempe photowalk…I have a few more, [...]
The light rail platform at 5th and Mill Avenue
I took this shot as I was leaving downtown Tempe last Friday night. I had been feeling pretty lousy about the shots I’d taken, they didn’t feel “awesome” and I had no idea what I would end up with. I switched to my 50mm lens when I was walking out and wished I had taken the time to just walk around and snap candid “life” photos of downtown instead of what I had been doing the last few hours. Don’t get me wrong…I ended up with a few nice shots, a beautiful sunset…but while HDR is great and fun, it’s [...]
The Fountain at Mission Palms in Tempe
My tour around downtown Tempe took me through the Mission Palms Hotel and right by this fountain. It’s located in the middle of a round-a-about that serves as the hotel’s main entrance. I plopped down on a curb and grabbed a bunch of brackets ranging from 1-30 seconds. What struck me most about the shot was just the way the palm trees were lit up from spotlights and the way they served as a pretty sweet background to the fountain. My only wish was that the water spilling over the edges had a stronger flow, because the blur is a [...]
Two more sunsets from downtown Tempe
I posted a shot on Monday of the Hayden Flour Mill at sunset, which you can see here again in the above panoramic view of the town of Tempe, Arizona. The sky was cooperative that night and it made for a nice sunset from the slopes of A-Mountain. Click on the photo for a larger, more detailed view. The shot below is looking north-northwest towards the Tempe Town Lake, also from A-Mountain. I love how it was just dark enough to see the string of lights running across the Mill Avenue bridges, plus a few street lights here and there. [...]
The light rail bridge in Tempe, AZ
I’ve been playing around a bit with my HDR processing methods after snapping photos in downtown Tempe Saturday night. I was ending up with a lot of noise in my shots and had to find alternative ways of getting the job done. This one above was in the same boat, but I ended up loving how it looked anyways. There is a lot of “grain” as I like to call it in the shot above. The sky, the clouds, the underneath of the bridge…all have a lot of dirty noise going on. I felt it looked a little more abstract [...]
Sunset behind the old Hayden Flour Mill in Tempe
Saturday night I went out for a little photowalk of downtown Tempe and started the little excursion by climbing up A-Mountain to watch the sunset over the city. This building on the right is a 100+ year old structure called the Hayden Flour Mill which began construction in 1872. You can read all about it on the Tempe.gov website. It was a great night for a sunset and I’ll post a few more later this week. I also have another shot of the flour mill after dark, but I just could not find a way inside the perimeter fences. I’d [...]
Mike is a Phoenix Wedding Photographer based in Arizona and can be contacted via all the normal methods and then some.