It’s been a great week in Austin Texas. The party started with friends and family coming to town for my son Matthew’s wedding. The wedding was spectacular! It was a military wedding in a great outdoor setting. The weather was perfect, the flowers were fabulous, and my new daughter-in-law was radiantly beautiful. Believe it or not, I didn’t take a single photograph. I consciously passed that task to wonderful professionals so that I could just be ‘dad’.
Monday, Matthew & his new bride Jessica left to drive to Alaska where they will be stationed for a few years. I can’t wait to go visit! (Yes, I will take my camera…) This was a great week for family to visit. Sixth Street in Austin Texas is known an one of the great streets in the world to go party. Every year during the international music festival ‘South by Southwest’ it is even more so. This year (2010) St. Patrick’s day fell during SXSW to add even more fuel to the event. My sister & I went down to the ‘party’ just to watch the crowds and take a few photos.
For those that are not aware, if you click on the photo it will take you to my Flickr site where you can see a larger version of the photo.

The annual creative explosion of SXSW is about to begin again in Austin Texas. Every year at this time thousands of Music, Film & Interactive creative professionals & their fans decend upon Austin from around the world. It’s a fun time in our little town.
This shot of Sixth street was taken last year during SXSW. Just for fun I did a little tilt-shift focus manipulation to give it that toy-land feel.

Sixth Street in Austin Texas is always a lively place. During the day their are numerous shops and great places to enjoy lunch or just a cup of coffee. Daytime on Sixth Street in fun, however the real action starts after the sun goes down and the music comes out. After all, 6th Street is pretty much the music epicenter of the “Live Music Capitol of the World” aka Austin Texas. You can see my other Austin shots here.

This photo of 6th Street in downtown Austin was shot about 7:50 one evening. The great thing about photographing night shots shortly after sunset is you you get that nice “Speilberg Blue” nighttime sky. The bad thing about photographing night shots on 6th street shortly after sunset is that for a spot that is known for it’s lively crowds, there are very few people.  6th street doesn’t really get started till around 10:pm. (To get an idea what 6th street looks like on a busy night check out the SXSW posting that was shot at Maggie Mae’s right across the street from here looking towards the Blind Pig Pub.) Meanwhile… I had no choice but to take the shot while the light was right, the carriage driver could just relax and enjoy the evening while she was waiting on the night.