Senior Pics in McKinney

This is Alex, the subject of my most recent senior shoot. I suggested we try some pictures at a few spots in downtown Mckinney. One place I can never resist shooting at is outside the old Collin County Jail.

These steel doors are located at the side entrance, and from the looks of it they've been there since the jail was built in 1880. The facility was in use up until the 1970's, and the last legal execution in McKinney took place there in 1922. Among the famous alumni to have a few sleepovers was Frank James (Jesse's older brother). Charles "Tex" Watson, one of Manson's merry followers, also spent some time here awaiting extradition to California.

Anyway, back to Alex. He was super-easy to work with, very open to my strange suggestions ("lets take pictures at a jail!"), and is a smart, bright guy. We got a lot of great shots and plan to get a few more.

Tunnel Light

This is a recent shot of my daughter taken at Adriatica. I had her stand at one of the tunnels that go under Virginia Parkway trying to get the effect of directional light.

Marvin @Koriente

This is my good friend Marvin whom I met up with while visiting Austin, TX. We were eating at a restaurant called Koriente and I took a few shots of him since the light looked pretty good where we were sitting.

This is a good example of how good the 5D Mark II is in low light. I didn't use a flash and was able to keep the ISO down at 100. If I had tried this with my old D80 the image would have been quite grainy. This one came out great. 70mm, 1/100 sec f4

Compressing the picture down to a jpeg to include it on this blog caused some loss of detail, but it looked fantastic on my monitor. The details I was able to capture in Marvin's face really surprised me. I LOVE my new camera..

Jewell & Willie

Here's another that makes you wonder...

Jewell & Willie were buried in the same place and share a headstone. What is not known is if they were brother and sister or a married couple. The shape of the stone suggests they were children. I've seen several other graves belonging to young people with a similar design.

Most of the information engraved on this stone is illegible. Jewell's date of death is now partially buried.

Mary Facing East

I noticed this statue of Mary while taking pictures at Pecan Grove. It wasn't near any graves so I'm not sure if was placed as a marker or purposely placed to face in the direction where someone is buried (which happened to be east). In any case, I thought it was interesting because it looked so old.

A Bad Week for the Davidsons

Mr. and Mrs. Lou Davidson's infant son unfortunately died at birth on October 9th, 1873.

Then on October 15, Mr. Davidson himself passed away at age 23.

There's a story here...wish I knew what it was.

Below you can see the infant's stone (on the left) and Lou Davidson's stone not far away. Again I have to wonder about the wording. "Sacred to the memory of.." almost sounds like the stone was put there as a memorial, not necessarily as a grave marker.

Bench Shadow

I originally meant to post this on the Pic A Theme blog when the theme was "shadows and reflections," but I forgot.

This was taken early in the morning in downtown McKinney last Spring with my D80.

And speaking of my D80, I recently sold it and all of my Nikon gear to help pay for my 5D Mark II. Not all to one person...my lenses and filters were bought by people around the country and the D80 was purchased by a guy in Sweden.

Abby #2

Another from the same session. Mom ordered 11X14's of this picture and the previous one.