A Few Photos From Downtown Dayton

After the end of my work day on Friday, I headed to downtown Dayton (a short drive North for me as a live in a South Dayton suburb) to meet my buddy John.  He got tickets from work to a Dayton Dragons game, which gave us a good opportunity to hang out.  I decided to bring my camera along on the off chance I could talk him into strolling around nearby Riverscape area so I could grab some photos.  I brought my Canon R5 and only a couple of lenses in my Lowepro sling bag – the Voigtlander 50mm 1.0 for the Canon RF mount, and the Canon RF 70-200 F2.8.

I can’t say that I got many shots that evening.  Here’s one I grabbed of a couple of the rehabilitated buildings near the stadium.  There are many such converted commercial buildings that are now residential with condos or apartments:

Taken with the Voigtlander 50mm @f2.0

I can’t say I’m tremendously into architectural photography, but this one came out quite nice.

My buddy and I had a nice time watching the came and catching up.  If I wasn’t with him I probably would have walked around a bit more to get some photos, but time together is precious and neither of us is getting any younger.  We did have pretty good seats so I broke out my 70-200 and took a few shots, obscured by the safety net in front of us.  Here’s a shot of the first Dragons home run of the night – I was able to catch the ball coming off the bat:

Taken with the Canon RF 70-200 @f2.8

Jarod Polin of Fro Knows Photo fame shoots a lot of Philly baseball and often uses his FroPack Lightroom presets to edit them.  I bought the Fropack 1-4 to support the Fro and decided to use his Skittles preset in the above photo.

Neither John or I are particularly dedicated baseball fans so we left the game early.  Here’s a shot of the main stadium entrance:

Taken with the Voigtlander 50mm @f2.8

More often than not, Ohio skylines are not particularly interesting (and this night was very on brand for Ohio/Dayton) so I did do a sky replacement in Photoshop to add a little visual interest.

The coup de grâce came as we walked over to the Riverscape area and I got this sunset photo of the downtown Dayton skyline:

Taken with the Voigtlander 50mm @f2

I’ve been wanting to get a photo like this one for several years.  Ironically, my friend John took a photo from the very spot I took mine about 15 years ago for a City of Dayton sponsored photo contest (he took his at sunrise) – a photo for which he won an award.  A large print of the photo the city had printed hung in the Dayton Airport for several years.

For not being a dedicated photography outing, it turned out to be pretty successful even if I only got the one great photo.  Sometimes, that’s all you need.