*Christmas time in San Antonio*
 

Back on the 9th I went down to San Antonio with my sister and her boyfriend. Now that day I had planned on getting up and going downtown in Austin for a round of photos since I hadn't done it in a while. Instead, I ended up having to do an errand with my mom that took up most of the day, so I wasn't able to do that. But before we left, my sister invited me to go with her and her boyfriend down to see the Riverwalk in San Antonio. I must admit, I had never been to San Antonio around Christmas, so the idea sounded wonderful. But, I had to go ahead and help my mom that day, so I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to be able to make it. But, my sister said "Well, if you change your mind, call me. We'll be leaving at 4:30, and if you haven't called by then, I'll assume you don't want to go." So we left to go do what we had to. The next day my sister told me that she told her boyfriend after he had asked if she thought I'd be coming along, she told him, "Oh, don't worry, Kevin will call." lol Anyone who knows me well knows I won't pass up a chance to go downtown to take pictures, and especially not in San Antonio. So that afternoon after getting done with what we had to, I really was doubting I'd have time to call her. I was thinking of just stopping off in downtown Austin for a few pics from the park, but decided against it because I was tired. But, on the way home I thought what the hell, and as we pulled into the driveway at 4:20 I ran inside to call my sister. They were just backing out of his driveway and were just about ready to leave town. Had I called 5 minutes later I would have missed getting to go.

We actually stopped to eat at the Adobe Restaurant in New Braunfels, because we figured the wait there would be shorter than on the Riverwalk, and we wanted to make the best of our time there instead of waiting. It's a good thing we did too, because the traffic in downtown was horrible in San Antonio. I've seen the place busy before, but that was just nuts. At one point we crawled for 30 minutes and only covered 3 blocks. My only gripe with this was that there were no police directing traffic. Some people were cutting in line and running red light. All the garages were full, and at that point we were worried we might not find any place to park. But luckily, we found a parking lot over on South Saint Mary's and East Nueva and walked down East Nueva to where the action is.

We had fun, and I really thought the city was beautiful. But enough of that, I'll let the pictures prove it.

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A very festive Tower Life Building. I had no idea they lit it that way. I loved it.
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My first glimpse of the tower at night since they did the renovation. The tower looks much much better than it did before.
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That would be the elevator shaft and hole.
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Sorry for the dumb trial version caption. I'm thinking I like this program though for making animated gifs. Pretty cool.
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The lights above the observation deck along the walkway changed from red to green.
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The fountains were actually dark, which was kind of disappointing. The light you see here was just reflecting off of the plaza and down from the tower.
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The red and green lights did not change color like this. Don't worry, they blended in and out. But this is cool, no?
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The Riverwalk was packed. Believe me, this was the first of 3 shots for this photo that didn't have a ton of people in it. I used the one with less people because I wanted you to be able to see the landscape a bit.
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The most famous building in Texas.
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While I was standing there taking this picture a couple was standing over to my left looking up at the Alamo. A woman asked "You look like you're fascinated by it." I looked over kind of like, "huh?" And asked, "What?" because it just kind of struck me as an odd statement. But I said, "Well, I am fascinated by it." She asked me where I was from and I told her, and she said, "Oh, then you're close by." My guess was that she lived far away and maybe was envious of someone living close to San Antonio. So I asked her out of curiosity where she was from. And she replied, "We live here."
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The Emily Morgan Hotel.
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Merry Christmas, y'all.
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Nice photos Kevin. Wish my night photos looked that good.
I especially like the lighting on the crown of the Emily Morgan.

Oh, and welcome back man.

Yes very nice shots. The TOA's looks great.

Good shots! Though it is a bit disappointing there's no pictures of the lights at UIW all the way through Alamo Heights on Broadway. I really like that set up. Also, no exploration of SA Christmas lights is complete without a trip through Windcrest.

Hey Kevin, what are you using that get that effect of changing lights? Is it the same program you used for the "dancing cranes" on a previous thread? It looks cool?

Thanks guys!

Well, it's the same type of program, but a different one from that other thread.

Download.com has programs to buy. You can also try many of these programs for free during a trial period like I did for this thread.
http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0....0gifs&tag=srch

If that link above doesn't work, just go to download.com and type in 'animated gifs' in the search bar. The program I used is Animated GIF Banner Maker 1.41.3. It's 30 bucks.

To do the changing colors like I did. For the tower photos I took two shots. One for the red and one for the green lights. Before you open your photos in the gif maker program, you need to change the file type to .gif Save it as a different name from your original photo, that way you still have your original .jpg "jpeg" file. You should be able to change the file extension with your photo editing software you use. When you "save as" it'll have a drop down menu below that has a list of file types. Just scroll through until you find .gif then save the file. Then open the photo with the .gif extension in the gif maker program. The way the image works is the two photos are put together like frames in a video. To do it, just hit the "add" button between photos. For the elevator shot I did that was three frames. For the other two photos of the lights those used two frames. Once that's done go up to "file" scroll down to "Make gif". Hit that and it completes it. You can then hit the play button to view the image and see how you like the animation.

Play with it a little. You can change the speed of the loop, you can also change the size of the image. You can even make avatars with this. Let's say you wanted to show all the tallest buildings in your city in one avatar. You could use each photo and place them in frames and have a changing avatar showing each building photo in one image. I found the program to be simple to use. I figured it out in just a few minutes.

Good luck.

Nice pics! Can't wait 'til the Grand Hyatt is lit, should look good.

Thx Kevin, I'll check it out.

Some of the best photos I have seen of the tower!