While on a shooting expedition in the West Bottoms of Kansas City I walked over to the Kemper Arena. For a long time this was the only arena we had in KC. It is a very interesting looking building and lends itself to being photographed even though as a facility it is greatly lacking.
One theme I keep exploring is abandoned places. I find the cast off relics of our existence to be very interesting. This building is in an area that has mostly been abandoned since the floods in 1951. The Kemper Arena has been replaced by the new Sprint Center but it is still in use for some events here in KC. Most notably the American Royal.
It is very interesting to me to see such a modern building in such an old historic place like the West Bottoms, especially when the functionality of the arena is very antiquated. All these facts makes it an interesting object to add to my list of lonely and abandoned places around Kansas City.
I shot this with a Nikon D2Xs and used Photoshop to create the infrared Black and White look. I really like the way it makes the building pop. When I shot this picture I was looking for good subjects for B&W photos. I find it best to shoot in RAW with full color even though I plan to end with B&W. It is so interesting to work with Lightroom and Photoshop to tease out the best B&W look to a photo. It use to be you had to commit to an entire roll of film both the film type and speed as well as processing. Now you can shoot image by image. In some ways it makes it even more important to have that vision of what you are striving for before you click the camera.