Avenue B Grocery
This is a very cool, old-fashioned grocery store hidden away in Austin! Ain't it cute? ;-)
I first read about (and saw pictures of) this little grocery store a couple of years ago when it was on the cover of a local Austin magazine. When I first glanced at it, I thought it was from somewhere else - it literally looks to me like it's from a small town somewhere. Maybe somewhere outside of Austin.
But no, this is right here in central Austin, tucked away in the Hyde Park area of town on Avenue B. I had no idea, but knew I needed to get out and photograph this thing. Finally, I made it happen. And truthfully, that was almost exactly one year ago that I went out and shot it. Yeah, I have been a little busy I guess, but better late than never!
I actually do that a lot - that is, take photos of something and process them much later. I can't possibly process all my photos when I take them as there are just too many. And then travels happen, and I forget about things, and a year later you get to see them. LOL
Anyways, it's a great little spot. As I tend to do, I arrived at sunrise so that I could capture the scene without the distraction of people walking by, or dining there for lunch, or whatever. Nothing wrong with that sort of picture, but I prefer to focus on the place itself and to capture it empty. So I got up early and drove over there.
While I was setting up, the gentleman that owns it arrived and we chatted a bit. He was kind enough to turn on the lights, which I think added to the scene quite a bit. He also gave me a little tour of the inside, which is quaint and feels like you walked into a place in the 1950's, although he asked that I not take photos inside, which of course I respected.
All in all, a pretty good way to start a day!
And for the curious, these are all 3 exposure HDR photos that I took with my Olympus OMD EM-1 (because it was a year ago - I am shooting with Sony now) and merged into HDR in Photomatix. Then I applied some filters in Color Efex Pro and final touch-up occurred in Lightroom. And voila, here you go!
