Sunday, March 8, 2009

Power For Industry

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An old power plant in the area north of the Arch. The architecture is beautiful: take away the smokestacks and it could be a museum. Still, it looks as if it is holding off an encroaching prairie. The place still pumps steam through a large downtown loop, used to heat many buildings.

WHAT
I LEARNED AT JIM RICHARDSON'S SEMINAR YESTERDAY: I am making much too little use of my wide angle lens. You can do much more at night with new DSLRs than I imagined. You can get really good candid street shots of people by using pre-set manual focus and exposure, taking the camera away from your face and putting it on your lap aimed at the area of interest, using motor drive on the shutter, then just firing away when something interesting passes. You should take two external hard drives for backup when you travel, leave one in the hotel and keep one with you when you are out.

TOMORROW: two windows - and a kidnapping?

10 comments:

  1. A museum: my thought exactly. I'm not even sure the smokestacks couldn't be revamped...

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  2. Have you used that wacky lens or whatever on this? It looks ominous to me.

    YOu do know it will take you forever to explain all that you learned to me don't you? Get ready. Now I have to have 2 ex. hard drives and I haven't bought the first one yet!

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  3. You're certainly right about the architecture. They don't make power plants like that anymore to be sure. The technique Mr. Richardson taught you is on old Leica rangefinder trick for street photos. Just preset focus, shutter speed and aperture and fire away, usually with a 35mm lens (on film anyway). I almost always use a 50 so I have to actually put the camera to my eye to frame the shot. But when I'm just out walking around with the camera around my neck (day or night), those 3 things are always preset so all I have to do is frame and push the button. With a 24 or a 28 and the ability to crop a digital image, your success rate will be higher than mine for sure.

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  4. Further evidence that St. Louis was frozen, placed under glass, in 1940 for future study and pleasure. What a marvelous photo.

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  5. excellent photo and thanks for sharing your technique. The photo looks so full of art and the architecture is just beautiful.

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  6. I sort of did that when I had my haircut the other day, with my Mario giving suggestions as he cut away. I took 53 shots and one I like very much. It will be coming up on my Strangers blog later this week.

    Thank you for the comment mentioning Georgia O'Keefe. I did not know of her and now realise what I have been missing.

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  7. Really interesting that it's still in operation and pumping steam through downtown. I'll bet it looks pretty cool on the inside too. Talk your way in there!

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  8. Fantastic photo of that amazing building! Makes me want to have been there! Cheers!

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  9. This is one of my favorite buildings north of the arch. I hope to see something special happen with it.

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