Faces in the crowd at the Mardi Gras parade. The event is a candy store for a street photographer. Nobody cares about being photographed; after all, they are out on display. In fact, since I'm walking around with a big lens, it is common for groups of people to come up to me and say, "Hey, mister, you want to take our picture?" Sure. I'll take anybody's picture.
The Mardi Gras parade returned to STL yesterday after a two year absence. I've never been to the big event in New Orleans but my impression is that their parades (they have more than one) have, um, higher esthetic values. Ours is a great opportunity for street photography, though. More to come.
Our big, somewhat unruly Mardi Gras takes place today. Since it's been offline for a couple of years I pulled an old picture that gives some of the spirit. (Pun sort of intended. There is some kind of alcohol in that fishbowl.) I'll be there as long as my increasingly-creaky back holds out.
St. Louis makes a show of a big production for Mardi Gras. Nothing like New Orleans but it's boisterous. As I have noted before, this town likes an excuse to drink in public and there will be plenty of it after the big parade steps off late Saturday morning.
I plan to be there with a couple of cameras. The weather should get a little above freezing, better than Thursday evening as I write this, after 24 hours of freezing rain, sleet, light snow and falling temperatures. The place is covered with ice but I have crampons if needed.
We have all met people who want to draw attention to themselves. Dress and style is a traditional way to do it and these ladies may be good examples. Looking at the picture again made me think of some of the lyrics from Laurie Anderson's Language Is A Virus:
Well I dreamed there was an island that rose up from the sea. And everybody on the island was somebody from TV. And there was a beautiful view but nobody could see. Cause everybody on the island was saying: Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!
As a photographer, I dress to avoid attention. I don't want people to notice me. Wear a lot of black, blue and gray.
A clever visual pun at the dog parade. S/he doesn't look at all cheerful but maybe that's just anthropomorphising. Still, I wouldn't want to make a close inspection of that jaw and lower lip.
Whatever it is, it may be gaining on you. From the dog parade, of course.
And happy birthday to my grandson, Atlas Henry Crowe, all of 3 today. He's a wild boy.
St. Louis claims to have the second largest Mardi Gras celebration in the U.S. after New Orleans (which is several orders of magnitude bigger and better). Events start well before Fat Tuesday. The dog parade resumed yesterday after a Covid absence in our Soulard neighborhood. Thousands of people and pooches dress up and march through the streets. It was pretty crowded on a spring-like day.
Turns out you can't write super and subscripts in Blogger text so the title will have to do. This is part of the entry of an office building where I worked for a couple of decades. The bit of numerology has some personal significance for me today.
I didn't get out to shoot yesterday. The day got complicated. But near sunset I rolled down the alley in our neighborhood on my way to pick up Japanese carry-out for the family. The ice was almost melted and the sun was low in a clear sky. Good thing the phone cam was handy.
I have a couple more butterfly house pictures I could run but I wanted some new material. Had an idea to shoot yesterday but nature was against me. Wednesday was very warm for February. We had heavy rain and dropping temperature overnight into Thursday morning. We reached freezing by late morning, the rain changed to sleet and then light snow. Bitter cold Thursday night. The town is now an ice rink. So I stepped out on my front porch and took pictures of whatever presented itself.
So what this strange and possibly French electronic keyboard is doing in the butterfly house I don't know. It wasn't making any sound but it was a good enough perch. We know that is a blue morpho by the seven circle pattern on the underside of the wing. And where does the name morpho come from, anyway? Morpheus? So many questions.
The smooth, plain contours of a feeding dish contrast with wildly varied-but-symmetrical patterns of a butterfly. Hard to say what it makes me think of - an inkblot from stone to smooth paper, maybe a fractal pattern. The thorax resembles an elongated bumblebee. By the way, we learned that the butterflies like to eat old fruit. The staff splits bananas. mash them a bit and leave them until they are bug-yummy.
The top of a butterfly's wings has beautiful, colorful patterns but the undersides may be completely different. I don't know what species the insect on the right is (we can just tell that the one on the left is a blue morpho), but, like many butterflies and moths, it has evolved patters that make it look like something big and scary to potential predators. I may be reading too much into it but this one reminds me of a owl.
Someone liked the butterflies a lot. She thought it was hilarious when one landed on my head and another on her mother's jeans. It's hard to see in this version of the photo but she's even wearing her butterfly dress.
Our wonderful botanical garden has a butterfly house and research facility in the exurbs. It's far enough from home that we don't go often but Ellie likes it. They arranged a special event for the month by shipping in a thousand blue morphos from their station in Costa Rica.
These are tough little buggers to photograph. They won't sit still and pose, leading to this so-so picture in which you can't see the head or body. The iridescent color comes from an amazingly complex evolutionary process, which you could read up on at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morpho_menelaus. More of this to come.
Snow doesn't usually last that long around here. Warm temperatures and blue skies create a stream along the riverfront, reflecting a railroad bridge and the graffiti section of the Mississippi flood wall.
I suppose that was an Arch picture yesterday but it was upside down. Here's a proper, right side up image, still with good effects from the snow melt.
For something that claims to be a St. Louis photo blog, there have not been any pictures of St. Louis for a long while. We've been home a week and it's time. I had my fourth vax shot yesterday morning at the huge medical center in midtown (no side effects), so I brought my camera and went by my old office to say hi. After lunch I went out cruising for images. The weather has turned from frigid to spring-like in a week. The melt-water creates reflections everywhere.
Philip Glass' birthday party was held in Rockefeller Center. St. Patrick's Cathedral, seat of Roman Catholicism in New York, is just across Fifth Avenue. It is large and Gothic, containing many side altars and niches. I did not note who this saint is, although the hand gesture is common in Catholic iconography (in which I was well schooled). You could wonder whether it represents acceptance of divine will or a "beats me" answer to a question. The visitor is probably not Catholic or he would know to remove his hat in church.
I've got my fourth vax shot this morning - over 70 and immunosupressed. Hope to look for some new local material afterward.
The view of The Vessel that I posted yesterday was through a multistory window of the shopping center in Hudson Yards. This is inside of it, sort of the bottom of the inverted cone. The stairways up the structure are complex and long. The track in the center is an elevator, although a terribly slow one. It carries six people and makes only one trip every 15 minutes. They let me use it on a previous trip when I was having back problems and was hobbling around on a cane. Looks cool, though.
Gotta shoot some new local material one of these days.
The West Side of Manhattan has a recent, huge and expensive real estate development called Hudson Yards. It contains several very tall buildings, one of which has the overlook called The Edge, which I think we will come to. The central plaza contains this sculpture, for want of a better word, called The Vessel. The Escher-y network of stairways lets you walk to the top, not quite seen here from within an overpriced shopping mall. (You have to pass by Cartier on the way out.) It is closed to visitors, for now, while they figure out what to do about the rash of suicides.
One of the most interesting features of Philip Glass' birthday party at the Rockefeller Center ice rink was the presence of professional ice dancers. Their jackets said Ice Theatre of New York. The changing lights made for dramatic effects.
We usually go to the Whitney when we are in New York. Technically, it's the Whitney Museum of American Art but the exhibits lean heavily modern and contemporary. The architecture is adventurous, with vistas and terraces overlooking the Hudson and New Jersey. The big show now is a Jasper Johns retrospective, which, frankly, felt overwhelming. The view from this room, something that I've photographed many times before, was refreshing for our eyes.
Under all this Nanook Of The North clothing and a mask, facing a couple of MacBooks and a mixer board, is one of my cultural idols, Laurie Anderson. For those who don't know her, see https://laurieanderson.com/, but it's hard to understand if you aren't a devotee. I think I've seen her perform in St. Louis twice. She was the host of Philip Glass' birthday party but I think she spent most of her time being cold. As did we.
So here's what was going on: not long ago I saw something on Laurie Anderson's Facebook feed about an 85th birthday party for Philip Glass that she was hosting. I'm a huge fan of both. It was a ticketed event at the ice rink in Rockefeller Center in New York. I looked at Mrs. C and said, "I'd go to that!" So, given the freedom of retirement, off we went (not that I need much of a reason to visit my beloved home town). It was as wacky as I expected.
Ever hear a recording of Miles Davis' Jack Johnson? That's power. This statue of Davis stands in his home town of Alton, Illinois, just upriver from St. Louis. The pose is drawn from the album cover of that piece. Worth a look and a listen - https://youtu.be/3U_jem9q_mg
See forceful images from City Daily Photo members around the world at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/
