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Monday is April 1, City Daily Photo theme day, so we have to juggle the schedule a bit. Yesterday morning Ellie's school had a field trip to Laumeier Sculpture Park. I went along. It is a 72 acre / 29 hectare wonderland, or I think so. Ellie and a classmate are standing in front of one of its iconic works, but there is much more to experience down the side paths through the woods.
Well, so much for scouting out eclipse viewing sites. My car had a nail in one of its tires and I couldn't drive any distance until it was fixed. By then it was too late to hit the road.
So back to Costa Rica. I mentioned that we took a drive to Playa Grande, just north of Tamarindo but 45 minutes away because there is no bridge across the estuary. At the end of the road sits The Grateful Hotel and Sugaree's Bar and Grill, sort of a 60s-70s fantasy for old Deadheads. The restaurant is a decent lunch stop. Was our trip long and strange? Eh, not so much.
At the Feria Tamarindo again. We see this produce vendor every time we visit and the bounty seems never-ending. We rarely buy something since we go out to dinner almost every night.
As most North Americans know, there will be a total eclipse on Monday, April 8, running from southwest Mexico to Texas, parts of the U.S. Midwest, northern New England and then the Canadian Maritimes. St. Louis will be close to but not quite in the path of totality. I expect to spend much of today driving around looking for someplace right down central that might not be too crowded (thinking Walmart parking lot or similar). I'll keep my eyes open for images, too.
Home, barely. Our flight from Costa Rica to Dallas-Ft. Worth was quite late, our favorite airline put our inbound and outbound gates as far apart as possible and we made our flight to St. Louis with six minutes to spare (yeah, I know, first world problems). There is a people mover train that takes you between terminals at DFW. When we sat down I saw four empty mini bottles of Tanqueray gin on the opposite seat, the kind you might get on an airplane. There is a story behind this, but I'm too tired to figure it out.
Playa Grande is a long, wide stretch of beach, much less developed, across an estuary from Tamarindo. You can take a boat ride on it to view the wonderful variety of birds and other wildlife. We've done it a few times, but not this trip. However, you don't want to let your arm drag along in the water beside the boat.
Home late tonight. Probably need to go with Costa Rica photos for a bit.
From the Feria Tamarindo, the twice-weekly outdoor market. We are approaching the end of the dry season here so these peppers must have been irrigated, or perhaps grown in a greenhouse. It has been hot and very humid and, we are told, about to get hotter. After that, the roads and hillsides will be awash.
A vendor's stall at the twice-weekly Feria Tamarindo street market. Every kind of local food, clothing and crafts are on offer. I, personally, wouldn't be caught dead in any of this stuff. When I'm shooting on the street I tend to wear black or soft blues and greys to blend in. Around here, that might make me stand out.
We've been coming to this town regularly for maybe a dozen years. Every time we see more development and more crowds. This building wasn't here, or maybe was still under construction, at our last visit. Fortunately, we stay a distance out of the center where commercial development is restricted.
I have taken innumerable ordinary photos of the sunset during our many visits to Playa Langosta. Some are pretty but don't have much creativity. Yesterday, though, something new caught my eye. There is a public path to the beach along one part of the ocean-side lawn, which is protected by a tall metal fence. The lowering sun fell between the bars and the complex tree branches. Opens to different interpretations.
What on earth got into me? Not exactly fourscore and seven years ago, but 6,107 posts are not trivial. It's kept me occupied. Although we will be in Costa Rica for a while longer, I thought I'd post a nice picture of the Saint Louis Art museum at dusk to mark the occasion.
We are still in Costa Rica, of course. My cross-cultural challenge yesterday was trying to read a Spanish-only menu in an Indian tandoori restaurant.
We are, in a way, creatures of habit. Year after year we return to this beautiful condo on Playa Langosta, just outside of Tamarindo in the northwest of Costa Rica. I didn't have a chance to shoot anything new today so here's a IR taken on the beach a couple of years ago.
The area may be getting overdeveloped. We've been coming here for at least a dozen years and we've never had traffic from the airport like today. The regional airport is so jammed that there aren't enough gates and some passengers have to descend stairs to the tarmac. We noticed many new furniture stores, which means that there are lots of new houses and condos. The main drag of Tamarindo was choked at dinnertime, when I was going to the supermarket. Langosta, where a road runs out of town and ends at an estuary, is much quieter. I hope it stays that way.
Off again on our umteenth trip to Costa Rica. The immigration agents smile when they see all those stamps in our passports. We fly American, overnighting in a hub to get a mid-morning flight down. This time it's at the enormous Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport. The people here are not shy about their culture.
One group in the St. Patrick's Day parade was a fleet of Jeeps in odd paint jobs with a row of small rubber ducks at the bottom of the windshield. The overall effect was a rolling party with plenty of CO2 emissions.
It got cold again here this week. Travel days today and tomorrow. By Wednesday afternoon we will be in some serious heat at what has become our home from home..
I've been shooting our St. Patrick's Day for years and have often mentioned the amount of alcohol sloshing around ante meridian. More than once, I've noted that St. Louis loves an excuse to drink in public. In the hi res version of this pic, you can see that the bottles between the two men are vodka and Bloody Mary mix. Reminds me of a picture I took at the parade 15 years ago (see below).
I accidentally shot this picture at f 9, probably my arthritic fingers knocking the aperture ring on the lens. The background was much too busy so I tried Photoshop's new Blur Background tool. I think I overdid it.
St. Patrick's Day in St. Louis. The parade on the Saturday before the date is a really big deal. The weather yesterday was simply perfect and the crowd was huge. I worked the staging area, which was enough for my creaky spine. This thing was odd but the joke was obvious.
Granddaughter Ellie walked with the Clark School of Irish Dance, more about which later. Travel day Tuesday and then a change of theme.
Not a lot blooming in our botanical garden yet - it's still officially winter - but since real winter is becoming just a memory there are early signs of spring. I'm no horticulturalist; my native ground covering was cement and asphalt so I can't identify the violet ground covering here. Still, with the hard shadow of a tree not yet in leaf, the pattern got my attention.
Our huge St. Patrick's Day parade is today. Granddaughter Ellie is marching so I'll be there with my camera as long as my back holds out.
I intended to go to shoot some of our 314 Day events yesterday. Nature intervened. We've had a mild winter and very early spring. Here in the Midwest that means it's time for violent thunderstorms and some tornadoes. When I was getting ready to leave in the afternoon my phone began to blare severe weather warnings and the radar looked ominous. A blast drove through soon thereafter, ripping off a large part of the tree in the foreground onto our front steps, seconds before Mrs. C was about to walk in the door. This was followed by a strange orange sunset over our street.
When I got to the botanical garden on Monday, I took a seat in the cafe and ordered some lunch. It is in the new-ish main entry and visitors center. These windows face south and do a good job of filtering the sun while bringing in plenty of light. But it's just so rectilinear, in contrast to all the plant life outside.
Today, 3/14 in American date notation, is Pi Day in some parts of the world. Around here it's just plain 314 Day, that being the telephone area code for the center of our region. I think there will be something to photograph on the theme.
Yesterday was unseasonably warm (what else is new). I went to our wonderful botanical garden for a walk with my camera. Despite the very warm winter, there was not yet much blooming. The garden has a large geodesic dome known as the Climatron, with four distinct climactic zones controlled by complex air systems, so I went inside. The sky was blue, the water reflected the sky and the aquaculture was happy.
Another odd wall painting in Cantado Mexican restaurant. The women's shirts resemble Cardinals baseball uniforms, appropriate since the stadium is across the street. I'm not sure what the number 13 on the earring means, other that it was the uniform number of a popular player who retired a couple of years ago. The place serves excellent margaritas in jars such as the one pictured.
The woman on the left seems to be whispering something. Does she have inside information about the team's chances this year with the season starting later this month? The Cardinals finished last in 2023 so they can't get any worse.
Always looking for something to do to entertain the kid. A few times a year the St. Louis Symphony will play the score to a screening of a popular movie. Even a top tier orchestra like ours needs to hustle up extra ways to pay the bills. Ellie loved it, but I don't think she was attuned to the nuances of the performance.
Mixed messages and images. We took the kid to the symphony yesterday for a screening of Encanto with a live score. She loved it. Afterward, we went to dinner at a new Mexican restaurant downtown called Cantado. STL has a large number of Mexican restaurants that basically serve the same slop. This one was a real cut above. The decor, however, was decidedly non-Mexican, more like comic book-graffiti-trippy. A good day all around.
A sign put up by a local booster organization on an abandoned building near the Mississippi. It is clearly visible from an elevated highway seen at the top. They want you to start a business, make a lot of money, but then DO NOT take it to another city. It's happened. Baby, please don't go.
Another thought on some riffs in yesterday's post. 16th-17th Dutch and Flemish still life paintings tend to have dark or black backgrounds. Not all of them and certainly not all black, but that's what's in my muddled art history memory. I exaggerated the contrast in this image to meet my impression.
When I was young, there was a well-advertised brand of cigars around New York called Dutch Masters. A slice of The Night Watch was on the box. I was aware of the product but no one in my family smoked cigars and I hadn't yet been to The Met. I had no idea what the brand name meant. Maybe it was just odd marketing. Over the years, I came to associate black backgrounds with Dutch/Flemish painting (except for maybe Caravaggio). I'm not sure how this floral arrangement interprets the nearby paintings but the effect is dramatic.
I gotta get back out on the street and find some new stuff. Getting my back worked on tomorrow at the mighty Washington University Medical Center and hoping for more mobility.
Everyone has a camera on them. There is a saying that the best camera is the one you have with you, but whether you have the cheapest pinhole or the most costly Hasselblad. the thing that matters is what you can do with it. I enjoy taking pictures of people taking pictures in art museums. I've done it in the Louvre, the Met, the Uffizi. and the
We think of floral arrangements as bursts of color. Sometimes, though, monochrome works better, particularly if the blossoms are mostly white. I think about Robert Mapplethorpe's lilies. This piece was mostly white, with tinges of dusty yellow I didn't find attractive. Would you rather see this in color?
The German Expressionist Max Beckmann was a star of his nation's art world a century ago. Along with that of many others, his work was condemned as degenerate by the Nazis. He went first to Amsterdam and then, in 1947, accepted a position at Washington University here. He developed a relationship with the retail magnate, art collector and philanthropist Morton May. One large room of our art museum is devoted to his work. This floral arrangement represents the painting on the left. The one on the right is a self portrait.
I assume that our art museum assigns specific works to the floral arrangers so that the displays are well-distributed throughout the galleries. It has a growing collection of contemporary African and African American art. The portrait on the wall is the Yoruba/Nigerian king, Irawo II, by Wole Lagunju. You can learn more about the painting at https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/71750/ . I think the flowers reflect it well.
It's the time of year when the Saint Louis Art Museum draws its biggest crowds. For three days in late winter, the most talented floral arrangers in the region are invited to construct a piece that reflects the feeling of something in the museum's collection, if much more perishable.
I've been shooting it for years, and it's a challenge. The Friday to Sunday run can be just packed. The museum sets up remote parking a ten minute drive away. Early Friday morning is reserved for members (we are) but it is still hard to get a clear shot. I stood for a few minutes before one arrangement, camera held high, waiting impatiently for the spectators to clear. Someone beside me asked, "Would you like me to ask that lady to move to the side?" I told her that the person was my wife and, if necessary, I would use telepathy.
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Did somebody say McDonald's? Looking east on Chestnut Street from 4th Street toward the local icon, with the ground floor of a downtown office building on the left. The view is roughly east southeast near sunset.
Check out the photons bouncing back at other City Daily Photo members at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .
