Wednesday, December 25, 2024

PEACE


Peace from St. Louis to all who celebrate Christmas as well as those who do not. It can be a hard commodity to find in this sad old world. Since we have no family in the area except Ellie, who was with us yesterday, and it’s raining all day, it’s quiet in our home. That's okay.                    

Tuesday, December 24, 2024

EXCITEMENT IS BUILDING


Christmas Eve, and the excitement in a certain girl who spends some of her time in this house is about to bubble over. All four grandparents, her father and a church that sometimes helps her and her dad since her mother has been gone, have built piles of wrapped packages for her. Despite all that has happened to this child in the last couple of years, she is so happy, so cheerful (mostly), so grateful and so positively involved with her friends that she makes me glow. May it remain so.

Locals may recognize that this is looking east on Manchester at the beginning of The Grove neighborhood.            

Monday, December 23, 2024

MADELEINE MONDAY

 

Haven’t had the kid on for a while. That’s her on the left, with best friend Emma. I don’t remember the cat's name but it’s very used to strangers.            

Sunday, December 22, 2024

WHO DISTURBED MY NAP?

 

The return of gratuitous cuteness. There is a delightful place in St. Louis called Mauhaus Cat Cafe and Lounge. For a small entry fee, you can get a beverage, a pastry and hang around with a bunch of friendly kitties. They are all adoptable. Our granddaughter, Ellie, just loves the place. We took her and her best friend yesterday.              

Saturday, December 21, 2024

GAS STATIONS IN THE NIGHT, NUMBER 4


QuikTrip, Big Bend Boulevard and I 44, Kirkwood. The underside of these canopies at newer stations are all white, with very bright lights. And all very clean. Most of them are edged in vivid red (except BP, green, and Mobil, blue). The feel is high tech.

I’ll come back to this theme later. There is something very cutesy to shoot today.                      

Friday, December 20, 2024

GAS STATIONS IN THE NIGHT, NUMBER 3

 

Circle K, Elm Avenue and Watson Road, Crestwood, very close to where we live. Don’t know how much longer I’ll continue with this. It’s different.                  

Thursday, December 19, 2024

GAS STATIONS IN THE NIGHT, NUMBER 2


South Broadway and Lombard Street, downtown St. Louis. This project is turning out to be harder than I thought. The photographer needs a lot of room to find an interesting angle. Traffic is a problem. I’m wondering when some security person will get suspicious about an old man in a black car taking pictures of the property through his car window. It might be easier if I went to the edges of the metro area where is lots of space, but that’s not convenient.                   

Wednesday, December 18, 2024

GAS STATIONS IN THE NIGHT, NUMBER 1

 

I’ve become fascinated with the look of contemporary American gas stations at night. The inspiration is a favorite painting by the artist Ed Ruscha. It’s tricky to make this work. It needs a dark location, preferably without adjacent structures.There has to be enough surrounding space to get a good angle. A bit more of this to come.

For locals, this at the northeast of Big Bend and Laclede Station in Webster Groves.                 

Tuesday, December 17, 2024

TRUMPET IN THE BASEMENT


I mentioned in yesterday’s post that I attended a fundraiser for Artica at the William A. Kerr Foundation. There were to be performances but no schedule was published. It was wrapping up when I arrived. There was the sound of a trumpet coming from the basement. I went down and found one last musician.                    

Monday, December 16, 2024

ST. LOU NOIR

 

The corner of Lewis and O’Fallon Streets in the post-industrial wastelands north of downtown. Normally somewhere angels fear to tread, especially at night. However, off-frame to the right is the William A. Kerr Foundation, in its unusual building that hosts all sorts of arts events. On this particular night there was a party, fund raiser and silent auction for Artica.                         

Sunday, December 15, 2024

FOREST PARK INFRARED IN COLOR

 

This old picture shows what you can get when you do an infrared conversion in color. The scene is one I showed recently in monochrome. Color is more technically difficult.  I will have to go back through the tutorials if I shoot more of these.                

Saturday, December 14, 2024

BLUE ARCHES

 

A long-time reader of this blog complained politely that she was tired of gloomy, high contrast monochrome infrared images. The original IR images are very magenta. It’s not hard to manipulate them into dramatic B&Ws, but there is also a way to make otherworldly color pictures. I used to do it more often but it’s complicated and I don’t remember the process well. Maybe I’ll post one of the old ones tomorrow. For now, arches from the World’s Fair Pavilion in an icy blue.

I am so out of material. It’s cold and wet today and miserable for outdoor shooting. I’ll scramble.             

Friday, December 13, 2024

QUESTA ABAJO

 

Um, maybe some mixed metaphors or loose associations. Our trips to Argentina over the years have made me a big fan of Carlos Gardel, sort of the Elvis Presley of tango, the king of the genre.  One of my favorite songs, performed with such intensity, is Questa Abajo, or, roughly, down the hill. It works here. You could tumble roughly and dangerously down the stairs and terraces from the World’s Fair Pavilion. You could walk smoothly down the stairs.              

Thursday, December 12, 2024

GLOWING BANDSTAND

 

More infrared. A small lake in Forest Park contains what is called a bandstand surrounded by a lovely garden, although I have no knowledge of any performance being held there. It would be hard to hear across the water, which makes me wonder about its purpose. Beauty is good enough.                      

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

SYSIPHUS


It’s not an arrogant mythical king but it is just as futile. Someone mentioned in a comment to Monday’s post that the missing sphere from the line could be seen at the upper right of the frame. But no, it is a separate sculpture by the locally famous Bob Cassilly, co-founder of the nothing-else-like-it -in the-world City Museum. The turtle may try to climb the sphere or push it forward but no amount of effort leads to progress.                      

Tuesday, December 10, 2024

THE OTHER SIDE

 

The other side of our World’s Fair Pavilion, down a long terraced hill. It’s December, but in warmer months an interesting fountain flows over these blocks. It looks more dramatic in IR.                  

Monday, December 9, 2024

MUSIC OF THE SPHERES


I guess you would call these things bollards. They are concrete and it’s hard  to imagine how they were made into such perfect spheres with no visible seam. What would be the second one is missing. Maybe it was damaged. Maybe some very strong prankster rolled it down the hill.                    

Sunday, December 8, 2024

BACK TO 1904


St. Louis had a world’s fair in 1904. (And the second modern Olympics after Athens. We used to be somebody.) This is one of two structures from the fair that remain, the other being the core of the art museum. We call this one the World’s Fair Pavilion.  There is a sweeping view down a hill on the other side and a nice open-sided space within. I’ve been to a wedding and reception there. When I was in college, the day after a concert in a theater, the Grateful Dead showed up here and played for free. Infrared makes it more dramatic.                   

Saturday, December 7, 2024

THE PARK IN LOW WAVELENGTHS

 

I had some time yesterday to get out to Forest Park with my infrared-converted camera. Working with these files in color is complicated. It depends on the band of IR wavelengths your camera sensor sees, making subtle adjustment in the channel mixer in Photoshop and other things I understand poorly. Monochrome is easier. The chlorophyll in leaves turns white and bright blue skies turn dark. Forest Park as you never see it.               

Friday, December 6, 2024

SOME IR


We are having trouble with our home Internet service, enough that we need to have a technician come over. In the meantime, we can only get access through our phones, which is really slow. I meant to go out yesterday with my infrared-converted camera but I spent much of the day troubleshooting. This is an older IR picture in Forest Park, looking across the Grand Lagoon toward the art museum.                  

Thursday, December 5, 2024

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - HO HO HO

 

A Christmas tree farm outside of Midland, Michigan. The whole family went to pick out something for the kids to decorate. The outside displays were a bit over the top. Mrs. C and I don’t get worked up over the holidays. We’re not sentimental.                  

Wednesday, December 4, 2024

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - CHEMICALS


Parts of the Dow Chemical complex in Midland, Michigan. It may be a bit odd, but the city has a parkway running by here and built an overlook. Dow has a complex and sometimes controversial history (you could look at the Wikipedia article). It was a principal manufacturer of napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. It is a huge, worldwide business but keeps its corporate headquarters in Midland. Hard to imagine what rich people find to do there.                    

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

STL DPB ON THE ROAD - TRIDGE

 


Midland, Michigan, where my son and his family live. It has lots of amenities, much of it funded, one way or the other, by its economic anchor, Dow Chemical Company. One unusual feature is the Tridge - not bridge - connecting three points in city parks near downtown. The center spans the confluence of the Chippewa and Tittawabasee Rivers, which eventually empty into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. Mrs. C and son Andy check the view in the cold.

Monday, December 2, 2024

PYRAMID POWER

 

No new local material so I’m going with my best available. Who doesn’t want more pictures of their grandkids? Audrey, Josie and Ellie pile on and I couldn’t have gotten a better arrangement if I knew how to direct posing (which I don’t). Josie, on top, is the instigator. Irrepressible, and perhaps a prodigy. Not through the first semester of kindergarten, she sat by me watching Weird Al videos on TV and read me the captions.                 

Sunday, December 1, 2024

CITY DAILY DECEMBER THEME - SLOW


Few things in St. Louis say slow as persistently as a barge struggling upstream against the torrent of the Mississippi River. Sunset on a cloudy day make it look almost motionless.    

City Daily Photo members around the world creep in their petty pace at https://citydailyphoto.org/category/theme-days/ .