INTO THE BACKGROUND

The Arch was right out in front in yesterday's picture. Today it slides into the background behind downtown buildings, notably the architecturally wacky Civil Courts Building, described in an early post on this blog. For the locals, the view is east on Chestnut from about 14th Street. I got a little subtle color out of this infrared shot. So much more to learn.             

TROMPE L'OEIL

This old building downtown used to be a warehouse with access to a railroad yard just in front of it. Now it's partly a hotel and partly fancy condos. The trompe l'oeil paint job might be thirty years old and is showing its age. The equestrian statue in the center is identical to the Apotheosis of St. Louis statue in Forest Park. Note the painted eagle flying across the far left side of the building.

Note also our bizarre Civil Courts building just to the right, with its Ionian columns, pyramid and sphinxes on top.              

The Law And The Economy

Three downtown buildings seen from a distance. 

On the left, the old Civil Courts building, where state-level litigation takes place. Hard to see from this distance but the architecture is genuinely bizarre. Worth this short read. 

The tall center building houses the federal courts, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. It is the largest single courthouse in America and is 18 years old. It has been controversial from the start because it completely blocks the view of the Arch from the main highway coming into downtown from the west.

The building on the right has the strangest story. After the breakup of the original AT&T into the regional "baby Bells," this was the headquarters of Southwestern Bell. That company started buying up other baby Bells and eventually the AT&T name. The headquarters moved to Dallas and this 44 story tower has been vacant for nine months. It will be hard to use because it was built for a single tenant and now has almost no parking. So another urban ghost building but the biggest one we've ever had.       

Delta

I could tell while editing that this is a Delta jet passing behind the Civil Courts building. It is approaching our airport from the southwest so it's probably coming from the airline's hub in Atlanta.

We almost always fly American. It took over TWA, which was based in St. Louis. We play the frequent flyer points game with a vengeance, so we stick with the carrier that gives us the most freebies.        

Urban Sunset

The Civil Courts building late in the afternoon. A photography teacher once told me that the light is good enough to shoot if shadows are at least 45 degrees from the source.  

Nice Light

It's Thursday and the Arch is in there somewhere. Looking east down Market Street from about 22nd Street.

Taking a quick visit online through my phone to post this. Violent thunderstorms again yesterday. Our power at home has been down since mid-afternoon.  

Et heureux fête nationale à nos amis français! 

Vise

Richard Serra's Twain puts the squeeze on the Civil Courts Building. I've shown it here a number of times before. Most people ignore it now but it generated a lot of hate when it was installed. I kneel before it.

It's gonna be a crazy but wonderful weekend. Up to Chicago today. Son Andy will be married on Saturday to the simply delightful Claire Blouin, who knows how to keep him in line. None of this wedding-industrial complex stuff. The rehearsal dinner is tonight in their back yard with Popeye's fried chicken and a keg. I'm the wedding photographer with daughter Emily working the second camera. We'll have days and days of this, I'm sure.                             

Thursday Arch Series

A look down Market Street with a long lens. The Arch is maybe a mile and a half away. The statues and fountain I've been showing lately are just off to the left of the frame. The architectural fruit salad of the Civil Courts is left center and the tower of Union Station to the right.                            

The Courts

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Another view from the rooftop terrace at the Park Pacific apartments. These are places lawyers hang out so beware. Center-left is the Egypto-Babbylonio-Neoclassic confection known as the Civil Courts Building. It contains Missouri state courts. On the right is the Thomas F. Eagleton United States Courthouse, the seat of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Eagleton was a senator some decades back. It may surprise you to learn that this is the largest single courts building in the country. In any event, I try to avoid both of them.

Below is another shot from the party at Park Pacific, a couple who appear to be having a good time. Turns out the young lady and I have only one degree of separation, as they say, a common client. We knew of each other but had never met. These small-town happenstances occur in St. Louis all the time.

2-Fer

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Downtown St. Louis 365 and St. Louis Daily Photo have a two for the price of one special today. These are a pair of view of views of the Civil Courts Building, seen here yesterday, through the portals of Ricard Serra's massive steel sculpture, Twain. While the Civil Courts is a jumble of ancient styles, Twain is at once much more simple and difficult. Certain people howled for its removal after it was installed in 1982. It stayed, thank heavens. The opposite result happened in New York when Serra's 1981 work, Tilted Arc, was removed from Foley Square in Lower Manhattan and carted off for scrap. So we get a one-up on the grand center of art.

Another advantage of a 2-fer is that I can use the same text on both blogs, more or less. Here's the image you can see on Downtown St. Louis 365:

Civilized

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I shot this Tuesday night after the political rally I had covered. It's facing west toward the architecturally wacky Civil Courts Building with the lights of Citygarden low in the foreground. The image is a three-shot handheld HDR. I had the ISO pumped up to 3200. Worked out okay.

What's on this weekend: we have a pretty damn good Halloween street party in the Central West End Saturday night. It's not the West Village in NYC or The Castro in San Francisco, but it's busy and a lot of fun. I've gotten some good images there in the past. Should be posts about it starting Sunday.

Citygarden At Night

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I've been wondering how Citygarden feels after sunset. Shorter days gave me an opportunity to hang around some after work and find out. The Civil Courts building lights up the background.

You Could Even Say It Glows

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The wacky architecture of the Civil Courts Building in the sunset, with a certain amount of electronic modification. Thirty or forty years ago, viewers might have assumed that there was a certain amount of chemical enhancement involved in the production. I'm old enough to remember.

A SAD NOTE: St. Louis lost two of its Toynbee Tiles in recent days. We only had four. Both of them in the crosswalk at 7th and Market were covered by repaving. The bizarre, mysterious plaques in the street are slowly being lost to time. I wonder how many are still left in Philadelphia, where theory holds they originated. I covered these on three consecutive posts in the early days of the blog and one more a month later. See the background story and first local tile here and my second discovery with more research here. The dear departed tiles and further inquiries may be viewed here and the second photo in this post. If you know of any Toynbee Tiles in your city, please let me know. This deep art must be preserved.

A Courthouse That Glows

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Photomatix can do strange and wonderful things to your pictures, although it takes some experience to get comfortable with it. If you didn't know better, you might think that this image was a painting. I particularly like the way the software adds a light glow around large objects although I don't know the technical reasons why that happens. This image is made of three photos, shot at correct exposure, two stops underexposed and two stops overexposed. The variable is the shutter speed, not the f stop, because you need to keep the depth of field the same. Photomatix squishes everything together, preserving high and low tones. Then you can fiddle with it some more. This is another picture of the architecturally wacky Civil Courts Building, with the Arch lurking in the background.

BY THE WAY, you may begin to notice some changes in the blog starting today. For one thing, I'm now using my real name, not the old nickname. Something new is afoot, something exciting (well, depending on how somnolent you are), with a projected launch next Thursday, November 13. Watch the skies. And thanks, PJ.

WHAT'S ON FOR THE WEEKEND: very little (a relief!), made up of tons of paperwork at the office, photo shooting, photo editing, dinner with our daughter and son-in-law, and working on this hush-hush new project. That's what I call free time.

TOMORROW: all of Soldiers Memorial. The full view. More than meets the eye but not necessarily the lens.

...and who, disguised as a mild mannered lawyer at a great metropolitan law firm, fights a never-ending battle for TRUTH, JUSTICE AND THE AMERICAN WAY

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No, not me. That line was about Superman or Barak Obama, I forget which. Lawyers in my specialty don't even go to the courthouse. The Civil Courts building downtown, completed in 1927, is one wacky piece of architecture as I discussed in a post last year. To call it grandiloquent might be an understatement (although it's kind of run down inside). I tried to bump up the volume in this picture with a wide angle lens. HDR, and various Photoshop magic tricks.

WHAT I'M GOING TO TRY TO AVOID DOING TONIGHT: gluing my nose to the television as the election returns come in. Que serà, Que serà.

TOMORROW: well, that depends on what we Americans learn late tonight, doesn't it?

BY THE WAY, my friend Snapper at Gabriola Daily Photo was kind enough to give me the Kreativ Blogger Award that's been in the blogosphere of late. I appreciate his support. When you get this, you are supposed to nominate six other bloggers for the prize and publish a list of six things that make you happy. I'm going to almost pass on the first part; most of the bloggers I would nominate has already been so honored, with two exceptions. First, Andre of Chicago Flair. Never routine, never boring, always a fresh eye on that Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler. Second, to iBlowfish of Cleveland Daily Photo, who stopped publishing last July. He is one of the finest photographers to have graced this group, a street photographer in the tradition of Cartier-Bresson and Winogrand, but with a melancholy spirit. I wish he would rejoin us. Look at his work. If you agree, email him and ask him to come back.

So, I am supposed to list six things that make me happy:

- my wife and two children. Really.
- arts and sciences.
- learning. Knowing is fun but learning is more fun.
- seeing the whole damn world, or as much of it as I can get to.
- this image thing, photography.
- independence.

Winter Geometry

St. Louis doesn't get a whole lot of snow. We're on about the same parallel as Washington and San Francisco, Madrid and Athens. However, yesterday we got 8 to 10 inches / 20 to 25 cm of snow. That's insignificant to many of you - I can see the look of disdain on Mitch's face up there in frozen Minnesota. It's a treat for me when it happens here. It gives the city a whole new look and imposes a quiet that happens at no other time. My camera went to work with me yesterday and I shot this downtown in Kiener Plaza, looking west toward the Civil Courts Building. The foreground is an amphitheater below street level. Note that there's a bit of the Arch reflected in the building at right center. I like the geometry and rhythm of the scene.

TOMORROW: Kathmandu