What It Feels Like To Be Back At Work After Two Weeks In France

Being a lawyer can be such fun. As we start law school in this country they teach us a bunch of old English legal maxims, since that's the basis of our system. One has it that the law is a jealous mistress. Enough said.

Just A Pretty Face

Neither Olay or Revlon is a sponsor of the Color Run.

Poof

There is a stage at the end of the Color Run where the participants gather. The organizers throw little packets of colored powder to the crowd. After a countdown, the runners toss them into the air. This is the result.

The crowd at this event was tiny compared to the past. Look at the number of people in the second picture - these were the participants at the end - and compare the mob there in 2012. The organizers ran one of these here in April. Maybe too often. Maybe a fad that is past its time. 

Colorful Personalities

The Color Run must have taken place almost everywhere in the world by now, except maybe North Korea. I've shot it twice, both in 2012, in The Lou and Birmingham, AL (scroll down in the set). I'm sure it's a for-profit deal. People pay a significant fee to run 5 km while occasionally being pelted with brightly colored powder. They seem  to have a good time.

These are just some very stained faces in the crowd. More to come.

The Occasional Madeleine Photo

 Baby's first visit to the Apple Store. She looks as befuddled as many of the customers. Taken on my iPhone, of course.

Color Explosion

At the end of the color run people crowded around a stage set up in the street. An  inane MC tried whip everyone into a frenzy of excitement (sounds like some churches or political rallies). Staff passed out packets of the colored powder. On a signal from the MC, the crowd hurled their pigment into the air. The result rang alarms at every office of the Environmental Protection Agency in the region. Looked pretty cool.

Overwhelming photo ops in The Lou this weekend. The annual Dancing In The Street festival is all day Saturday in Grand Center. The Great Forest Park Balloon Race is also on this weekend, with the night time balloon glow this evening and the fox and hounds chase tomorrow afternoon. (Last year's pictures here.)  Daughter Emily and granddaughter Madeleine will join me in Forest Park. Baby's first balloon race.           

Saffron - It's Not Just For Curry Anymore

There were four stations along the Color Run where participants got whacked with pink, blue, yellow and green. The yellow one had the best light and space to shoot in. (Hint to Grace: watch the direction of the wind, stay just outside the blast zone and be sure to carry a lens cloth. A very wide angle lens helps.) All that saturation and contrast played tricks on my camera but the results were pretty good.

The second of these pictures got the most views on Flickr. The person in the red shirt looked like he dropped dead in the street. After a moment, he started writhing around in the powder, sort of wallowing in it. Then he got up and continued. To each their own.

We'll have a nice ethereal Arch photo tomorrow and then some more of this on Friday. Haven't got to the mass color eruptions from the crowd at the end.            

Makeup Artists

So many good shots from Sunday. The first one was actually taken near the end of the run as the crowd gathered around the stage. These two look like I did their makeup.

Below, everyone stands still during the singing of the national anthem. Bottom, a puzzle. I have no idea what the person in the unicorn head was about but I saw him/her all over the course.

Observations: the ratio of women to men had to be 10 to 1. I don't remember that from last year. I guess the ladies love being pelted with bright colors while the men would rather just have jeans, a blue and gray plaid shirt, a beer and be left alone. Also, the vast majority of participants walked the course on Sunday, while in 2012 most were running. I'll have to think about what all of this means.         

Return Of The Color Run

For-profit but fun (or, as The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy would put it, mostly harmless) The Color Run returned to St. Louis yesterday. I've shot the event twice before, once here and this time last year in Birmingham, Alabama. (Hey, Grace, it's coming to Perth on 3 November!) Other readers should see if it's coming to a city near you.

The idea is to run or walk 5 km in a white tee shirt and get completely blasted by super-fine, brightly colored powder. The other idea is to avoid getting it all over the front of your lens.

More to come.     

Madeleine Monday

Last Friday night at the Soulard Art Market show opening. Baby's first art gallery. I don't know if that look reflects interest, bewilderment or grandpa blasting the flash in her face again. 24 days old.        

Alabama, The Only State In The Country Where You Can Drown Standing Up

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The caption was a snip of conversation I heard yesterday morning at the Birmingham edition of The Color Run. It had the ring of truth.

Readers may recall that I shot the first stop on the tour in St. Louis a couple of weeks ago. Well, it was pouring down rain at Barber Motorsports Park outside of B'ham where the run was held. Virginia, Mrs. C and I drove out to see and shoot the spectacle. No rain delays, just go for it.

This was way different than the one back home. No dry, dusty color hanging in the air, just streams of colored mud. What fools these mortals be.

Purple Haze

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Yep, that's today's theme song. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear.

Some commenters on this series have it exactly right: many of the scenes look like a terrorist attack, a natural disaster or an environmental crisis. Speaking of which, were the organizers of the Color Run required to do an environmental or public health impact statement concerning the city or the runners? Looks like they weren't.

The young lady with the fairy wings in the second photo somehow found the image on my Flickr site. Boodles of her friends have now viewed it. She said that she likes it.

By Request (And Sort Of A Thrsday Arch Picture)

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Olivier and Jilly preferred the last of the three pictures in yesterday's post, which surprised me. I didn't think it was that great but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. That picture and today's were shot moments apart. I like this one better, sort of the march of the living dead. Sure, it's the Color Run, but this is more effective in B&W. The early morning sun throws the runners and the Arch into sharp relief.

Sorry for the lack of comments yesterday. We took our daughter and her husband out to dinner for her birthday. Got home late.

FACTOID: an anagram for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan is "My Ultimate Ayn Rand Porn." Bingo.

Dust To Dust

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The junk the participants in The Color Run had to suck into their lungs was amazing. Where was the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Government Agency For Spectral Pollution (GASP) or the Institute For Chronic Kafkaesque Induction Of Purple Uvulas (ICKIPU)? All that colored powder had to coat the runners' bronchial passages. It covered my camera but was no big deal to clean off later. However, the participants should have been issued respirators with their white tee shirts.

Cosmetics

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Although both sexes were well represented, I think there was a clear majority of women at the Color Run. It's interesting to speculate why. Maybe some men were uncomfortable about being coated in colored powder. They should get in touch with their chromatic side.

Painted Ladies

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By the end of the Color Run your skin tone depended in how much you reveled in the bombardment of colored powder. These young ladies had no inhibitions about it. They were pressed up against a rail in front of a stage at the end of the course. Runners were being pressed onstage by the MC for a dance contest with separate male and female divisions. The audience apparently had strong opinions. 

The Color Run

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I still don't get it. 15,000 people showed up in downtown St. Louis early yesterday morning to run or walk 5 km while being pelted with bright-colored powdered pigment. The Color Run had no obvious tie-in with a charity, no major commercial sponsor. Was someone trying to work this up into a profit-making event? St. Louis was the first in a series of such runs in second and third tier cities, although there's one in New York City in a remote section of Brooklyn.

More about this in days to come. I may get to shoot another one of these but we will talk about that in due time. The video below has a big splotch of purple dye on the lens that I didn't notice until I downloaded it. Seems appropriate, though.

What a shooting day. Besides the Color Run there was an exhibition of "vintage" baseball under the Arch. The players wore old-fashioned uniforms, had an odd-sized ball and did not wear gloves while playing the field. Last night, the young lawyer who works for us part time got married in a spectacular venue in Forest Park. She will have a CD of photos when she returns from her honeymoon in British Columbia. On the way home from the reception I stopped at a pharmacy and got a splint for my right index finger.