LONG WAVELENGTH WATERWAYS

Around the bend in the same artificial lagoon in Forest Park. Pretty bridge, pretty landscaping, and the strange shadings of infrared light images. Our everyday world in a way we can never see on our own.            

Octopus' Garden

The title of one of the few songs the Beatles let Ringo sing. At least one of them is still trading off the old fame. Paul McCartney played at our baseball stadium Saturday night. I declined to pay $300 for a ticket. My sister and I did attend the Beatles second concert at Shea Stadium in New York - OMG, 50 years ago next week. It cost $5.75.

But I digress, as is so often the case. I was walking around Art Hill last weekend desperate for some material when I found this remarkable cephalopod. Not entirely self-propelled but visually arresting.             

Year's End

The last day of 2012. It has been a challenging time in my practice with significant changes in the field. The hours were often too long, taking time from other interests. It's also had special pleasures as Carolyn and I go through our 38th year happily together: the news about our grandchild; visits to Death Valley, Philadelphia, New York, Costa Rica, Birmingham, Seattle, Kansas and Los Angeles; and a week of intense photography study at the Maine Media Workshops. Now for another chapter.

We wrap up with sunset scenes in Forest Park taken Saturday, just to prove we got some snow this winter. Above, the Jewel Box, a giant greenhouse. Below, two views of Art Hill and the Grand Lagoon. The buildings in the background of the last one are part of Washington University Medical Center, where I sometimes get this and that fixed.

There are more good pictures of New York City (you can see them here) but I thought it best to end the year in St. Louis.

TOMORROW: A review of STL DPB's best photographs from 2012. IMHO, of course.

Don't you just love it...

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...when you are about to take a stupid boring picture and a kid on a bicycle rides into the frame and you had the flash on to get some fill? I was about to shoot the St. Louis Art Museum atop Art Hill, with Forest Park's Grand Lagoon in the foreground. Somebody mowed a crude arch into the grass on the hill, which is what got my attention. I put on the speedlight to get some pop on the planters in the foreground. This would have been a dreadful photo. Then the boy rolled into the shot. Thanks, kid.

TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series, plus a new Arch photo on GATEWAY.

Big Sky Country

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Fooling around with HDRs again but this one is different. Usually I shoot handheld and blend three images. This was on a tripod (yes, me!) and made from seven shots, like the big boys do it. It has smoother tonal transitions while keeping the whole light-dark range.

The view is from mid-way down Art Hill in Forest Park, beneath the Art Museum, looking north toward the Grand Lagoon. It was taken with a 17 mm wide angle lens. Note the other photographer in the green shirt working off a tripod in front of me. She was shooting film. Such discipline.

TOMORROW: bunch of fairies.