STL DP At 11 - What A Workout

Today is Saint Louis Daily Photo's eleventh anniversary. I have not posted every single day but I've come pretty close. It should reach 4,000 posts in less than three weeks. From one point of view, it's been as much work as this nut-job exercise class doing push-ups off a platform in Forest Park. 

Why do I keep doing it? Other excellent City Daily Photo Blogs have come and gone. Maybe I need a creative outlet, or an alternative activity since I'm really tired of working. Maybe it's because I have come to enjoy photography so much and welcome the push to keep at it. Maybe it is the CDP colleagues from Paris to Perth, Berlin to Birmingham, we've become friends with and, in many cases, met. They are all good reasons.

I regret that my comments on friends' blogs have dropped off. It is a combination of things. An unrelenting work load. (I've been trying like crazy to cut down to part time and it's just not happening - I own the law practice.) Family obligations - as some of you may have inferred, Ellie lives with us half time and she is always my first priority. And maybe just getting older. But, in any case, thank you for your visits, your comments, your Facebook notes, your friendship and chance to enjoy your wonderful images.        

STL DP's 10th Anniversary

Honestly, I had no idea.

There was the childhood Brownie camera and the 35 mm Yashica film camera that came with the woman I married (both of them happily still around). The trip to India and Nepal in 2000, when I brought along one of the first consumer digital cameras. The video producer who said, perhaps out of flattery, that I had a good eye and recommended the Maine Media Workshops, where I spent five of the happiest weeks of my life. The colleague in my legal specialty in Seattle who had a daughter going to college in Washington who had heard about this City Daily Photo thing that might be of interest.

And Virginia and Jing and Jack and Olivier and Grace and Steffe and C de Q and Jilly and Nathalie and Grace and William and Ming and David and Julie and Julie and Sharon and Hal Cyon and Bibi and Stef and Luis and Bill and Kate and Kim and all the people I've forgotten to mention and all the people who have come and gone, leaving memorable images. And, of course, Eric. And, of course, the dear, departed Birdman.

There has been an anniversary post every year.  Being a little short on time and creativity, the photo above is the entrance of 10 South Broadway downtown, with a little digital goofing. I was surprised how many of the old pix were not taken in STL. From the beginning of the series:

         

2008 - A Buddhist monk in Thailand. I got in some trouble for taking this without his explicit permission, a cultural taboo I was unaware of. Our guide actually got down on her knees with forehead to ground, begging forgiveness for the idiot Yank. I won't know if it did any good for at least a few incarnations.

2009 - On Bourbon Street in New Orleans. This guy and his friends have been out there for years, posing for tips. The store beside him actually sells huge ass beers to go, depending on your definition.

2010 - This started as an exercise in learning Photoshop, dropping in one head and face over another and blending it in. Cousin Russell never objected.

2011 - Things were a bit more creative years ago. Time grinds us down.

2012 - Not my photo! Mrs. C and I in Menton, France, taken by our dear friend Jilly.

2013 - Not what it seems. The tiles mark the intersection of St. Louis and Bourbon Streets in New Orleans. 

2014 - things start to get a little less creative. Not too bad a photo but time is linked to entropy, somebody said. 

2015 - just a couple of blocks away, but one of a only couple of the anniversary pictures that works in the local icon

2016 - if you are counting single digits it's good to live in a city with numbered streets.

 See all of you again tomorrow. Who's counting?

St. Louis Daily Photo's Fourth Anniversary

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Four years. 1,458 posts (I missed a couple of days when we were out in some yak pasture). 10,000 Blogger profile views. Dinner with an affiliate in Shanghai, lunch on an island in the Seine with four Paris colleagues, friends made around the world. Strides forward in the improvement of my photography and a much deeper understanding of my city.

Also, thousands of hours spent shooting, editing, posting and commenting. Big drop in the number of books I've read. Can't remember the last time I went to a movie. Tentative diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Four more years! Four more years! is a chant heard at our national political conventions when an incumbent president is running for re-election. How long can - or should - I keep this up? No idea.

Sincere thanks to all of those who have supported my work and said such nice things about my photography. Another post will go up at midnight tonight, at least, and there will be a picture of the Arch on Thursday.

To be continued...

By the way, Steffe of Haninge Daily Photo suggested I mark the occasion by putting together a collection of my best work on Flickr. Already got one! Select a few that catch your eye or run the slideshow. Click here.

And speaking of the Cardinals and the legal profession, Downtown St. Louis 365 has an observation today.

STL CDPB's First Anniversary - My Very Best Photos

Whew! A year of photographs. 366, actually, since it's leap year. I've been thinking about what to do to mark the occasion. No time to assemble something witty. One possibility would have been to pick my favorite photo from twelve months of work and use that today. But this is about photography, something I love, so I decided to post a set of what I think is my best work, shot on a marvelous trip to Thailand two years ago. The picture immediately below is the best image I've ever made, IMHO. It is a hair salon in Chang Mai, at the back of a local market, a piece of real Thai life. It's easier to see the detail if you click the picture to enlarge it.

The picture above is eye-catching for the portal, a Buddhist monk reading the paper in a temple in Chaing Mai. The second photo below was shot at dawn on the Chao Phraya River in a rural area north of Bangkok. The last is a boy from a remote tribe that was forcibly resettled by the government to a village outside of Chaing Rai. These pictures are my best stuff.

Thanks to the 25,000 visitors from 120 counties in this short time. Thanks, too, to my children, U "R" Us and ShadowyOne, both good photographers, who have covered the blog when I was away. Thanks to NYC's Ming for beautiful photos of the neighborhood where I grew up, Shanghai's Jing for being tour guide and dinner hostess in her exciting city, Minneapolis' Mitch for so much good technical advice and Cleveland's iBlowfish for his pure aesthetics. And so many others I can't count them all.

Gotta go get to work on the next batch of pix. There will be lots more from my home, St Louis, and some interesting places around the US and the world, starting with Puerto Rico next month. And in October a big photo op (hint: where does Bob Seger really want to go if he ever gets out of here?).

So stop by.

TOMORROW: Easter Parade