Cycle

Forest Park, yesterday afternoon. Gray day. The annual cycle continues.

Color

We don't always get a colorful fall. Many years it is too warm and dry. Leaves turn brown, drop to the ground and that's it. This year, though, we hit the jackpot.

Still short on new material. After physical therapy this morning at Washington University Medical Center I went by my favorite spot in adjacent Forest Park. Damp day or not, it was ablaze.

There are some good sources of new images this weekend.      

Cammo

Back home at last. I was sitting on our front steps yesterday afternoon while Ellie was doing something we will see tomorrow. A monarch butterfly flitted by and settled in the fallen leaves. We don't get many of these in our area. If I hadn't noticed it in the air I probably would not have seen it among the browns and oranges.          

CORRECTION: Mrs. C, the house lepidopterist, botanist and grammarian, looked this up and informs me that this is not a monarch butterfly. It's called a comma, oddly enough. I'd be a mess without her.

Madeleine Monday

Getting better bit by bit, except for the &^@(* back arthritis. Still not out that much but I needed a Monday picture. I chose Ellie in front of the house on a warm (too warm) autumn afternoon.      

Ellie wanted to ride to the top of the Arch on Sunday. Fun for her but not such a good idea for me. Still long lines waiting for the tram (which an employee described as a combination of an elevator, a tram and a ferris wheel-spot on) and a fair amount of walking.

The ground is strewn with crab apples from a tree beside our house.

Transition

It finally feels like summer is really over here. It was a long one. Every autumn Citygarden covers its long stone wall with a row of pumpkins. The color is striking if you get the light right.             

The Best Trees In Forest Park

Fall color is hit and miss here. We need the right amount of rain and a little bit of cold weather. This year it's been dry as a bone for a few weeks and we haven't had a freeze. Most of the trees are dull brown.

But there is a small area in Forest Park that holds a grove that always blazes red and yellow in October. What could it be, the species or the soil? These are a couple of shots taken on Sunday.

Tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of the completion of the Arch. It will not go unmarked.                   

Pumpkins Need Police Protection

I turned around after I took yesterday's photo and got this one. The policemen in the background may have been left over from the gun rally, which happened earlier the same day. 

The pumpkins were gone when I drove by yesterday.                    

Orange

Orange is not my favorite color. I prefer serene blues or vigorous reds. Orange has always struck me as sort of a decayed red. Since our red and white Cardinals didn't make it quite that far, when I watched the World Series this week I was rooting for the blue and white Kansas City Royals, our cross-state neighbors, over the orange and black San Francisco Giants. Unfortunately, the team that dressed like a sooty fire won.

There is one grove of trees in Forest Park that has the best fall color year after year. These pictures were taken there last weekend. The colors have faded since then.   

Usual Stuff For The Season

We rarely get the spectacular autumns Americans associate with New England or maybe Minnesota and Wisconsin. It's going to be 79F/26C today and that's just not cold enough. These pictures were taken in Forest Park last weekend. Good enough for us.

I decided not to go to the pumpkin drop this morning. It's almost an hour drive from home. The pictures from previous years don't look so great - a couple of World War II military planes  dumping little orange spots. There's more to photograph later in the day. Plus, Mrs. C and I babysat Madeleine last night so our daughter and her husband could get out by themselves. It goes without saying I brought my camera. 

Midday update: the family fact-checker, proofreader and editor has informed me that temperature is not the only factor with the leaves changing color. It's also the declining length of the days. Apparently, when there is less sunlight photosynthesis shuts off. When the green chloroplasts in the leaves are gone the color of the structure of the leaves comes out. Now I know.
 

Early Sunset In Flyover Country

Forest Park empties out early in November and December with their shorter days and progressive cold.         

Color And Computers

I went out to Tower Grove and Forest Parks yesterday looking for the last bits of fall color. The pickings weren't that great but here and there I found spots of brilliance. It probably has to do with the species of tree but my arborist skills get a failing grade. On the one hand there is nature. On the other hand there is OS X, Photoshop, Photomatix, tripods and shutter burst mode. Technology saved the day. Appearances count for a lot.    

Madeleine Monday

Halloween is a silly season in this country, even for the two month old crowd.

                

Fall Color, At Last

Autumn color varies a lot from year to year in St. Louis. It seems to be a matter of the right amount of rain and temperatures in late summer and early fall. In many years, particularly dry ones, the leaves just turn brown and drop.

I'd say this is a medium year. The show came late but then we're pretty far south, about on the same parallel as Seville, Naples and Istanbul. One of my favorite spots to record this is the lawn and double colonnade of trees running south from the Arch. The trees form a cathedral-like cieling.

Skies were mostly dull yesterday. It's supposed to be sunny today. Maybe I can get one last blast in Forest and Tower Grove Parks.          

The Quiet Of Cold

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Cold weather seems quieter to me than warm. Fewer people out and about, only a few hardy birds left, no leaves to rustle in the wind. Bare tree branches have much less to say. In the summer people are outdoors and there is much more activity.

As the days become chilly some spots around town get a lonely feel. The ticket windows at the baseball stadium are abandoned. Come spring, this place will be full of chatting throngs.

Another View Of Autumn

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The original color photo was full of oranges and yellows with fringes of purple. Ho hum, another pretty fall foliage shot. For the moment, I'm more interested in the clean shapes and tones of black and white. This was taken last weekend in quiet Tower Grove Park.

Near The End

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Forest Park in early November. There was some good color here but I was more interested in the shapes: the emerging bones of the trunks and branches, the shrinking fleece of leaves, the carpet that shifted with any breeze.

Paragraph 1: Gray. Paragraph 2: JOY!

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Yesterday was a nasty late autumn day. The temperature hovered around freezing while a strong, damp wind blew from the north. The skies were leaden. Forest Park looked like a series of images from a Zoloft advertisement.

But wait, there's more! Last night was the opening and awards ceremony of Seen 2010, STL's big year-end photography show. I WON BEST IN SHOW, YOU KNOW, LIKE, FIRST PLACE IN THE WHOLE THING with this entry that took the Architecture division. I also placed first in the humor division with this one. So woo hoo! La vita è bella.

Last Colors

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It's the middle of November and the city is settling into dull browns and grays. It's not all gone, though. The plantings in Citygarden were arranged to take advantage of the seasons. They burst out yesterday, even though the sky was cloudy.

Order 190

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To go where? I found this lying in the dirt and dead leaves of Kiener Plaza. There are several restaurants across the street, including a local Italian eatery, a T.G.I. Friday's, a Hardee's (home of the Cardiac Combo) and (the horror!) a Hooter's (whose motto is, or used to be, "delightfully tacky." Really. Except only the second word is true). Maybe this is a subtle form of street art, suggesting we grow our own food.

Lingering Images Of Autumn

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The tree canopy is turning brown now. This picture was taken in Forest Park a couple of weeks ago but Virginia said I should post it. Yes, ma'am. Colors and textures that may stick with me through the winter.

I AM A DOPE DEPARTMENT: thanks to all of you who left comments here, on Facebook or on Flickr about my entry for the 2009 St. Louis Post-Dispatch travel photo contest. Someone even suggested I submit yesterday's post or the last Arch post. Well, I appreciate the thought but the rules say it has to be somewhere outside of the STL metropolitan area and you spent a night away from home. So no Arch.

I selected the entry today and uploaded to the paper's web site. It wasn't one in the set I put together on Flickr - I just overlooked it. This is my entry. I was such a dope for not seeing it earlier. It has what the editors want - a strong image, a bit of exoticism and a compelling sense of place that's definitely not here. Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series.

Tower Grove At Sunset

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I was going to continue the series of dead composers on sticks that I've done for the last two days. However, the images I got of Mozart, the next one, were really awful. Maybe I'll go shoot it again next weekend. For now, here's some lurid color I shot elsewhere in Tower Grove Park last weekend. It seems like it should have more meaning than just another HDR shot, like something from an Ingmar Bergman movie.