Thursday Arch Series

Weird stuff with a wide angle lens. All the office buildings bow down in obeisance to the Arch. Shot at 17 mm, the shortest lens I got, on a Canon 5D. The 5D's light sensor is the same size as a frame of 35 mm film so there is no "magnification factor," as with most DSLRs. So, WYSIWYG (what you see i what you get) in the viewfinder. The short focal length creates optical distortion at the sides.

I bet there are going to be a lot of CDPB posts today about the lunar eclipse. I went out in front of my house to shoot it with a 400 mm lens, the longest I got. I know zip about astronomical photography and it was difficult. Not enough light for the autofocus to work. Manual focus was hard because the subject was dim and I wear trifocals. I tried to shoot at 100 and 200 ISO for maximum clarity but, damn!, those celestial bodies move in a 20 or 30 second exposure. I wish I'd tried a higher ISO but after a while I couldn't feel my fingers and I weenied out from the cold. I know, Mitch, this is nothing. If it's 20 F. here it's probably zero or below up there. Minnesotans are made of harder stuff.

TOMORROW: Crown Candy

Very Low Cost Eye Care

Much of the north side of the City of St. Louis is a hard place to live. It is predominantly black and poor, with limited neighborhood facilities. An older part of the area, close to the Mississippi, is home to a restaurant that is a local institution, more about which on Friday. What's pictured here is across the street. Still, it's not a happy neighborhood. What's a nice Japanese optometrist doing in a place like this?

Beats me. This looks like a tough way to make a living from a professional practice. Obviously, the overhead is very low but there's got to be more to the story. Would you be interested in contact lenses?

TOMORROW: Thursday Arch Series

Treatment for couples with, um, a difficulty

Will living downtown improve your intimate relationships?

Perhaps, depending on just what the problem is. For this couple, maybe all it takes is a prescription for Fortysil. Those three ED medications, whose ads are inescapable in the US, all have chemical names that end in sil. Don't ask me what it means. All I know about organic chemistry is that it has something to do with carbon chains, which sounds like a good way to lock up your bike.

What this is really about is commuting in St. Louis. An 11 mile-18 km section of our major east-west highway, US 40 - Interstate 64, is closed for complete rebuilding. This section is in the suburbs and construction goes on for a year. In 2009, the highway department will shut down a similar stretch in the city for the same purpose for yet another year. Two years of traffic mess. The Rx for a cure? Acording to this ad, live in a downtown loft apartment and forget the highway. Satisfy your partner.

TOMORROW: Low budget eye chart

Peace and Vigilance: Detail

It's hard to get a good overview of Peace and Vigilance with Eagle, featured yesterday. It's big, it's above eye level and it's indoors. The details show more of the art.

Vigilance is on the ball. She is alert, scanning the horizon. Her posture is relaxed but a sword is ready in her right hand. Peace, on the other hand, is harder to interpret. She holds an olive branch in her left hand (I don't know if the lefty olive has a meaning) but, frankly, she looks depressed rather than peaceful. Maybe her lover left, her dog died and, as the old Commander Cody song has it, she's down to seeds and stems again, too.

The eagle shrieks over the whole scene. Vigilance might appreciate the scouting help but how is Peace going to get any, well, peace with that screaming bird over her head? Maybe that's why she's depressed.

TOMORROW: Treatment for couples with, um, a difficulty.

Peace and Vigilance

The structure in the background of yesterday's picture is what we now call Old Post Office Building. Originally the U.S. Custom House and Post Office, it was dedicated in 1884 and housed a variety of federal government offices. One of its great little secrets is that a tunnel runs under the street on the east, three levels below the surface. There are huge iron doors from the tunnel into the lowest level of the building, once used to securely bring in government gold shipments. Today the tunnel carries the bit of our light rail system that is a subway.

The statue Peace and Vigilance with Eagle once stood on top of the front of the building. In recent decades, it became damaged by air pollution. The original statue was restored and re-installed in the rotunda. A fiberglass copy is now in the original location outdoors. The sculptor was Daniel Chester French, whose best known work is the seated figure of Abraham Lincoln in Washington's Lincoln Memorial.

Walking Figure

This whimsical pedestrian strolls down Olive Street in downtown St. Louis, right outside the doors of my office building. Walking Figure by Donald Baechler was installed with funding from the Gateway Foundation, which places public art throughout the area. For another example, see my post last May about Nijinsky Hare, an enormous balletic bunny outside the hockey arena.

Walking Figure is about three meters tall. It makes me smile every time I pass by. It is so lighthearted, so silly in a sophisticated way. Nothing heroic about it. It could be a friend of yours or mine after knocking back a couple of shots of Alice's Drink Me.

TOMORROW: How about some more good downtown sculpture?

Valentine, A Day Late and a Blossom Short

This picture technically has something to do with St. Louis. It was shot in my living room. I'm about out of material and need to get out this weekend and shoot some new stuff. Not on the street much during the work week. This will have to do for today.

My first name is Robert so I made my wife a Sponge Bob Valentine card in MS Publisher. I glued bits of sponge to the envelope. She liked it a lot. She got me a book that's a comic look at the many wonders of Latin in the ancient world and modern language. I like it a lot.

By the way, these are tulips, not the traditional roses. Shot with a Lensbaby, of course. I have a set of photos of tulips and lilies, shot over a two-day period, on Flickr, here.