Every Picture Tells A Story

Found just inside the plate steel walls of the Twain sculpture. I invite readers to tell a little story, just two or three sentences, about how and why these objects came to rest here.              

Mellow Yellow, Citygarden

Okay, anyone old enough to remember that one raise your hand. (Geez, it was popular when I was a senior in high school but lives on in certain circles.) Still wandering around with the fisheye. Serra's Twain and Citygarden are across the street from one another.  That's one of Tom Classen's Two Rabbits in the middle background.                         

Twisted

I made it back downtown with the fisheye lens. To complicate matters, I shot HDRs with it, something I've never tried. 

The top image is an old (by American standards) courthouse that gets great light in the late afternoon reflected from the windows of the building across the street. You can see a bit of it in the extreme warp at the top left.

The second picture was taken in exactly the same place as yesterday's lead pic, just different lens and digital technique. Note the weird digital noise outside the circle of the image. That area was theoretically dark, as the fisheye should have kept all the light within the circle. What you see in there was created by Photomatix, the HDR software. Kinda cool. I blacked it out in the top photo and left it in the second. Which do you prefer?

I've been terrible about comments. Too damn much work, with some special business planning issues on the table right now. On the current schedule, retirement is 43 months away. Maybe I should start a countdown clock.                                    

Lie On Your Back And Look At The Sky

Screw on a wide angle lens and a polarizing filter. Put yourself right in the middle of Richard Serra's Twain downtown. Be willing to get dirty. Push the shutter button a few times.

I want to go back and try this again with my fisheye lens.                                 

In The Good Old Summertime

One nice thing  about Citygarden is the water features. Children and their parents are welcome to splash through them, surprising in today's world of liability insurance and litigation. Such a scene on an August day needs an ice cream truck.

I am so low on material. What's going on around here?                         

OnSTL: Less Than 15 Minutes Of Fame

In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.
Andy Warhol

Andy overestimated it. I got 3 minutes 49 seconds.

There's a really good local website here, onstl.com. It's about life in St. Louis, its people, its events, its vibe. A couple of times a week they have a feature called Hello, St. Louis!, a visit with a St. Louisan who brings something unusual to the scene. For reasons best known to them, today's subject is me.

The photos below are of Ron Stevens and his wife Joy Grdnic, the principal owners, Grant Murphy, the videographer, and Ric Anthony, the studio engineer. They're all delightful people and the visit was a lot of fun. Looks like they may run a photo of the month from St. Louis Daily Photo.

OnSTL is a great resource for locals. You can sign up for their newsletter here.

That Lady Has A Hot Embouchure

I'm out of touch with so much in my community. I work, work some more, take pictures, edit pictures, tend the blog, have dinner with my wife and fall asleep. Barely use Facebook and have no interest in Twitter. So I can get disconnected.

Fortunately, Mrs. C is just the opposite. She keeps me in the loop. Carolyn told me that there was a series of Wednesday lunch time concerts in Citygarden. Who knew? Today's main performer was Dawn Webber, one of the hottest trumpeters in town. We've heard her before. The performance was terrific, a perfect way to break up an overloaded morning and overwhelming afternoon at the office.