I'M MELTING

Like the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz, that's the feeling I sometimes get from a Lensbaby image of a figure. You can get the sense that unnatural forces are at work, that matter is beginning to dissolve and vanish. (Ever read The Gone Away World by Nick Harkaway?)

This is Eros Bendato by Igor Mitoraj in Citygarden. It is enigmatic. The blindfold isn't doing a very good job but there are no eyes behind it to see. Children frequently crawl around in the hollow interior.            

I FOUND MY LENSBABY

Twenty years of digital photography has left me with a lot of . . . stuff. It gets piled up in boxes, more or less sorted by brand (Canon, Olympus, and, for a while now, Fujifilm). I was digging around in the Fuji box looking for something when I came across my near-forgotten Lensbaby.

Ever hear of these or play with one? Look at https://lensbaby.com/ . It is a special lens that has a focused center spot (which can be moved) that becomes progressively blurred toward the edges (which can be varied). There are quite a few different varieties and diopters you can switch in and out.

So I took the Lensbaby and my Fujifilm X-T3 to Citygarden after work yesterday. This is Aristide Maillol's La Riviere. I think it worked. Might have some more of this.   

Thursday Arch Series

I got the day of the week right this time. It's always been my opinion that the Arch was placed on the banks of the Mississippi by the same aliens who created the monolith in the opening scenes of Kubrick's 2001. 

Been bad about visiting my friends blogs and leaving comments this week. Just too, too, much work. Things will turn around.                 

Right After The Last One

Yesterday's, today's (and maybe tomorrow's) pictures were taken on a September afternoon. I was walking around under the Arch shooting hand-held HDRs, some of them with a Lensbaby. This view is from the top of the stairs in Friday's post with the shadow of the Arch running down. If you look carefully you can see the shadow out over the river and hooking left.

AND THE ST. LOUIS CARDINALS CRUSHED LOS ANGELES 9 - 0 LAST NIGHT TO WIN THE NATIONAL LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP. The Cardinals now advance to the World Series against either Boston or Detroit. The Series will be here Saturday, Sunday and perhaps Monday of next week. I hope to get to one and possibly two of the games. 

The Cardinals are a remarkable franchise. There are 30 teams in Major League Baseball. Our's has reached the World Series 4 of the last 10 and 2 of the last 3 years.

 

       

The South Lawn

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In this country, mention of the south lawn usually refers to the White House, where receptions are held and helicopters fly in and out. This, however, is the south lawn of the Arch grounds. It was a freakishly warm day for the first of December although the sky looked as bleak as frozen January.

This is a 5-image HDR taken with a Lensbaby. I needed some entertainment.      

Vision

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Foggy, cold, damp, miserable day yesterday. Everything your eyes observed was soft, including the angular statue of King Louis IX of France, St. Louis, in front of the art museum.

At The Orchid Show

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I rarely shoot flowers. The subject has been overworked. Too often they are good for a "gee, that's pretty" reaction and little more (with some big exceptions, of course, like Robert Mapplethorpe's floral work).

However, the big annual orchid show is in progress at the Missouri Botanical Garden and I had to check it out. What different approach could I use? A Lensbaby with extension tubes to get in close and make the pictures semi-abstract. It worked out pretty well. I hope you agree. We will see a few more of these in days to come.

By the way, a tip of the hat to Mike Hillis at St. Louis Honda for putting me in some new wheels yesterday. Good people to do business with.

Meet our new traffic reporter, Meriwether Lewis, on Downtown St. Louis 365 today.

Believe

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What do you believe in? Or maybe the question should be: do you believe? Those cherished ideas may seem clear and well-understood, but they begin to get hazy when we explore the edges. This photo is of a window at the downtown Macy's. They would like us to believe in giving, through their agency, of course. Maybe what we believe to be true needs to fit the data; maybe it doesn't. It's up to you.

Well, It Sure Wasn't Shot On Film

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Another one from last weekend in Tower Grove Park, pending the hope of getting new material this weekend. This has layer after layer of digital tricks: Lensbaby, HDR, computer desaturation and image manipulation. Purists may disapprove but I think it turned out okay.

But, two really good photographic events today:

- there's a wrecking ball party in downtown STL late this afternoon. Twenty years or so ago, someone built a big enclosed shopping mall in the middle of downtown. It was the biggest such development in a US city center at the time. And it was a complete failure, dead vacant for some years now. (How about that for St. Louis' renaissance?) Well, now someone is turning it into a futuristic-looking parking garage. I think downtown will soon have more parking spaces than workers but the conversion is better than following the path of the ruins of Detroit. Anyway, the mall had a multi-level pedestrian bridge to an adjacent department store, also long defunct. The hulk blocks the view along a major downtown street that's actually undergoing some revitalization. So late today there's a street party for the first blows of the wrecking ball on the sad bridge. Your faithful reporter plans to attend.

- Amazon says my copy of Photoshop CS 5 will arrive today. Yippie!

Rain Cycle

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A bicyclist in Forest Park dodges the rain showers that rolled through the area yesterday. There is a tornado watch in effect as I write this on Saturday night. I've been in St. Louis more than 40 years and I've never seen one, fortunately, but they've been around the area many times. Mrs. C is from rural Kansas and she's never seen one. She actually has a sister named Dorothy who still lives in Kansas but, sadly, does not have a dog names Toto. She has a husband named Bill.

I'm hoping to shoot the annual Earth Day Festival in the park today. The forecast looks dicey but even if it doesn't rain Sunday the area should be slop. Break out the Wellies.

Thursday Arch Series

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Lensbaby! HDR! Photoshop! Is it too much? Up to you.

Another quick post and few comments. Our home Internet problems should be solved today.
Back to your posts ASAP.

Mean Streets

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Most of the graffiti art I've shot in St. Louis has been whimsical, conceptual or sometimes just funny. Type the word "graffiti" in the search field at the upper left of this page and you'll see what I mean. This one, however, is the stuff of nightmares. It's hard to read even without the Lensbaby effect but I think the letters on top of the skull spell out "HATER."

There are some people who are so disturbed, so far removed from society and full of anger, that they become dangerous. I meet them sometimes in my practice and they can be frightening. Imagine the personality of the person who painted this. Then think about the talent that created this powerful design.

For the locals, I found this on the side of a building facing a vacant lot on South 4th Street, on the eastern edge of the Soulard neighborhood. Not a particularly scary area.

Thursday Arch Series

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The view from across the Mississippi on a day with a dramatic sky, shot with a Lensbaby. The big news for Arch photography is that the new overlook on the river opposite the monument finally opens on Saturday. I plan to be at the dedication ceremony, although I may have to fight for tripod space afterward. No doubt there will be zillions of pix taken there in the months to come.

There is a new Arch photo
today on GATEWAY.

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.