July, No Fourth
(Click any image to enlarge)
50mm | f/2.5 | 1/400
I’m switching to include shutter speed with every photo in addition to focal length and the f/ stop. I would gladly share ISO but I don’t see a way of retrieving that from file info.
Anyway this is a beautiful marble torchiere in the downtown STL main library Great Room, original to the building although new floor standards were installed with brass mold torchieres and alabaster bowls for the lighting elements. The original library was completed in 1865, although the building as we know it now, the Cass Gilbert main building, wasn’t completed until 1912, and this most recent renovation wrapped in 2013.
50mm | f/2.5 | 1/40
Detail of the alabaster base. Just beautiful work. You could spend a lifetime diving into the architectural details of St. Louis.
85mm | f/2.5 | 1/400
I like the idea behind this shot, a kid’s bike proudly and boldly parked on a Tower Grove South sidewalk on a late St. Louis summer afternoon (the young sir is just off frame on a porch). It’s not a good image as I should have stood up rather than crouching—the handlebars and upper frame are lost in the background.
There’s nothing holding this post together thematically, by the way. Maybe ‘summer,’ but really just a random assortment of images from the past couple of weeks, and I did absolutely nothing for the Fourth—hence the title. Every year I think ‘this is the year I’ll go downtown for the fireworks,’ and I will mean it and hold that thought with gusto. And then the day of, I get to thinking about crowds and heat and parking and traffic getting in and out and blah blah. Also this year I was thinking of the particular awkwardness of shooting that kind of event. Anything where a lot of people are either just standing still or sitting down is a challenge to shoot, at least for me.
There are some shots below of Whitaker Music Festival and I felt the same there, namely that I didn’t really enjoy shooting the crowd and I felt weird about it. Whereas I don’t feel much discomfort at, e.g., Festival of Nations or some event where folks are milling about, doing people things. Part of the issue is access. To properly cover an event like a concert, you would need a press pass.
85mm | f/2.5 | 1/500
This is at the ruins at Tower Grove Park, last Saturday morning. Snugs.
85mm | f/1.2 | 1/2000
Whitaker Music Festival at the Missouri Botanical Gardens, July 2nd, with Saint Chuck playing. I moved all throughout the crowd and I would usually say something like, “May I be incredibly rude for a moment, join you, take pics for thirty seconds, and then leave?” That part was fine and I did get some good coverage of the band that way, but there was no way of covering the seated crowd that would be both 1) comfortable for all parties involved and yet also 2) form a decent composition. The below isn’t terribly engaging to me, but it’s a decent sort of abstract impression of a hot July evening at MoBot.
24mm | f/16 | 1/320 (ND variable filter on)
85mm | f/5.6 | 1/400
50mm | f/5.6 | 1/160
St. Louis Art Museum, last Saturday, July 12th.
85mm | f/5.6 | 1/160
Construction on the Tower Grove Connector.
23mm | f/4 | 1/320
50mm | f/6.3 | 1/400
A Friday movie series showing Frozen at Keiner Plaza last night, with special guest.
85mm | f/7.1 | 1/500
85mm | f/1.8 | 1/160
Saturn Lounge, Cherokee Street
50mm | f/1.2 | 1/200
Cherokee Beach
50mm | f/1.2 | 1/200
50mm | f/1.2 | 1/200
50mm | f/3.5 | 1/400
Someone left this abstract bouquet near the park ruins this morning.
5.7mm | f/1.5 | 1/800 (iPhone)
Ryan and his pops mixing up cement for Ryan and Nicole’s forthcoming outdoor kitchen.
