MOBOT Glow

We ended up at the Missouri Botanical Garden Glow the other night. Basically, the gardens are decorated with Christmas lights. It's a little expensive but well executed and fun and there are so few things that are worth getting outside for on a December evening. Unfortunately, the night we went was the last of the cheap nights and it was warm. This translated to there being abundance of people and a restriction on the use of tripods. Oh well, since I was frustrated by the inability to get reliably stable shots, I ended up taking a lot of deliberately out of focus pictures because I was more interested in the colors and lights than things.

Above is one thing in focus. It's a glowing ball on a stick that is planted in the ground. By itself it wouldn't make for much of a display but I enjoy the patterns and colors in the close up photograph. The gardens, of course, had a field of these. 

Below are out of focus Christmas tree lights that remind me of gold sequins. 

-Vince

Disco Kat

Johnnie Brock's Party Warehouse  bills itself as the largest store in the universe. Perhaps not, but they do have an impressive 25,000 square feet of retail space devoted to mostly costumes -- so if you are in need of a sexy-creepy clown costume, you could do worse. We ended up there recently because we thought they may have some interesting after-Halloween specials.  Alas no. Because they occupy the costume niche so successfully, and because they operate year round, there were no deep post-holiday discounts like you see in the big box stores.  They did have a 50 % off table, however, in the back. Mixed in with expected useless bric-a-brac were some ridiculously cheap mirrored balls. Since we've been waiting for a good sale on mirrored balls we snatched one up. Here the cat is showing interest in our new purchase. The dog is terrified of it.

-Vince

Cycling Around North St. Louis

I went on an architecture bicycle tour of North St. Louis this morning. It's not the best part of town but I love the building stock in this part of the city. Sadly, however, much of it is in ruins. This is the rose window to Bethlehem Lutheran. Clearly, this window belongs to a once gorgeous building that has simply been left to rot. The rest of the building was in similar shape.

The next three photos are examples of one of the reasons why I like the old buildings so much in St. Louis. Nearly every one of them is adorned with intricate decoration.

I'm aware in all of these photos I have pushed the saturation or contrast just enough to make the images appear a little off.  I prefer them this way to show detail. Sometimes the unprocessed photos just lack the oomph to capture the feel of these real-life features.

-Vince

Cats

In addition to Larry the beagle we also have Maggie cat. Like other cats she is a needy beast until she's got your attention -- then she wants nothing to do with you. Maggie is named after an old friend of ours that doesn't much care for animals and hides behind a claimed universal allergy to maintain her distance from them. Whether or not she is actually allergic will be a hotly debated topic for years to come.

Maggie was my biggest distraction on Monday. I had called in sick from work because I was under the weather but I ended up working all day on my home computer because I was bored and home was quiet. For some reason, Maggie cat becomes single-mindedly a lap cat if I am staring at a screen and pecking away at the keyboard. After brushing her away a few times, she finally took the hint and took this position on a pull-out writing shelf on the desk I was working at (in the picture she's in a window but she had the same paws-over-the-edge pose on the desk). She sat like this for about a half hour, staring at me, as if I had wronged her. I made it up to her later by ignoring her the rest of the day.

Photo by K.

-Vince

Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light

Even though points and the winner don't matter, there are rules to the Great Forest Park Balloon Race.   I believe they involve something about the other balloons chasing the Energizer Bunny balloon.  It's a bunny chase, like greyhound races but with less cruelty and gambling.

In any case, the Bunny is the star, and by my estimation the largest balloon of the lot.

While I didn't catch the rabbit in all its glory, during the glow before the race,   I did get a photo of it as it resigned itself to cool air and collapse.

The second picture was taken near the same time of the evening. Most pilots weren't flaming their balloons anymore and balloons fell as they cooled. I didn't see it happen, but I'm not convinced spectators weren't blanketed by collapsing balloons. I'm sure most photographers had given up on getting a good-glow photo by this point but I like this one. It's cold and somewhat menacing. Cold and somewhat menacing balloons.

-Vince

Great Balls of Fire

I know precious little about hot air ballooning. Sure, you put a load-bearing basket under an envelope of hot air and things go up, up, up. But the actual mechanics of piloting a balloon? I'm clueless. The glow was the closest I've been to balloons and I was struck with the size of the flame used to heat the air. Not that it seams unreasonable -- just that it seems a bit precarious. I don't recall ever hearing about a balloon burning to the ground but how difficult could it be? Is the bottom ring of the balloon made of asbestos?

-Vince

Great Forest Park Balloon Glow

This Saturday was the Great Forest Park Balloon Race. The night before the race there is a glow where most of the balloons are inflated and lit up so they can be enjoyed in the dark. It's a neat event, there are a lot of balloons and the average spectator gets more access than I was expecting. When we first showed up the balloons were fenced off until they were inflated. Once everyone had their balloons off the ground the fences were opened to allow you to peruse and interact with the crews.

Most of the time the balloons are dim and only received an occasional shot of fire to placate the crowd or to top off the hot air. In an effort to create photo-ops, however, they would blast an air horn every five to ten minutes and all the pilots were supposed to flame their balloons at the same time. The first two photos were taken during these synchronized blasts.

The final photo was the last bit of light before the sun went down. This photo was taken in 'auto' mode and no filters were applied in processing -- so the color is close to true. It was a clear, cool and gorgeous evening for the glow. The ground was a little muddy but I think that's to be expected with a crowd this size.

-Vince

Larry on an Zebra

K and I ended up at the zoo on Sunday. One of the pictures I wanted was a zebra I could use to make a Larry-as-Don-Quixote image. I got the zebra pictures but I didn't have a good beagle picture at the angle I wanted. For now I'll settle for this mock-up.

A Park of Art

The two art museums we visited yesterday are next to one another on Washington Boulevard. This street has a number of fantastic parking signs. Above is one example in pink and purple. Unfortunately, I don't know if the lighting on these signs is operational or not. I should drive down the road at night to find out.

Shadow Puppets

We went to the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Pulitzer Foundation of the Arts today. These three photos are all of the same Anthony McCall installation found at the CAM. Over time the light moved, slowly, projecting different shapes on the wall and the rays were decorated with texture from a smoke machine in the corner.  It doesn't look like much but it was amusingly interactive. While we were photographing it several groups of people, mostly grown ups, came in to make shadows in the light.

-Vince

Hooka-Smoking Beagle

It's sad that Hooka Larry has gained too much weight to wear his Nehru jacket.

The only tobacco I indulge in is a very occasional cigar. I've tried a hooka once. Hooka tobacco comes in flavors like apple, cherry and piña colada -- fruity and sweet, not really my thing. I would do it again though depending on the company. Hookas smoke smooth, there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours with friends.

-Vince

Naughty Tomato

We stopped by Global Foods the other day in Kirkwood. It's a unique international market in that you can shop for exotic ingredients and pick up most standard groceries in the same store. Next to the chickens' feet are boneless-skinless chicken breasts. Next to the Lay's Potato chips are prawn flavored corn puffs. Of the foreign snacks, I thought Kurkure brand Naughty Tomato had the most intriguing name. I'm guessing ketchup flavored.

-Vince

Shipwreck

This is my first time just playing around with Illustrator outside of following tutorials. Obviously, I'm ripping off  Spaceman Spiff from Calvin and Hobbes. I especially like the preset color palettes of the program. They make choosing attractive color combinations easy.

At some point, I'll probably ruin this doodle by Photoshopping my dog Larry into it with Spiff goggles and a drawn blaster...

Update: I had some idle time on my hands but I didn't have a good photo of Larry to put a blaster in his paws. So here is Larry walking away from his wrecked craft.

-Vince

Spinning Rides and Silhouettes

I thought the spinning rides at the carnival made for a striking background for photographing silhouettes. The guys operating the rides, naturally, made the most convenient subjects. The top photo was one of my favorites from the evening because of the strong contrast and the way that the ride looks like its taking off in flight.

-Vince

A Colorful Close-Up

Vendors at the Hispanic Festival were selling these bespoke light fixtures made out of tessellated plastic pieces that were simply snapped together. This is a close-up of two spherical-shaped fixtures. While clever and colorful these will no doubt look dated in a few years. Still, they were fun -- wish we had a use for one.

-Vince

Fair Hopping

As Katie mentioned we spent Saturday evening fair hopping between the Polish Festival, the Hispanic Heritage Festival and the St. Joan of Arc's homecoming carnival. Both of the nationalistic events were too loud and crowded for our tastes so we ended up spending most of the evening at the carnival taking pictures. Fortunately, the garish rides were fun to photograph while experimenting with exposure times. Unfortunately, we put off eating until we got to the carnival -- I think we would have scored better food from the Poles or the Hispanics.

Above is the Ferris wheel at the carnival with a one second exposure. Below is a lucky capture at the Polish Festival of a carnival game just after a bean bag struck its target.

-Vince

September 8, 2013

Last night we tried our luck at three different events: the Polish Festival, the Hispanic Festival, and this catholic school's homecoming carnival.  The first, while it was advertised as open to the public, was filled to the brim with large family groups which all seemed to know each other. The polka music was fun, though.  The second was incredibly crowded and hot, though the music was good and the people-watching was much better. The third proved best for interesting photos, and for a reminder of what it's like to be in junior high and high school.  It really was a multi-generational homecoming, and very well attended, unlike my high school events. -K

Devilish Eggs

I hard boiled twenty-three eggs this morning and not one of them peeled cleanly. This is what you get for boiling fresh eggs -- older ones peel easier. These are egg salad eggs.

-Vince

Hey Diddle Diddle

Over the past year my dog Larry has become the subject of many Photoshop projects. This was the first project, however, where I used the official Photoshop software. Before a few weeks ago I had been using Pixlr, a free web-based lightweight Photoshop knock-off. It worked to get my feet wet but I wanted to learn the actual Adobe system so I decided to sign up for a Creative Cloud subscription. After a year of Pixlr I'm finding Photoshop fairly intuitive. Adobe Illustrator on the other hand is my first experience with true vector art -- I see the potential but it's driving me nuts to learn.

This took longer than it should have. Morphing Larry into that elongated shape was simple enough using the puppet-warp tool but that stretches out the fine details making the manipulation obvious. I wanted to make Larry more creepy-realistic. To do that I used the stamp tool excessively to transfer detail onto him from the unwarped version.

Looking at it now, if I were to continue editing this image I would shrink Larry's front feet to match his back feet. I think that would add to the feeling that Larry is not as stable on land as he is in the air. In reality though, Larry is a tank.

-Vince

Serendipitous Flash

Another image from the candle lit walk in MOBOT's Japanese garden. While I was trying to get a long exposure shot of the bridge, this group was getting their picture taken. This isn't the most balanced image, but I do find it fascinating to look at. The expanse of the lake is directly behind them. I wonder if the flash picked anything up in the background?

Below is a contrast of water lilies in the garden photographed at dusk and a few hours later. I like the scale-like quality of the lilies in the second image.

-Vince

Those Drums

One of the biggest attractions of the annual Missouri Botanical Garden's Japanese Festival are the Osuwa Taiko drummers. Hundreds of people sit outside to listen to their rhythms as they athletically pound their drums. These shots hopefully convey the kinetic nature of their performances. 

I love it, and could listen to live Taiko for hours, even in the blistering St. Louis heat. My affinity for it probably comes from my history as a band geek. I was a field commander for our high school marching band many years ago (and a starting varsity football player -- figure that one out) and my favorite part of that experience was the drum cadence. Taiko drums have that same feel to me. 

-Vince

Kick Off with an Evening Stroll Through MOBOT

The purpose of this site is to be a daily photo blog between my wife and me. The motivation for this project is to hone our photography skills and to be more disciplined in our search for material.  We have decided to name this blog 'A Day in St. Louis' because our inspiration for this site are the excellent member blogs at City Daily Photo. Once this blog is up and running we will probably join that group.

For the inaugural post I've decided to contradict the title and share a couple of long-exposure night shots. The image above was taken at the Missouri Botanical Gardens during their annual Japanese Festival last weekend.  A part of the festival was a candle-lit walk around the Japanese garden which has a large lake in the middle with this pedestrian bridge extending over an edge of it. That night this poorly-lit, uneven and narrow bridge over water was crowded. If you look carefully you'll see the blurred images of people walking through the shot. I'm sure they appreciated me and my tripod.

This second shot is no mystery. I took this photo because I liked the texture of the clouds. The night was bright illuminating the clouds from above and the city illuminated the clouds from below producing an interesting layered effect.

-Vince