52 Week Project: Week 43

This week's photo is brought to you by Shaw Nature Reserve. It is connected to our absolutely already amazing Missouri Botanical Garden. My parents and I wandered around the Wildflower garden, which was mostly out of bloom but amazing still.

We mostly went for fall foliage:



Almost made it:



Gross but cool.

52 Week Project: Week 42

On my staycation vacation, my parents and I made a day trip with the pups to Springfield, IL. Mom's been wanting to go to the Lincoln Museum and Friday was the day. The museum is really stunning in some of its layouts and composition and it's always refreshing to review history learned as a child as an adult.

Since photographs aren't allowed in the museum - I took this picture at his tomb in nearby Oak Ridge Cemetery. It was nice to pay my respects to such a historical figure. And did you know that Tom Hanks is related to President Lincoln? You learn new things every day....



Also almost made it into the project, Governor Tanner's grave against fall foliage:

52 Week Project: Week 41

Fall is here, and even though I'm on Day 13 of 15 in a row... I made some time this morning to walk around the Missouri Botanical Garden to see how fall is blooming there.

I encountered much gorgeousness and it made my heart happy and my feet tired. Hard to choose, but this picture won out because it was what I went to the garden for; autumn in the Japanese Garden.



A close second was this one:



I can't believe I have 11 more weeks, 11 more photos. Time to start working on ideas for the next project. Anyone have any ideas?

52 Week Project: Week 40

Whoa... 3 months left in the year? My how time flies.

It has been a work-consumed week so all of my pictures this week were taken one morning. I took several gems and it was a hard time deciding. Ultimately, this door won out. I've only been promising myself I'd take a picture of this eye catching door on a now defunct building for ages now.



Here are the runners up:

     

USS Inaugural

There is a shipwreck on the Mississippi River... kind of. The USS Inaugural was a minesweeper (Admirable class) that was used in World War II. It was decommissioned in 1946 and came to St Louis as a floating museum on the riverfront in 1968. In 2003, during the Great Flood - it came loose of its moorings, crashed into the Poplar Street Bridge, took on water, and came to its final resting place about 1/2 mile downstream of the MacArthur Bridge.

How did I find out about this? I randomly came across it in on the on-line edition of the Post-Dispatch, our newspaper. What prompted the photographer to take the picture, I have no idea. But I'm glad she did. I took time for myself out of my crazy work weekend and went a-searching. And I was well-rewarded.

It's pretty hard to find, and I was a little nervous being by myself on the industrial riverfront, so these pictures were taken pretty hastily. In this picture, the ship looks tiny. If you look carefully on the righthand side, you can see a little blue person. That person is sitting down, but you can still get an idea of the size of the ship. According to the Wikipedia article, the ship is 184 ft in length - so I'm thinking, even with the river levels so low (really the only time she is revealed), most of the ship is still submerged in the silty riverbank.

While doing a search online about the USS Inaugural, I found many interesting things including a debate on who owns the ship and how exactly it came to rest downstream from its original moorings. And, apparently, according some individuals, there has been theft from the abandoned ship. Who stole it is also under debate.  Here's the link to the Riverfront Times article which seems incredibly well-researched and detailed.









As I always say when I photograph and blog about urban decay - this is the stuff I love. Finding something, finding out more about it and reading the history of said item. This is what I live for as a photographer.