27/52 - Photo Project 2013

It's been a slow week - both at work, and on the picture-taking front. I went to the Eads Bridge at the last minute on Thursday to take photos, but I didn't have my settings the way I wanted them and my pictures turned out not great.

So last night, I went to my new favorite location to see fireworks in St. Louis and took photos there. It didn't hurt that my friends from Circus Kaput were keeping everyone entertained and decorated, etc.

Here's my favorite fireworks photo... check the rest of them out here in my set, "Sixth of July".



And the close runners up:

   



Hopefully this upcoming week will provide more opportunities...

Urban Decay in St. Louis - Wright/Arcade

The great/bad thing about St. Louis is that there are many beautiful buildings that sit abandoned. In the case of this one, it had been abandoned for awhile (early 80s?) and had a recent attempt at rehab which came to a screeching halt when the company (Pyramid) collapsed. Arcade has a new buyer and hopefully will get rehabbed to its former glory soon.

The thing about the Arcade in its current state is that it is beautiful in its decay, yet I can't wait to see it back to what it was. What we call the Arcade building is actually two buildings connected with each other. The Wright building was built in 1906, and the Arcade building was built in 1919 and wraps around the existing Wright building. Inside, there are several floors that are not exactly at the same height and have small sets of stairs inbetween. A lot of the floors have beautiful white marble walls. The Arcade building had ground level stores and shops with a Gothic vaulted ceiling as well as a variety of other offices upstairs. Ranging from jewelers to a radio station to a law-oriented printing office. There seemed to be small factories, a music store, several doctor's offices and that's all we could tell from the 9 stories that hadn't been internally demo'd and stripped down to its bare bones.

I recently got a chance to tour the building prior to the new rehab attempt and I jumped at it. It was worth totally worth it, as you can see from the pictures.

To see all 133 photos from the set, check it out here. I really encourage you to do so, this is just a smattering of the gorgeous beauty within those walls.

                                   


                                                    

Can you believe it? You can see the potential, right? I cannot wait to see the finished product.

26/52 - Photo Project 2013

I can't believe it - halfway there... where in the daylights did this year go???  I finally got the chance to tour the newly renovated Central Library in downtown St. Louis. I can honestly say that I'd never been to this library before, but now that I have been... I want to go again. It is simply gorgeous... and our tour guide was fabulous. There is so much rich history in the building - and some of the smallest details are wonderful. Libraries are true treasures, yes?

I've been taking a lot of photos lately, so I need to play catch up soon!

25/52 - Photo Project 2013

This one is a tough one... I actually had at least 3 different photo opportunities this week, but only have uploaded from two of them...

Here's the winner:



I really like the lines of the leaf and the contrasting dark background.

This is a close runner up because the drop glows from below:



And this is just cool-looking:



More adventures to come! I just had to send my awesome Tamron lens for a check-up, so it's either macro or my nifty fifty...

24/52 - Photo Project 2012

I am a part of a meetup.com group, the St Louis Photography Club. Photographers of all levels and experience get together and take photos. Sometimes, we get super awesome opportunities. For example, St Louis has a circus called Circus Flora. They had an artist's day, where us artists (photographers and a sketch group) were allowed pre-show behind-the-scenes access to the circus. As an added bonus, we were allowed to photograph the show that afternoon.

I shot a lot of photos... I mean A LOT. We had low lighting (barely any) for the rehearsal, so shooting the show itself was a lot of fun. I paid for a center seat in the back, and had a good view of everything except the high-wire act.  A fellow club member had spotted that some seats were open in the ring-side boxes during the first half. We got clearance from the house manager and had a FABULOUS view of the second half.

Getting back to the original topic at hand, I shot TONS of photos... but this time I was absolutely ruthless with my deletions. I narrowed the field down to only 21 photos. But it was still a tough choice.

This is the winner - one of my favorites and the one that is getting the most feedback from the group:



Close runner's up:



I am so glad I was able to make this meet-up. The circus was wonderful, there are many acts not represented in the pictures.

23/52 - Photo Project 2013

Guess what I've been photographing again... macros! This late Spring and early Summer has been very rainy. I'm getting better at getting the photo I want on the first few tries rather than the fifth or sixth. The macro lens I have does not have image stabilization but it's hard to do rainy day macros with a tripod.

Tempting as it was to go with macro, I really like the colors in this make-up palette that I shot at Taste of St. Louis:



Here is the runner up:




It's raining right now, and when it lightens up, I'm taking another stab at my macro fun!

22/52 - Photo Project 2013

Whoops! The picture was definitely taken but I forgot to post about this!

Well, it's a race between a macro and a macro and a macro... but this one wins:



Followed shortly by these:

   

Should have some fun stuff to post soon... I've been busy with work and now I'm trying to be busy with photography!