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I've posted a number of pictures lately on St. Louis Daily Photo of the sculpture Kindly Geppetto by Tom Otterness in downtown's Citygarden. The last couple of them (here and here) have been titled Geppetto's Hammer because this old woodcarver in in the process of whacking little Pinocchio to bits with a gigantic mallet. Not kindly at all. I find the work dark and fascinating.But here's another hammer: a view of the north leg from inside the curve. It looks to me like a titanic blow from Thor or John Henry or maybe Maxwell blasting our city center.
An exercise: this photo has a close relative appearing today on ST. LOUIS DAILY PHOTO. They are parts of a seven image sequence of the same subject, shot at 2/3 stop intervals from -2 stops to +2 stops. The aperture remained the same and the shutter speed varied. They were intended to become part of a seven layer HDR of the Arch. However, when I blended them in Photomatix, the sky came out with a marked box-shaped weave pattern in. It looked like fabric. Actually, it looked terrible. If any HDR experts can explain that to me I'd appreciate it.
So, I started playing with the individual pictures in the sequence. This one was +1 stop (ISO 100, f 6.3, 1/100 sec., spot metering). I always shoot in RAW so I could mess around with the image a lot. This is what came out. 
Click to see the companion photo on ST. LOUIS DAILY PHOTO. Which do you prefer, assuming that either one does something for you?
You could read all sorts of things into this. I'll leave the interpretation to the viewer.
The writer Jonathan Franzen was born in Chicago but grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, the town where I have lived for 22 years. He wrote a novel, set mostly in St. Louis, called The Twenty-Seventh City. That was the city's U.S. population rank at the time. It's fallen considerably since, what with devastating suburban sprawl, although we remain the 16th largest metropolitan area if you believe Wikipedia. It doesn't look like much in this view from across the Mississippi but the Arch is ever glorious and we are covered by the boundless Midwestern sky.
Sunday was a day you could have ordered out of a catalog, to use an old expression, with the Arch surrounded by the expressions of summer. And it pays to keep a wide angle lens in your bag.
If you look at the Arch from the side, the very top has the most gentle of curves. You notice the slope when you are in the observation deck inside the top but it's no big deal. Then, as you move down the leg, things go downhill in a hurry, to borrow an expression. When you stand at the foot, you see a horizon part way up, like the way the earth drops away on the ocean.
I've been neglectful of this blog, although I do get something posted on St. Louis Daily Photo every day. It's not that I've lost interest in the Arch but rather that my time is spread so thin. Taking and editing the pictures themselves has become a compulsion. Everything gets shot in RAW, everything has to be sorted, all the final choices get edited in Photoshop. It's become compulsive. Maybe I should look for a local chapter of Photographers Anonymous. Hi, my name is Bob and I'm a photographer.
Anyway, I got back by the monument over the weekend, trying to slow down and think. The result was a series of Lensbaby shots about the surface of the metal and how it interacts with what's right around it. My friend Lisa, a painter and photographer who is working in Morocco these days, said that this image felt like a childhood memory. I hope it has some sense of wonder.
This photo has a similar look to the one posted today on my St. Louis Daily Photo Blog but this one is an HDR. It gives more detail and dynamic range than you might otherwise get. The image sort of looks like an avalanche is about to engulf the monument.
A more traditional, if that's the right word, HDR, with slightly garish color and big tonal contrast. I have mixed feelings about these in color. They are eye-catching but loud. There's a black and white version of this photo on Flickr here. You can see which you prefer.The bad thing about shooting the Arch from the new overlook in Illinois are the eight damnable high voltage lines that run right through the middle of your picture. In many of the previous photos from this location I have Photoshopped them out. It's a slow, tedious process. I decided to leave then alone this time.
Nice light. More Lensbaby. What else is there to say? Well, maybe that this was shot from Eads Bridge.
