LaBarque Creek Conservation Area, Jefferson County, Missouri

Thursday was a good day for a hike at the LaBarque Creek Conservation Area in Jefferson County, Missouri. The hiking trail starts along the creek,  ascends into the hills overlooking the creek,  and crosses the many drainages that have exposed the underlying St. Peter Sandstone in many intriguing ways. When I returned home and loaded [...]

Wide angle lenses versus Telephoto lenses

I am a wide angle person. I put that wide angle lens to my eye and my eye and my brain swoon. And, I find a place that intrigues me and work the place until it bores me and the images go stale. Such is the case with the Peabody River King State Fish and [...]

Photographs that Make the Brain Work

Sometimes photographing only part of an object or the object backwards makes a more interesting image that photographing it straight on. It makes the brain complete the object, which is fun for the brain. St. Louis’s Gateway Arch is way more interesting in parts than as a whole, possibly because it’s familiar shape, a cantenary [...]

Make Great Photographs: Do Your Research

In August I head north up Route 66 in Illinois to Moraine View State Park and found a wind farm outside the park. It was one of those fist-pumping YES! moments when I realized that no matter how we extract energy from the landscape we are going to alter it, for good or for ill. [...]

Flash or No Flash in Watery Landscape Photographs

Last Friday I hiked Hickory Canyon in Ste. Genevieve County, Missouri. It is a beautiful place, a box canyon of LaMotte sandstone, the first layer of sedimentary rocks in Missouri. These rocks eroded from the igneous base rocks that form places like Taum Sauk Mountain, the highest point in Missouri, and the Silver Mines Shut-in, [...]

Many ways to look at the Confluence

Many years ago, when I was starting out,  a curriculum development company hired me to make photographs of every aspect of the Bus Station for a Teacher’s Art project, to prove that beauty could be found in a conventionally grubby place. I explored every part of the station, the seating, the food, the gift shop, [...]

Being Still

I had a rant the other day about industrial tourism, being dragged through tourist sites and told what I am seeing or what I am supposed to see. I learned five years ago, while resting my feet in Italy, that if I sat still, I saw way more than when I was moving. I have [...]

Exercise in Light, Color, and Graphics

Several years ago I spent three months photographing a red shed in a growing wheat field. I quit when the farmer cut the wheat. It was an exercise in color and light and graphics. First, I settled on the composition and the graphics, the simple shape of the shed and where to put the horizon [...]

Think like a View Camera; Shoot like a 35mm

When I use a view camera, I carefully select elements in the landscape that I want to put in the image. One reason is it costs about $5/shot to get the image to a contact sheet. When I use a through-the-lens 35 mm or digital camera, I respond to what I see in the view [...]

Negative Space and the Spaces between Objects

In Michigan last summer I was learning how to use this computer with a lens attached and doing a lot of walking along the beach and the walks through the community where we stayed. I always assign myself projects. It gives my work focus. During that week I spent my time photographing the spaces between [...]