The STL..... The sides of East and West

Well last weekend was a trip to the North so we have to go West this time right? Well that lead me to the interesting place I like to call the STL, or St. Louis as some of you may know it as. The place of not much city, Awesome parks, good friends and Church's Chicken lol.

One of the many boarded up storefronts in the downtownish area of East Stl


I spent the first half of the trip exploring a little of the Illi side of Stl, also known as East St. Louis. It truly is an interesting and beautiful, in a tragic sense. The once great architecture and neighborhoods slowly fading away back into dust and in some case's small prairie fields and miniature forests. It's really interesting to see nature reclaiming what we had taken from her.

 

From there I made it back to the Highway and over the Bridge in to the Stl to pick up Jenny for lunch. We took a decent lil time cruising about the area and I really must say it is a pretty sweet town. It's city city is way closer to the suburbs it seems, it goes basically from city to Aurora like really quick which is kinda cool, but after dinner and chilling it was off to meet Katie at the park and do a lil shooting :)

Meet the cute and funny Katie R. This is more of a test shot showing the area we were shooting at. In the background you can see the Art musuem.

 

These images really hide how dark it really was out. It was about 5ish while taking these so real low level soft warm light, but man does that low light work awesome. Also gotta love f1.4 haha

Once the sun had finally dropped we made our way towards the city to do some city scene shots but ended up just shooting around in the parking garage and Metrolink station down by the Arch :)

 

 

 

And for being lit just by the ambient Sodium,Mercury or whatever ugly lamps and one lone overhead flourescent I was really excited to see how the light actually worked and well, came out really nice.... It's awesome when mixed ugly lamps can make something beautiful, and not full of odd color casts to boot!

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Boo

Well it was finally that fine fall holiday, that's right... Halloween
And with it came candy, entertainment and some good times with friends. I had made the trip north to pick up some colder clothes since I'm staying south for the Fall Break since we're having food with the fam in Stl. While I was north though I did get in a lil side project, a little fall shooting :)

Stalking the Prey

About two day's before I headed up Will gave me a call saying he was wanting to do a Fall Fashionish shoot. His look/idea was that of the Hunter and the Hunted and here's the shots from that Test Shoot

Stalking

Captured

The Fight

Life

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And then there was none.... Midterms that Is! Pt 1

Finally after a a week of chaotic studying,reading and overall loss of soul and fun the weekend appeared. And for the first time I finally really just went out and shot for fun. Not for an assignment or gig, just for fun, and so began the weekend with the oddest convoy ever imagined and ending with a hike in the woods and fields and finally me in the kitchen with a Gas Mask and some grape drink.... Needless to say it was a good weekend.

Bryans clean 87 Supra



The weekend began with a meeting of sorts out in our lawn. Like a true trailer home we now had 6 cars out front... To tell the truth I was kinda proud haha. After the ritual washing and route planing we took off the ever strong Cappy taking the lead... after a beautiful 15 minute run though the lovely fall foliage of the So Il we made it to our destination, Rt 57, and we soon made temporary home at an old Gas station for a few shots and to finalize the order and the exits.

The Drivers for the day

87 Supra

The other Jap car 72 510

The Japanese car's holdin it down

And that one kid that we kinda know

And with the final detailing and cleaning of rims and paint we were off down the road, with 4 miles for me to try and figure out how to shoot a moving vehicle. Oh it was fun.

 

 

With less than a quarter mile before the exit the cappy was finally cleared to move into position, and then we were off back down the side roads to take a few photo's by the dam.

And of course with me what would be a day with out a portrait, Mike in his normal Drab.... Ok maybe it was unofficial, perhaps??? Wander/Hiker's a pretty good look for em dontcha think?

 

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And then there was none... Midterms that Is! Pt 2

And then came Sunday... A nice relaxed day of well, relaxing and then a hike out in Giant City with Em n Julie. From the rocks n tree's we made our way to the freer and more open expanse of the fields and found millet, grass and cool looking tree's.

Em at Giant City Park

While walking around it was definitely evident of how wild that storm back in the spring was as there were still ton's of downed tree's along with broken overlooks and stairways. None the less we pressed on and continued our lil hike around.

And then the sun began to drop below the bluff, so we made way to the field to get some nice setting sun shots in.

 

I even took a break and tried that whole Nature photography thing. Backlit subjects are sooooooooo awesome!!!

And who doesn't love grass

And yeah I just really really liked the way the branches of the tree were all curvy, and the leaves were really sweetly colored as well.

 Julie!

 

And then the serious side of Em,

Ever curious and off trying to figure the ways of the world.... Or just how did that one plant get so tall

 

And with the sun nearly taking it's long plunge we raced off to the retention wall over by the school and sat to watch the setting sun before partaking in the ever interesting and tasty endeavor, we like to call, Chinese Buffets

And a sneak peek at my project for photography... We have to make a PSA regarding food, I choose pesticides

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After Nearly a Year she's finally done

The Cappy!

Finally got her all painted up (Bumper mainly) She'd been rolling around with a primered/Bondo'd/Fiberglassed ghetto smoothed bumper for the last year. But finally that's been completed and now PHotographed :)

My whip

Ah Ghetto Smoothies haha

 

 

 

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Gotta love bein a Double major!

While it definitely add's to the workload it's a load of fun. Along side that whole workload thing I have managed to maintain a life and that's also kinda why there hasn't been anything since the end of September, what can I say life's been busy. So here's a little look at what I've been upto... Let's just say it's been a fun run filled with a trip to the Stl, Redneck Hottubs, Gangsters, Mathletes and well of course Photos :)

It all kinda started off with a trip to the Stl. I went out to that fine lil city with Pgen and we visited the Art Museum, Sculpture Park and the Loop. It was really a fun day, got to scout around and really work up some ideas for a shoot I want to go do over there. Still hopin it'll happen this month but we'll see... Maybe working in the cold of november will be cool too? Just not to sure bout the Nimh's and the Flash Batteries.... While the Magnesium bodies of the Canon's make em robust and uber beastly they also have a tendency to catch cold and well batteries plus cold = short shoots. Really want to pull of a Fashion/Coat shoot some urban/grunge life style photos ya dig? On with the pictures :)

Some of the Group before we rolled out around the loop

Sculpture Park

Dinner or so

Then last week entered the fun of being an engineering student.... Redneck Hottubs baby! We built a make shift backing board to fill up the bed of Mikes' truck. For the heating unit Vs 1.0 did something but not as effective as we'd like. We used some copper tubing intertwined with the Exhaust manifold and a submersible pump but it just wasn't enough. Even with putting the copper hose on a grill we were loosing too much heat in the transfer hose so shorter hose and more copper might be the way to go. 

Well it looks like a hot tub...

Just chillin, good food, people and well, Time

Finally the Photography... Just a little excerpt from what we did wednesday. We were using Canon flashes to learn about the FP and Second Curtain mode. Not gonna lie having a 580ex II on the 1Ds was nice, really easy to use, but I still like my older Nikon Sb's. Manual! haha. Also a photo or two from the week before when we did some studio shooting Gangsters and Mathletes two totally related Idea's right? haha man I love that class

Kelly

And then One of Kelly's shot's of me

More Kelly, Kinda blew the background but still

kinda like the image

Flash + Iso 400 and f2 and 1/25th = Bye Bye Background lol

Correctly Dialed in flash and Ambient

Wish I had bounced though, Ugh... Catchlights

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Getting back into it all

Well it only took about a month but I think I'm finally coming up with a decent schedule for everything. The blog just so happens to have made it's way on to that schedule, I'm thinking that I'll be able to keep up with a once a week thing too :)

A few excerpts from the weekend with Jenny, filled with hiking, rain chasing and a whole lot more.




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