Tag Archives: saint louis

mobot


Barbara – my brain coach – has been encouraging me to shoot more just for shits-n-gigglesand brought up the current orchid show at The Missouri Botanical Gardens… I figured it’d be something to invite Chad along to since he’s bozo for plants and any excuse to eat at the Persian joint down in that neck of the woods is a good thing.

The show was contained in a large sky-lit, heavily climate controlled room attached to the Missouri Botanical Garden’s main entry… Along the winding path through the exhibit you’re confronted with all types of orchids (some of which I’ve never seen before) along with these strange Myan-themed decorations.

I mean – to the defense of the gardens… They put on the show every year and I reckon they feel the need to “dress” up the show with extra stuff to keep interest up for people to return every year….

… that or there’re hiding a meth-adicted window dresser from the department store era in the basement and let them out once a year to blow off steam.

So anyway – you’ve got this room full of pretty flowers populated by these moss-covered mannequins in various poses… yeah – kinda creepy…. and kinda hot if you transpose my hirsute fetish in a Swamp-Thing kinda way.

and yea – when I downloaded my pics – I had more pics of moss-covered limbs than orchids.

I’m not a flower freak anyway… What’s important is I got out and played some.

Thanks coach.

lemp


Caught up on those missing winks last night…. Yup.. no caffeine after 7 does the trick.

An old friend from high school / college daze who I keep in vague contact with asked if I could snap a shot of the front of the old Lemp Mansion , specifically “The stone in front which reads Lemp”.

Why? He didn’t say. Knowing this character though – there’s most likely a wild story behind it.

Nontheless – the other day I found myself out that way and it was one of those real nice crisp clear early autumn days – so I stopped and nabbed some shots.

While I was up there I spent a little extra time wandering around and playing… (Dayjob bossette asked if I had or could take an image for her other friend who recently got relocated out of St. Louis.)

Found some funky views over Soulard. She liked em and picked one to be made into a print.

This has all since revived an old itch I had back in school to mix graphics and photography within a fine arts context. The technology wasn’t quite there yet in the early 90’s to do it as easily as you can now.

Regardless – it was nice to go and (with purpose) take pictures of stuff other than what normally puts food on the chicken.

stinky-d


I’ve been running around a lot again in this area of town called Skinker-DeBaliviere… Before my employers started turning old wineries, hotels and monasteries into apartments – they built their property portfolio in this neck of the woods….

They still own seven small apartment buildings in the area – therefore they’re on the photography rotation schedule. (Whenever one becomes vacant – I snag pics between move-ins to be used for the *NEXT* time they’re vacant).

The hood is has really changed over the last decade… I worked with my first business partner out of college in a small apartment on Waterman and Skinker. In those days – it was pretty much understood: you don’t go “into” the neighborhood.

These days I don’t think you could get into any of the houses for under three hundred K.

crazy.

So the funny part here is it seems every time I venture into Stinky-D to take pictures of one of our buildings – something embarrassing happens to me.

Maybe it’s because these places are old and are simply “maintained” – not totally rehabbed like all the new projects work is doing. Places that most of us associate with your “first apartment”: cooler old buildings with hardwood floors and wood molding you can “almost” make out underneath the thirty coats of latex.

Time before last? I set off the buildings alarm system.

Time before that? I somehow kept getting the wrong keys from the leasing staff and wound up making three trips to take one picture.

Last time?

The deck’s screen door handle broke locking me on the veranda..

I had to either a: repel off the building… b: call maintenance and wait and bake in the 100+ heat…. or… c: break in.

I chose “C”,… all the while telling myself that it’s much better that the landlord’s advertising guy gets stuck out there than the tenant who’s due to move in like today.

Guess we’ll see if there’s the approximate cost of a screen door backed out of my next chicken.