Ideas for places to visit in the Midwest
The business end of a F/A-18 Hornet. Designed and built by McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis, Missouri. This aircraft serves both on land and aircraft carrier. If you drive near Lambert Field (Lambert International Airport) you might see the Hornet’s doing test flights.
A friend was a manger for the development of F/A-18. When asked what that meant, he indicated that he was in charge of the left wingtip….. There must have been a huge team required to develop the aircraft.
Just feet from the runway, a crowd watches this F-16 as it does a “touch and go” on the runway. St. Louis County has revised its fantastic air show at Spirit of St. Louis Airport with two days of amazing displays.
I like this photo since you can get a sense of the power and speed of the aircraft from heat trail behind it. There was a lot of noise that day.
I had a red door in a previous post so this is “Another Red Door” and another alley shot in St. Charles, MO. This is actually near an entrance to an antique shop hidden away off Main Street.
This is a three shot HDR photo edited to enhance the color while giving it a kind of fuzzy look
This little B&B is trucked away on busy Main Street in St. Charles, MO. This area is a restored part of 19th Century Missouri and has a lot of historic buildings and shops. From here you can visit excellent restaurants, wineries, shops an more. Two blocks away you can view Missouri River.
While poking around some side streets in St. Charles, MO I found this little display of a Lemonade Stand. No one was really there selling anything, it was just sort of an artistic display.
There are a lot of antique shops in the area and this was to something to draw your interest.
This is part of the scenic Cave Point County Park. Exploring the shores of Door County (a peninsula) you find a lot of the stacked rocks you see on the beach. Cave Point is full of low bluffs and water swirling under the rock.
The rock piles are called cairns. These have become more numerous and higher over the years now there are some restrictions.
This is part of a long building that looks like an old barracks with a vegetable stand on one end. While our group was shopping for vegetables grown out back I walked around this building to get a bunch of photos of this interesting place. The owners could not figure out what I was doing.
This is just one of thousands of interesting scenes in Door County, Wisconsin.
Sunrise on North Bay near Baileys Harbor in Door County, Wisconsin. This view always has spectacular colors but you have to get up early to see them. However, watching the full moon come over the horizon happens in early evening, a much better time.
I really liked the soft tones of some photos I have seen and I have been looking for ways to accomplish the effect. What I found was that you really have to take these photos during the “Golden Hour.” That is, take your photos about 10 minutes before sunrise/sunset to 10 minutes after. The light is softer and the shadows less harsh. Also, the color really stands out.
This photo was taken during a “sunset boat cruise” with some friends. The sun was still up and there were clouds acting as a filter. Also, this is near Canada where, during the summer, the sun slides at an angle past the horizon providing some amazing sunsets.
In photography, timing is important. That means you have to be at a particular place at a particular time to get the right shot. This means you may have to get up very early or miss dinner. This photo was taken last year on Lake Michigan. This year the lake water level is higher and the pier is underwater. Even our Great Lakes have cycles you want to pay attention to.
This photo gives downtown more of a rural look thanks to new landscaping of the Gateway Arch Grounds. Part of a highway along the riverfront was covered over giving an uninterrupted view of the park from the Mississippi River to first line of buildings.
Great Rivers Imaging 