Ideas for places to visit in the Midwest
I always found advertisements on the sides of buildings interesting. This “wall art” has made a comeback in many small towns to boost an identity they are trying to convey. Here is a photo from the the not so small town of Memphis. This is a promotion for a night club on Beale Street. I used my Nikkor 35mm, 1.8 lens to capture this after dark photo.
Dogs at Peabody Hotel. This was taken with my Nikon 35mm 1.8 lens. This lens allows you to take great photos in low light.
Finally, a little snow in St. Louis. These benches look over Forest Park’s Grand Basin, the heart of the 1904 World’s Fair.
Sculpture by Kan Ya Suda “Door of Return.” This is located in City Garden in Downtown St. Louis. City garden is an interesting place to visit with lots of photo opportunities.
This is a road on the northern tip of the Door County peninsula in Wisconsin. Researching a visit to Door County last fall I found that this was a very popular place to photograph. Visiting some art shows in the area, this was also a favorite scene in artists portfolio of work. When I drove to this area to take a look, there were several other photographers already taking photos. What makes this windy road interesting is the “compression” effect of the telephoto lens. This was taken with my Tamron 70-300mm lens, set to 185mm. At this setting almost all of the road is included in the scene even thought it goes back for almost a half mile. The telephoto lens, as it is supposed to do, makes everything look closer. Unfortunately this was a bad time of day and weather condition for this photo. Sunrise, sunset or overcast conditions would have removed the distracting tree shadows.
Adolphus Busch (1839-1913) mausoleum in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, MO. This is the final resting place of the founder of Anheuser-Busch brewery. Above the entry to the mausoleum are the words: “Veni, vidi, vici” (I Came, I Saw, I Conquered). Bellefontaine is a very interesting place to visite and offers many photographic opportunities.
Winter is Eagle weather for the St. Louis area. Eagles can be found along the Mississippi river, most notably Alton and Grafton Illinois and Clarksvill, Missouri. During the summer I see a lot of Eagles on the Northwoods of Wisconsin. Here is a photo taken with my old Pentax K100D with a Tamron 70 – 300mm lens.
Here is another photo with converging lines but in a different environment. Taken on a very foggy morning just hours before the snows arrived in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. Converging lines is a technique to draw the viewer into the photo. Also the fall color makes an interesting composition. On this morning I took a walk without a tripod so I was using an ISO of 1600. I used a Nikkor 18-105mm on my D7100 at f13 and 1/00th sec.
I used to think that getting in tight on a subject may make a more interesting photo and, that may be the case. However, over the years I have noticed that the wide lenses add more drama and so I have been adding wider and wider lenses to my stock over time. This photo is of a simple porch. However, the 10mm lens used here provides interesting converging lines and a dramatic sky, making a less than ordinary subject interesting. This was done with a Sigma 10-20mm 3.5 lens on my Nikon D7100 (3 shot HDR, processed in Photomatix and Lightroom).
These photos are mostly of boathouses on Lake Minocqua in North Central Wisconsin. Also several structures in St. Louis, MO and Ephraim, WI are included. The Minocqua boathouses makeup the character of the area and many times house some classic boats. These are photos taken over a period of six years. Enjoy these photos in this slide show or see them individually: http://greatrivers.smugmug.com/Galleries/Boathouses/.
Great Rivers Imaging 