After work, I studied my last little bit of microecon and took the test. 50 questions, hour and a half time limit. It took me 28 minutes to complete and I felt pretty confident that I knew the material. Unfortunately I got an 84. Oh well, what can I do now. Still really good compared to my macroecon experiences at OU.
Ok, with work done and the test over with, I had some free time. Hooray! I've been itching to go out and shoot again since I haven't really done it since the first day I got to St. Louis. No motivation. Again, my plan to shoot was that I had no plan. What I've learned in the past few years about photography is that your success is based on the amount of preparation you put into your work. Even treks on urban photography are thought through in some way. A photographer usually packs for the conditions he or she expects to experience while shooting. However, there is also that element of pick-up-your-camera-and-shoot. That was definitely the theme of the evening.
What was my plan? Get in the car, drive toward downtown, shoot things I see. Here is a map to show you where I ended up (click on map to see larger picture). The star marks where I started my journey, in Creve Coeur where I reside.
Courtesy Google Maps.Now, keep in mind I literally jumped in the car and started driving. I do not know the streets of St. Louis or the roads to get around. I started by going south and turning east toward the town of Ladue. Ladue ended up being the rich part of STL. It was about 8PM so the sun was started to go down and create long shadows everywhere. It was great for the golf course views and huge houses with well manicured landscaping, but not good for me if I planned to go downtown. Inner city in the dark and I have no idea where I am... good call. Anyway, Ladue looked pretty amazing. Everything screamed wealth. I was probably the cheapest car on the road at the time. I was beside a BMW 7 series and behind an Aston Martin the whole time. I stayed on Ladue rd. and passed through Clayton, the source of all this wealth. Clayton is a little blip on the map, but has big presence. There are actually high rises with big banks, streets with expensive boutiques and trendy-looking people everywhere. It was a nice bit of rich.
After making a few turns I very quickly (and I mean quickly as in one street) went from wealth to the old dingy University City, or U-City as it's known by the locals. U-City is the home of Washington University, a top 20 school and considered one of the best for undergrads wanting to go on to med school. U-City is interesting because right outside of campus there is a strip that reminded me of Campus Corner. This, however, was about five times larger and ten times cooler. There were really cool looking bars and restaurants, all on a strip that was wide enough for traffic but still narrow enough for people to casually walk across the street.
I kept driving east, thinking nervously that I was getting closer and closer to places that were legitimately scary. And I was. Very soon after passing through U-City I was officially in the City of St. Louis. This part of the city is pretty run down. There were whole blocks seemingly void of business. Every building boarded up and deteriorating. Paint probably more than a half century old still clinging on to dirty brick and rusted corrugated sheet metal. Yet, amidst all this I stumbled into the St. Louis University campus. The campus was far from deteriorating. It was quite nice, in fact, especially with the sunlight where it was at that point in the evening. Architectural lighting accented almost every building. The Saint Francis Xavier College Church was especially nice.
Saint Francis Xavier College Church on the St. Louis University campus, just west of downtown. Nikon D300, 34mm, 1/10 at F/4.2, ISO 200, Picture mode Standard +2, hand-held.
A close of up the Saint Francis Xavier College Church architecture. I came at a good time, right after sunset. Nikon D300, 200mm, 1/15 at F/5.6, ISO 500, Picture mode Standard +2, hand-held.
Saint Francis Xavier College Church. Nikon D300, 60mm, 1/13 at F/4.8, ISO 500, Picture mode Standard +2, hand-held.The light was starting to fall fast and I had to make a decision on my shooting plan. As of this point I barely shot anything at all, being too intimidated by the surroundings to get out of my car and shoot any of the run down parts of town. Plus it was not ideal with the sun almost gone. I picked a horrible time to go shooting, but I really had few choices since my econ test and the time I took getting downtown. Oh well, might as well keep going and see what happens. I couldn't really get a good look of how much light was still on the horizon, but I figured I'll work whatever I have when I get downtown. At this point I convinced myself that I have to try and get that iconic downtown St. Louis shot from across the river. Stupid, I know. How many times have you seen that shot? Whatever, I have nothing else going on, let's do it.
So, it took me probably another 20-30 minutes finding my way through downtown and across a bridge into Illinois. I don't know what bridge I took. All I knew was that now I'm in Illinois - Obama country. The road kept going quite a ways into Illinois before any useful exits. I thought to myself since I'm seeing so many signs for Chicago maybe I should make a trip up there sometime. I think I'd rather shoot some of the flooding just up north of STL before I did that, but it would be highly unlikely that I do either. Anyway, I eventually got turned around and headed back toward the river. I couldn't see any of the downtown buildings or the arch which made it difficult to make decisions on what roads to go on. If inner city STL was bad, then this was absolutely horrible. There were whole streets that were not only boarded up and abandoned, but had one street light every 1/8 mile. Needless to say I was a bit nervous now. Especially with the random businesses that always had those two or three guys sitting outside smoking and checking out the surroundings. Shady!
Finally, the river and downtown were within sights. The bad thing was that the ideal place to go was a heavy industrial area. I passed by a Cargill silo on my way to what I thought would be a good shot.
Here's the creepy part -
I came to a curve in the road. Looking over to my right I could see the arch and the buildings just off to it's right. This is where I want to make the shot. Just off the road was a set of train tracks leading to the Cargill silo and a hill of tall grass and a concrete wall that stopped at about chest-height. Perfect to perch my camera on. Just 50 yards in front of me was another car, parked to the side of the street. I didn't want to just park next to it, seeing as how I didn't know what was going on out there. I passed by it slowly and turned around on the road to get another look at my shot. Just then, a woman came out of the tall grass and started walking toward her car. She had something in her hand. For some reason I assumed it was a small camera but in retrospect I realize that I neither looked to see what was really in her hand nor looked at her face. Some help I would have been if she killed someone or made some drug deal. Anyway, I was parked on the other side of the street by now, pretending that I don't see her doing her... whatever she was doing. I could see in my peripheral vision that she was looking at me from behind her car. She then got in her car and drove off slowly, riding the brakes the whole way. I carefully got out of my car and started walking up toward the tall grass to hopefully shoot downtown like I planned. As I reached the concrete wall, I noticed that the car completely stopped up the street. Her brake lights were still on and I knew for sure she was looking back to see what I was doing. Holy crap, I thought to myself, I better not be interfering in her dirty work.
For some reason, in my body's decision between fight of flight it chose fight. Instead of turning around and going back to car and driving away like any person with reason would have done, I shrugged her off and even gave out an audible "psh...fuck her" as I set up my camera. Because of the situation, I only shot seven frames in a nervous fit. Each frame was a at least 6 seconds of exposure so I would literally stand there in paranoia looking at the woman's car while trying to suppress mosquitoes with my hands. I probably looked like an idiot creeper out there. Oh well. All that, and this is what I got (click to enlarge):
St. Louis as seen from Illinois. Nikon D300, 36mm, 6 seconds at F/7.1, ISO 200, Picture Mode Standard +2, perched on a concrete wall.I checked my screen to see if things looked good. Gave my D300 a push on the center button to zoom to 100% to check sharpness and focus. Things looked good. Now, GET THE EFF OUT OF THERE. I quickly packed up my camera and walked back toward my car. In that span of time, the creepy woman's car had gone, but another set of headlights was on its way. Paranoia is a pretty strong feeling. I jumped across the train tracks and hastened my pace to my car, having my key ready in hand. I literally flew into the car, turned it on, threw it in drive and sped off like I did something unlawful (who knows, it was Cargill property, so I could have been doing something illegal). The set of headlights turned out to be a taxi. Weird that he would go way out there... again, shady.
Exit strategy, get on I-70 west and ride it all the way back to 270 and home. Well, as you'll notice from the map, I was on I-70 east for a while before I could turn around. Damn exits, you can't just go where you want. Anyway, my adrenaline took a little while to come down, and by the time I got back home I had a headache and my sore throat felt considerably worse. It took 40 minutes to get from where I was in Illinois to Creve Coeur, so in the meantime I shot this in the car:
Tired and scared. Nikon D300, 24mm, 20 seconds at F/11, ISO 200, perched on the dashboard, Pop-up flash on commander mode with remote SB-600 hand held on Rear Curtain Sync. The long exposure makes the lights go crazy in the background while the flash on rear curtain sync froze me at the end of the exposure.So yes, pretty exciting night for me. I woke up this morning and my throat feels fine. I guess I just needed a shot of adrenaline.
Plans for next shooting opportunity:
1) Have a plan
2) Bring a friend
3) Buy a small knife
That's it for now.
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