missouri

Photography 101: Architecture
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Photography 101: Architecture

Our Day 12 assignment in Photography 101 was “Architecture”, and we were also asked to explore black-and-white. I have included dual photos in color and black-and-white of various downtowns: Granbury Texas, St. Louis Missouri, Philadelphia  Pennsylvania, and Seattle Washington.  There is a photo looking up at the ceiling in the Atlanta Museum of Art, and also a photo of the iconic Space Needle in Seattle built for the 1962 World’s Fair.

It’s interesting to note how the color versions of the skyscrapers show various shades of tan, blue, black, and silver, and the St. Louis photo includes the turquoise and green from the courthouse top and lawn; these are all eliminated in the black-and-white versions, which I don’t think I like as much even though it still shows a lot of gray-scale color contrasts.

The St. Louis photo was taken from the observation windows at the top of the Gateway Arch, the Philadelphia skyline from across a highway (which was cropped out at the bottom), and the Seattle photo was taken from the 76th floor of the Columbia Tower building.

The atrium ceiling in the Atlanta Museum of Art had a striking pattern of lines and shadows and I had to take a photo of it since it was different; I think I might like the black-and-white version in this one better since the shadows are even more emphasized, and there wasn’t much color in the original anyway.

The old 1890 Hood County Court House in Granbury, Texas offers the most unique character in this typical Texas town square, and I prefer that one best.

Branson: Water, Racing, Wax, SIX
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Branson: Water, Racing, Wax, SIX

After in returning from St. Louis, we decided to stop over at Branson, Missouri. It’s a nice, clean, family-oriented entertainment destination with over 100 shows and plenty of things to do and pretty scenery in the surrounding area of the Ozark Mountains. We enjoyed a water show, raced go-karts, viewed wax actors, and watched the SIX show.  It was fun time and we would like to return another time.

Water

Also, we ate at the Mexican restaurant Cantina Laredo, which was very good. We were familiar with it when we lived near Dallas. It had a great location overlooking the $7.5 million water fountains attraction in the town square at Branson Landing, which is a nice outdoor shopping area with over 100 specialty shops and 16 restaurants along a 1.5-mile scenic boardwalk adjacent to Lake Taneycomo.

Every hour in the evening, they have a musical fountain show with fire bursts that’s amazing to watch, which features the first-ever merging of water, fire, light and music that offers a dazzling interplay of water Fountains shooting 120-foot geysers and fire cannons blasting, all choreographed to light and music.

I took some photos of the fountains, but it’s hard to get the overall effect with just the single images.  These are presented as a slideshow, which automatically advances through all 18 photos.  Also, I included a photo of Table Rock Lake from an observation tower just west of Branson, and then the slideshow repeats. When you move the cursor over the slideshow, a pause button with left and right arrows appear, so you can stop it at any time and/or skip backward or forward; that might be useful if you want to zip though it more quickly than waiting for the

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Racing

We played miniature golf and my son raced GT-5 and RT-8 go-karts in timed heats up to 40 mph on the Xtreme Racing Center course.

 

Wax

We visited the Hollywood Wax Museum. I’ve included photos of many of the famous actors there, and most of them looked pretty good.  My son kept wanting to get his picture taken with the figures, so the ones I cropped appear narrower than the others.  You can click any photo in this gallery to view a larger image with the ability to go forward or backward to view the others, if you prefer that option to scanning over them all.

 

SIX

We saw the SIX musical show, which is an a cappella singing group of 6 Knudsen brothers. They perform for two hours and there are no instruments, but everything you hear is just their voices. They even performed the sound tracks that accompanied several movie clips with lots of action, car chases, crashes, and other sound effects and you wouldn’t believe it’s just their voices making all the sounds.

 

Gateway Arch
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Gateway Arch

Recently, we visited St. Louis for my nephew’s wedding, and we visited the Gateway Arch on the west bank of the Mississippi River where St. Louis was founded.  It is a magnificent 630-foot high stainless steel monument to the westward expansion of the United States built in 1965 for $13 million.  It’s the tallest man-made monument in the Western Hemisphere, Missouri’s tallest accessible building, and the world’s tallest arch.  You can ride all the way to the top in a series of 5-person mini-pods, and then you can get out and look through the narrow windows at the city and river in the surrounding area.

You can see St. Louis landmarks such as the Old St. Louis County Courthouse and Busch Stadium (where the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team plays).  I also tried taking some photos of the river from the top of the arch, but those didn’t really turn out so well.  We ate dinner at the Broadway Oyster Bar, which is a famous Cajun/Creole seafood restaurant that has live St. Louis blues/R&B music nightly right near Busch Stadium.

My Photos

Here are the photos that I took during our visit to the Gateway Arch.

Looking sideways
From an angle
Getting closer
Almost there
Up close
Underneath looking up
Old Courthouse
Busch Stadium
Downtown buildings
Looking down on highway
Across Mississippi River
Looking down river
Looking straight down