WHAT BECAME OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The St. Louis Art Museum has a wildly popular event at this time of year called Art In Bloom. Thirty master flower arrangers are invited to create a piece in response to one  of the artworks. The results are striking. The show is Friday to Sunday, as long as the flowers will last, and on weekend afternoons it's just mobbed.

The museum had a members-only viewing early this morning. Mrs. C and I went at opening time and it was already busy. What struck me were the scores of people taking pictures on their phones. I was the only person staggering around with two fancy camera bodies, one of which had an f2.8 telephoto lens that is so heavy I thought I was dragging a fire hose. Not that you can't take good pictures on a phone. I use my camera phone, too. It's just that some of us keep up this snobby sense of craft.

Many pictures of the flowers to come. There's a political event downtown Saturday morning - Missouri and some other states have primaries on Tuesday -  that I want to shoot.       

THURSDY ARCH SERIES

A dark day in Kiener Plaza, looking east across the strange checkerboard pattern in the pavement. The place was empty but the forecast for the next three days is all sunshine with spring-like temperatures. That should bring lots of opportunities, including an unusual event Saturday we'll get back to.                           

REPOSE

A cloudy, quiet winter afternoon in Citygarden, our two-block long downtown sculpture park. Laura Ford's Bird looks like it has its own seat, while Aristide Maillol's La Riviere seems to have taken a tumble. If, like me, the figure was wearing an Apple Watch it would start beeping and display in red and white "DID YOU FALL?" If you don't respond within 30 seconds it starts sending out emergency calls. Think of the infamous "I've fallen and I can't get up" TV ads. I just tell mine to shut up, I've just plopped on the bed.            

SKATER

I was wandering around Kiener Plaza downtown Sunday afternoon looking for something to shoot. It was gloomy and I didn't have an idea in my head. Then a group of young men with skateboards came by. This one hopped up on a stone wall about six feet high and a foot wide (just visible in the lower left), zoomed into a gap of three or four feet to the next section (not visible here), landed smoothy and then swooped off the end onto the sidewalk with aplomb. I was stunned and asked if I could photograph him doing it again. He was happy to oblige. I showed him some of the shots afterward and he gave me a fist bump. Made me feel cool.            

MADELEINE MONDAY

We usually take the kid on some kind of outing on Saturday. There are plenty of choices here. This weekend we went to the St. Louis Science Center, a technical fun zone for children. This big drum/treadmill powers a screw that lifts colored balls into what some people call a Rube Goldberg machine (here's a really good one). Ellie isn't very big and she had to work hard but she got the job done.