Forest Park Forever, the citizen’s organization that can be truly given the credit for rescuing America’s greatest urban park from decay and neglect, claims that the park contains 45,000 trees (give or take a few). This seems on the low side for a 1300 acre park that is called Forest, so it is important to consider all of the open spaces in the park.

I have a knack for meeting people. Perhaps it's because they want to know what I’m up to! Tired of the gloom of heavily overcast skies, I ventured inside today to see what I could find. The Panoramic exhibit in the History Museum is an interesting one, complete with 1920’s automobile, several cameras (one incorrectly labeled as to both manufacturer and purpose) a ball gown

I hadn’t planned on revisiting Art Hill quite so soon (I like to spread my days out evenly over the park), but Rebecca and her friend Lou wanted to go sledding, so I decided to join the fun. This was Lou’s first time sledding - they don’t get much snow in Liberia -

Not a blizzard, but a lot of snow, and it didn’t seem to want to stop. Yesterday’s gentle snowfall continued overnight, paused for a brief while, and gradually turned to freezing rain. It was raining as I waited on this Great Blue Heron to make his move.

Yes, I was singing “Let it snow” when I picked up my daughter Rebecca at school today. Her school, like so many others, let out early, and I was thinking about a niveous world as I puttered about the city on our way home. I am not disappointed with the results. I got to the park after traffic thickened to the point of being annoying, but once inside and walking through the Kennedy Forest,

I like to look for the unfamiliar in familiar places, for what is different in the same, and what is striking about the ordinary. All too often we see what we want to see, or what we expect to see, and really don’t look very closely at what is actually present. Part of this is our perspective; we see the world from a certain height above ground level, and a change of elevation can

That’s what I had in my mind today when I set off to capture something new in Forest Park. There was one particular tree that caught my attention as I drove south on Skinker Boulevard, so I doubled back to give it some love. If I had been capturing my images on film

He was looking at me with those great big puppy dog eyes (even though he's 8 years old). 
"No." I said 
He did a little dance and barked.
"Ain't happening." I informed him.
He sat and looked at me

The day started inauspiciously enough; it was raining and cold when I got up to take my daughter to school, but things changed as the day went on and when it was time to meet Mark Glenshaw, the Owl Man of Forest Park, in front of the Visitors’ Center, it was downright balmy. By that time I had shed one of my sweaters and my coat, hat and gloves and was thinking perhaps Spring had come early.

I spent some time today thinking about what has changed in Forest Park since 2009, when I created my first 365 project (http://www.forestpark365.com). In addition to the new building and parking garage at the Art Museum, there is a new wild area on the north side of the improved Central Fields (with new rest rooms and pavilions), a lot of new signs around the park,

Getting out of bed in the morning is not exactly my favorite exercise, but this morning I exerted myself and when early-born rosy-fingered dawn appeared in the east, silhouetting the skyline of the French king’s city, I was standing on Art Hill,

At the end of a busy day, a day of meetings, pictures, welcoming visitors to Studio 858 in the Loop, and then photo exhibitions in the Grand Center arts district, I pointed the nose of my humble Toyota towards Forest Park, ready to get some fresh images. My plan was to catch skaters at the Steinberg Rink, experiment with motion blur and win the Pulitzer Prize

OK, Canadian friends, YOU might not think 25º F is particularly cold, but my hands were so numb I could scarcely move them! Note to self, wear warmer gloves. Today’s walk seemed colder than yesterday’s by far, and with the heavy overcast we’ve been having, no brighter. I headed to the east side of the park looking for interesting scenes to catch and climbed the berm

It was ten years ago yesterday that I embarked upon my first 365 day project: exploring the two square miles in the center of the Saint Louis metropolitan area that is known as Forest Park. And what a year it was, even with the relatively mild winter, dipping to a mere 0º F (-18ºC) on January 16, and an unusually cool summer with a high of only 98ºF (37ºC) on August 9.

The Exposure Triangle; you’ve heard of it, I’m sure. It’s fabled in story and song and celebrated by photo instructors everywhere. We can even buy t-shirts commemorating the concept! There have been countless articles written about the “exposure triangle” (try a web search and see for

The mirrorless wars have started. Troops are lining up on the borders of each principality involved in response to the bullets already flying. Here are some of the headlines:

Talking about the days of film photography is almost enough to get oneself labeled as a totally irrelevant  dinosaur in this day of digital supremacy, even considering the inexplicable hipster fascination with film cameras and photography. There are, however,

Do you read the news? Are you aware that Finland is the happiest place on earth (the USA is only 18th in the rankings)? Even though their suicide rate is 13 percent higher than ours (the United Nations, the folks who create the survey, attribute that to the long winters and the ubiquity of Ikea furniture), they live in a place that is “the most stable, the safest and best governed.” Apparently their banks are better than ours as well.