Gateway Sunrise:

It's been a month since I updated the blog and it has been great!  Sometimes to improve, you have to stop doing something for a while.  Kinda like when you are training hard as an athlete, it will do you good to take a break and eat a huge cheeseburger to put you back on center.  The holidays are kind of a creative photography buzz kill for me because often you end up shooting a bunch of mediocre "Snapshot Portraits" and aren't able to create the images you would really like to create.

I spent the week downtown at a training seminar with some collegues at the Hyatt near the Gateway Arch.  The seminar was presented by The Matchbox Group and led by a really fun guy named Bob Faw (Chief Ignition Officer) who specializes in "Change Management".  He presented some fantastic concepts and provided a lot of food for thought.

One morning I got downtown a little early with the intent to do some street photography but was pulled to the arch instead.  I probably have hundreds of images of this architectural wonder but love the challenge of trying to always capture it from a new and more creative vantage point.  Add in the environment and you always have an opporunity to "change" your perspective and still be creative.  The warm sunrise was in full effect and the light fog in the trees added to the softness.  I captured the following image of the arch or "Inverted Catenary" for you engineering geeks....

Gateway Sunrise (D3S, ISO800, F/22, 1/500th, 66mm through Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8)

Remember, you can click on the image and it will resize larger to fit your screen.

Oh and Hey Bob Faw, Photography is the best way for me to "Calm my Caveman"....

Until the next image theft, Enjoy!

Photogs Note:

Sometimes you gotta make do.  This image isn't composed exactly like I would want but it simply was not possible.  I had to shoot from a little far off with a mild zoom to get the compression of the arch into the trees which was several hundred feet behind them.  Unfortunately, there is I-70 between me and the image.  Therefore, I couldn't compose the trees a little higher in my frame without getting a shot of highway and the hundreds of rush-hour cars beneath it.  So what do you do?  Forget the rules of photography every once in a while, break them.  Do 10 things right, nail the exposure and capture the image.  Not every picture can follow the rule of thirds man.  Its just one aspect of hundreds of things to do to get the image.