In the Halls of Heaven...

I took this photo in January of 2010.  The front door to the building was wide open and I was in an exploring kind of mood so I checked it out.  I have other photo previews at the bottom from the same building, but from various shoots.
  I digress.  This is the state of the building in 2010, before any real restoration work or preservation has begun on this building.  there was a blue tarp over the front of the entrance, but it had just been put up.  There weren't even any no trespassing signs when I went there.

  I did a little bit of digging online and learned this amazing building I had been in is none other than the James Clemens House, named after an uncle of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.  There's no evidence that Twain lived here for any significant length of time, but certainly he spent time here in his youth.

  I went into this building not expecting anything in particular.  I walked through the front door and headed straight for the giant four foot wide staircase that took up half of the hallway.  The wood was in good condition, the plaster on the walls faring relatively well.  I walked up the stairs, turned right into the first doorway I happened across and stopped in my tracks.  The above photograph is the room that I stepped into and held my breath.

Outside the Hall

  To say that the space was holy is not untrue, at least from what I experienced there.  There was a lingering quiet about the place, even as I heard birds chirping from outside the room somewhere.  But a peace washed over me as I walked into this sanctuary and I was humbled by the vastness of the room as well as the toll that the elements had taken on it.

  I've returned to this building since then but the doors were all sealed and once, when I pused on a door to see if it would open, an alarm went off.  One day I noticed the front porch overhang had been removed and that was bad enough.  But then this morning I was able to return to this beautiful building that I had come to cherish so much, and decided to visit my room and see how she was faring in the 3 years since I had seen her.  This is the sight I found.

  The building had been cut away, braced as you can see so it wouldn't fall completely over.  There was no "inside" any longer, just a beautiful alabaster and marble archway that would soon be dissolving in the rain.


  To be really depressed, go look at what this room was like in 2003 at the following: http://www.builtstlouis.net/clemens3.html

P.S. - Trying to post more photos with blog isn't working out as well as I'd hoped.  Bear with the technical difficulties for me, please!

#urbex #photography #abandoned #MarkTwain

Chances are, you have already seen some taste of my interest in the macabre.  This photograph goes right along with it, a little disturbing and also surreal.  I have always wondered about the woman in this photograph, the character she is portraying.  Is she hiding from someone and chose an uncomfortable place?  Or is the set of tools in silhouette a portent of things to come?

We were shooting all kinds of crazy stuff at my house this particular day.  This model is a friend of mine, Gina, and she makes the best desperation/misery faces I've ever shot and that's precisely what I was going for here.  She had asked what sorts of clothes to bring to the shoot and I told her knee socks were always welcome.  They make such an interesting contrast against whatever creepy background I've decided on that day (or will decide on once I see the socks).

This was before I started shooting with a strobe light and so the image is a little bit orange, but I like that.  It shows off the aqua and blue very nicely.

This beautiful young woman is named Nicole and I have yet to meet a person who didn't adore her within ten minutes of meeting her.  She's beautiful, that much is obvious.  But when I met her she was working at three different jobs and was part owner of one of my favorite night spots in St. Louis.  I met her and instantly saw her charisma and personality would come through in photographs.  It took me about three minutes of her smiling and serving drinks and then I was hooked.

I approached her about shooting with me and we took an evening and wandered around one of my favorite buildings, taking photo after gorgeous photo.  We had a great time, even shot some product photography of our favorite beer.  All in all it was a wonderful evening of shooting.  Afterwards, we parted and I went to visit with a friend and I had no idea where she was going.  It was the first time we'd ever really hung out (although we took some photos previously at her bar).

So I meet up with my friend and she says let's go grab a drink at the Jade Room, a bar in the South Grand area of St. Louis.  We head on over there, I sidle up to the bar and there is some beautiful brunette standing there who turns and says "Long time no see!"  It was my friend Nikki!  She introduced me to her boyfriend (who kinda looks like Dave Grohl) and we have a GREAT time hanging out.  I pull out the camera and we go through some of the photos with him and we sat and drank and chatted and talked art and music and all kinds of stuff.  Had a fantastic night hanging out with them.

Unfortunately, fast forward a few years and the couple has a baby with Osteogenesis Imperfecta, the same disease Samuel L Jackson's character has in the movie Unbreakable.  It's a terrible affliction and has a high mortality rate among infants. They recently had a fundraiser to take care of the medical expenses and their bills but when I asked if I could link to their page in the blog, I was told that they would prefer I steer you to the OI website and any donations to go there.  So please, go inform yourself about this terrible affliction and if you can afford it, help a different family deal with this disease.

http://www.oif.org/

In the Hall of the Mountain King

Every time I look at this photograph I think of the musical composition "In the Hall of the Mountain King".  While I don't think the music matches the mood of my photograph, the name of it certainly does which is why that is its title.

I first saw this building a few years ago, when I began my #urbex sojourns and wondered what it was like inside.  I kept finding other places to explore and being distracted from going to this particular building so it eventually fell off of my radar.  Eventually, after three years or so, I saw it again on my drive around the city and swung past to check it out.  The outside of the building is overgrown with vegetation and has lost a fair bit of its glass from the windows but all in all it is still a very sturdy building.

I went in a week later and was awed by the sheer amount of junk that had been left in the building.  I have found no end of bizarre things in this space; broken widescreen televisions (a dozen of them or so), a recliner, thirty or forty highway patrolman uniforms from Illinois, cases of abandoned soda, piles of papers of course, plastics used in forms and even a fully intact cat skeleton  (that was taken by a model of mine and turned into a mobile...don't ask).

This was one of the first photographs I took that day entering into the building.  The thing is, this is the middle of the building, not even the front.  That's a good eighty feet behind me.

This is actually me under the lawnmower.  So /technically/ I didn't take the picture, but I did everything including setting the camera and just had my friend walk around me with the tripod, set it down and take a #photograph.  Walk around, move the tripod, push the shutter.

Incidentally, the human head won't fit underneath a lawnmower comfortably, as is evident by our unfortunate guy here.  I removed the blade and unplugged the spark plug when setting this shot up, and still the bell of the mower was too low and trying to break my nose.  So I dug a hole, tossed a plastic bag down in it and lay down.  Still not enough room.

I dug a strip out of the earth next to the hole so my neck would recess.  My head was lower still and yet, the lawnmower was starting to sit on my neck instead of my nose and that wasn't pleasant.  So I cut some wood and lifted the rear wheels of the mower about a half an inch which kept the thing from cutting off my #AirSupply completely.  (Yes, I did that so fans of Air Supply might accidentally come across this photograph without meaning to.  I like practical jokes.)

All in all, I was only able to be under it for about twenty minutes before I just couldn't handle the discomfort anymore and was done.  I tossed the dirt back in the hole and lay the sod back over the top and voila!  The hole is gone!

A lot of people ask me what that red stuff is.  My usual answer is "my face after the blade chewed me up really good" but occasionally I'm kind and tell people it was a mixture of red food coloring, tomato sauce, tomato paste, diced tomatoes (unsalted) and a tiny bit of post production work.

The Mask Adjustment

This model really isn't a model.  Yes, I know, that doesn't make any sense but then again, neither does a platypus but whatever.  She is, however, a costumer and a chocolatier, which is a good combination to have.  Okay, I'm not sure about that, but I do like her chocolates.

I work for a large industrial building turned artists' space and this is on the roof of one of the buildings.  It's not easy to get up to, involving a wooden staircase and no lights but when you reach the top there is a door and the sunlight likes to peek in around the cracks.  Stepping out onto the rooftop, the actual covering of the roof is a super heavy white vinyl so it likes to reflect lots of light.  So on a solid, overcast day the whole area is lit up with sunlight like a giant white reflective box.

She'd gotten dressed before coming to the shoot which is always a good thing in my book and we went up onto the rooftop, bringing with us another friend who wanted to get some photos taken.  I decided where I wanted to shoot the first set of photos and while she was adjusting her mask to get ready, I took this shot.  Technically, it was the first shot of the day but she wasn't posing.  I often find the first photograph and the last photograph of the day's shoots are usually pretty good.

Hera and the Gazing Pool

This is my friend Nuria.  She was engaged to be married in less than a month when I took this photo.  She suddenly decided one day that she didn't want to marry her fiance' and she didn't want to waste the dress entirely, so she asked if I'd be willing to shoot her in it.  Let's see, beautiful woman, wedding dress, loose ideas of public behavior?...  yes please!

We went exploring down near some locations that I wanted to get her portrait in with the dress.  We went to a fairly nice part of the city and took some photos on the steps of some churches, in front of a couple of huge old houses and generally made a nuisance of ourselves while having a fantastic time.

This location is the courtyard for a church that has been vacant for quite some time.  I saw the pool and simply had to try and take some photographs with it.  She wandered over and we started shooting away.  Eventually, towards the end of the shoot, I asked her to look down into the basin as if it were a divining pool and this is the result of that pose.

After four years I can look at my other work and see how it has transitioned and gotten better.  But this photo still stands out as one of my favorites.  I love the way the colors are all very primary and distinct from one another, as well as all the textures too (the dress, the brick, the inside of the pool, her skin, the veil).  Since I like to think in terms of comic books and larger than life characters, looking at Nuria like this makes me think of Hera, Zeus' wife from Greek mythology.  I like to imagine she is spying on him right now, watching his philandering from a safe distance and plotting her revenge.