Sixty-five cents each. Soulard Farmers Market, St. Louis, Missouri.

An eggtradition, st. louis, missouri. iPhone 3Gs photo.

A bit of a belated Happy Easter, but I was making the family rounds and couldn’t get to the blog in time. Enjoy your chocolate eggs. The hollow ones are always so disappointing.

Cherokee Street, St. Louis, Missouri. Photo by Erik M. Lunsford

There just happens to be the side of a house demolished with a single chandelier exposed to the world on Cherokee street. When I stopped for a photograph, these birds flew the coop (get it?)

It almost feels as if the birds are memories leaving the house that once sheltered the lives of sons, daughters, parents, and grandparents. Now the sad and defaced  room that brought families together at the dining table is but an airy window for all the world to see.

New solar panel (scape)  array at Emerson Electric in St. Louis, Missouri, photo by Erik Lunsford

Self portrait of the photographer in the Hilton Hotel downtown St. Louis elevator, photograph (clearly) by Erik Lunsford

It’s not often a self portrait makes it into the blog, so why not now?

Hangers and balloons, photo by Erik Lunsford

Found this frame as Lindenwood University staff prepared for the grand opening of a downtown campus in St. Louis. There is nothing particularly entertaining about this photograph other than my desire to share it.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., observance parade, St. Louis, Missouri

Detour West (very far from the highway) St. Louis, Missouri

Somehow this detour may not be the most feasible route to the highway. Hmm.

Exercise Lab, Barnes Jewish Hospital, St. Louis.

Certainly, this photo gives pause.  The breathtaking fall forest scene on the wall invites us to hike its trails and hear the crunch of fallen leaves below our feet on the dirt pathways.  In the foreground, heavy medical tissue paper (ironically with its own crunch sound) and a sleeved pillow on the examination table gives a sense of unease while medical equipment sits idle for the next patient.  Having always loathed and feared medical tests and examinations since I was a child (the familiar smell of a medical lab and blood work is enough to make me queasy), the photo takes on a figurative visual tug-of-war.  While a part of me desires to study the foliage scene and associate good memories, the other part cringes and recoils from the medical apparatus.  I speculate the reason for the fall wall scene is to neutralize the patient’s anxiety and fear of the medical visit.  If that is the reason, then it is a tender attempt to ease the patient and provide a more relaxed environment.  A staff member mentioned that the photograph has withstood several attempts by the hospital to paint over it for almost forty years.  That is fascinating.

Compositionally (and I’m eagerly open to critiques, so please help yourself), the photograph feels heavy on the right side of the frame due to a lack of balance.  I tried to find a way to balance the sheets of paper taped to the wall (which can’t help but earn a small chuckle because they’re taped to tree limbs).  Maybe I should have stopped and spent more time at this scene, possibly using a steadier device than shooting handheld to stop down the aperture and increase the depth of field.  On the other hand, the lack of depth of field in the medical equipment very slightly increases my eye’s tendency to focus on the leaves (other than the overwhelming light and color), so maybe it is an attempt to ease over the unease.  There is also a possibility that spending too much time at the scene hinders the creative process by overanalyzing the frame.

The entire photograph is interesting, nonetheless, and lends itself as a beautiful outdoor space inside. Similar colors draw the viewer in for their own interpretation.  I wonder how long this wall photograph will remain before a drab paint overtakes it.

toy gator on the dashboard, southbound I-255, Illinois

Part of the lost and found series, this photograph was taken in the last few minutes of our drive from Florida to Missouri last year. This little toy gator, found on the ground at a Florida rest stop the day I moved down for my first job at the Stuart News in 2004, has accompanied me on my many journeys in the car through the subsequent years.

As the gator opened a new chapter in my life moving away to Florida, it also signaled the closing of that chapter and the opening of a new one when we moved back to St. Louis in 2007. It gives me pause to the volumes we write in the pages of our lives.