Photos around Cape Archives

March 19, 2016

Through Ace Taylor’s Eyes

I had the pleasure of roaming Illinois, Kentucky and a chunk of the Missouri Bootheel with Ace Taylor, the 13-year-old nephew of museum director Carla Jordan. Carla mentioned that Ace was interested in photography and was good company, so invited him to hit the road Thursday.

It’s never good to waste a perfectly good seat, so Carla’s ready-to-ramble mother, Carolyn Taylor, filled it. I have the feeling that she may become like Mother was: jingle the keys and she’s ready to go.

I tried to think of a photo-rich environment where taking good pictures would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

It turned out to happen, almost literally. When we got to the spillway at the southeast end of Horseshoe Lake, we saw hundreds of minnow-size fish frolicking in the overflow. We couldn’t tell if they were trying to fight the current to get upstream into the lake or if they were beings swept out of it. A couple of fishermen said they were baby carp. It’s worth clicking on it to make it larger. Maybe someone can tell us if the fishermen were right.

The kid has a good eye

I got my first camera at 12. Ace is so far ahead of where I was at his age that there is no comparison. I didn’t point out any particular shot to him. I would give him a little background about why the location was interesting from a geologic or historical perspective, then I’d look around and Ace was already scoping out angles and getting busy.

Experimenting with framing

Ace wasn’t a plain old point-and-shoot photographer. He experimented with shooting through things and with the relationships of shapes. He also had a good grasp of depth of field and the relationship between lens settings and shutter speeds. He tried using slower shutter speeds when shooting the fish photo so the water movement would show up, then he switched to higher speeds to freeze the fish. All of this without a word of advice from me.

In fact, I tried to capture the jumping fish in a video, but Ace aced me hands-down with his still shot.

Not afraid to get in the middle of it

I told him that photographers have a responsibility to document the world around them for future generations. He took a dramatic photo of a machine eating one of my favorite old buildings in Cairo.

“You realize,” I told him, “that you have taken the last photograph of that building that anyone will ever see. If you come back tomorrow, it’ll be gone, and the opportunity to document it will never be there again.”

[Note to Ace’s Mom: he was very cautious. He was careful to step in areas clear of nails and glass, and I always made sure he wasn’t any place where he was in danger.]

A deliberate shooter

The kid wasn’t a pray and spray shooter. After he took a photo, he would study it to see if he had captured what he was looking for or if he should take another crack at it.

A quiet kid

I don’t know that I’ve ever met any boy that age who was so quiet and soft-spoken. When he DID talk, he had something to say. I liked that.

The next day, he was helping Carla at the History Center in Jackson, so we didn’t roam around. I stopped by the center to give him a polarizing filter that I discovered had a small scratch. It probably won’t make any difference, but I’m persnickety about that kind of thing.

We talked gear and techniques, then I watched him wander around the room checking out how the filter would eliminate reflections. I give him credit for understanding when you DON’T want to use it.

“I WANTED the reflections in the water in the picture of the cypress trees, so I wouldn’t use it there, would I?” he asked.

You nailed it, kid.

If he continues at the pace he’s on, he won’t have to talk: he can let his camera and photos speak for him.

Ace Taylor’s work

Here’s a selection of what Ace photographed in roughly six hours (including 150 miles of driving). Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move around.

Keep in mind while you are looking at these pictures that Ace Taylor is 13 years old.

March 15, 2016

Could It Be Spring?

When I shot pictures of North County Park on February 16, it was because “celestial dandruff” was coming down like crazy, coating the ground and trees with white stuff. When I showed up around sunset on March 14, the grass was greening up nicely.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

Trees are budding out

Trees that were white with snow a month ago are beginning to sport white blooms.

I wonder if this means I’m going to be stuck with 50 lbs. of snow melt and a pickup truck of firewood I ordered a few weeks ago?

Memorial Park getting color, too

Purple was the color of the day in Memorial Park cemetery.

March 6, 2016

Update on Allenville RR Bridge

I’ve photographed the removal of the rails between Gordonville and Delta (one of these days I’ll get around to printing them), but I didn’t know if the flooring and rails were still intact on the bridge spanning the Diversion Channel south of Allenville. Here’s what the bridge looked like in 2013.

The first thing that stood out was the door ripped off the cabinet that I assume contained the electrical equipment for the warning lights where the tracks crossed Hwy N. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

Trees blocked the way

Walking was easier than the last trip when Friend Shari and I visited. Pulling up the rails and ties provided a nice surface. The roadway was probably TOO nice, so someone felled trees across the way in several spots to keep people from driving down it.

Either that are there are some highly selective square-toothed beavers at work.

Ties pushed off to the side

It’s obvious that steel rails were worth salvaging, but there was no value in the rotted ties that were pushed off to the side to go back to nature.

Riddle of the Spinx

When I encountered the final barrier, I realized that I could no longer leap, scramble and scamper like I once could. Now, better than when I was young, I could interpret The Riddle of the Spinx.

In Greek legend, the Sphinx devoured all travelers who could not answer the riddle it posed: “What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon and three in the evening?” The hero Oedipus gave the answer, “Man,” causing the Sphinx’s death.

On the way back, I snagged a branch suitable for a walking stick because, alas, I felt that I had reached Evening.

The bridge

When I finally got to my target, I was glad to see that it was still mostly intact. A few feet of rails at the ends of the structure had been removed, but the bulk of the 1918 bridge was still there.

I’d like to have stuck around longer, but the light and the temperature were both falling rapidly. I didn’t want to try to pick my way through the barriers by feel.

March 6, 2016

March Weather and Murder

You couldn’t beat Saturday’s March weather: winds were calm, skies were blue, temps were in the mid-60s. I decided to take advantage of it. I spent some time at Salem Cemetery, then made a quick pass through Dutchtown, and updated my old pictures of the Allenville railroad bridge. You’ll see those later.

By the time I got through with the bridge, the sun was about to dip below the horizon and the temps were dipping just about as fast. I stuck my camera in the car and was just getting in when I looked up, probably to keep from bumping my folically-challenged head on the doorframe.

These utility lines caught my eye. I was going to keep getting into the car, then my old rule kicked in: shoot it when you see it.

A view down Hwy N

This is what you saw if you looked down Hwy N instead of up in the air. Around that curve, headed to Delta, is where one of Southeast Missouri’s unsolved murders occurred.

On July 3, 1954, Bonnie Huffman’s 1938 Ford was found parked in the middle of this road. Sixty hours later, the body of the pretty, young schoolteacher was found in a ditch nearby. Her neck was broken, and the 100-plus-degree summer temperatures had caused advanced decomposition.

Over the years, countless theories have been advanced, leads followed and suspects interviewed, all to no avail. John Blue, a reporter at the time, covered the story from the start and became obsessed with the case. When he was editor of The Missourian, he kept the story alive.

Missourian front page

This is the original story on the July 6, 1954, front page. The timing of the story was unfortunate for the paper: July 4 was a Sunday, when the paper didn’t publish, and Monday was a holiday. That meant the story didn’t break until Tuesday.