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The Gateway Arch, or Gateway to the West, is an arch that is the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial in St. Louis, Missouri. It was built as a monument to the westward expansion of the United States. At 630 feet (192 m), it is the tallest man-made monument in the United States, Missouri’s tallest accessible building, and the largest architectural structure designed as a weighted or flattened catenary arch.

I have visited the Arch umpteen times and always been amazed by the construction.  Although I would have loved to stay there for a long time taking pictures, it’s next to impossible when visiting places with the family. Interestingly, my 8 yr old and 4 yr old seems to showing lots of interests in photography too..may be I should take them on a photo walk to the Arch  ;)

Shot these while we were waiting to enter the Arch. It was an overcast day and I like the way these turned out with monochrome post processing.

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Things have been so busy lately that I missed posting my weekly blog post – who’s counting anyway

Still taking lots of pictures, just didn’t get time to post/share it here.

Had a chance to take the family to St. Louis Arch just this past weekend and it was good trip. Family get to enjoy the magnificent Arch and towards the end as the family had settled down, relaxing by the river front, I get to put my camera to work – had my 24mm Nikon prime and it came in handy for these street shots by the St. Louis Arch.

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I take Metro (train) to work and on my return trip home last evening, I was so much into listening Radiolab podcast – Guts, that I ended up getting on a train that was going southbound (rather then getting on a train going west bound). I happened to realize only after getting past couple of stations – sure call me an absent minded

So what did I do? Panicked a bit..as I had to pick up my daughter from her school on my way home from work. Luckily I was able to call my wife on time and ask her to pick my daughter up…then I was at ease. Eventually I ended up at a station far from the right direction and had to kill 20 minutes or so until heading in the right direction.

These days I carry my point and shoot camera with me and was able to spent some time taking some shots at the train station – sure enough, there were folks who looked at me like a out of towner – which was true in my case

Hence the title When life gives you lemons…make Lemonade.

Although photographers (in particular landscape photographers) have been using this technique to capture stunning details on landscape photography, I wasn’t aware of this technique being used in Street Photography until about a month or so. While reading a photo blog on a post related to street photography tips and tricks, I stumbled upon setting up the camera to hyperfocal distance and then when walking on a street, and finding a scene that you want to shoot, you just point the camera, shoot and be done.

Sounds simple doesn’t it?

Upon reading, I found that there are charts and online dynamic forms that could be used for setting up the camera at hyperfocal distance for SLR cameras.

Interestingly, Panasonic LX5 point and shoot camera has a built-in depth of field indicator that could be used for setting up the hyperfocal distance! No tables/charts needed. These are some experimental shots, I clicked using hyperfocal distance setting on LX5.

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You may remember this bench shot titled Emptiness (from last year) – it’s the same bench, but cheery looking. I waited for the couple to settle down and had this shot. May be I should have called this street photography

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Had to run errands this afternoon and thought I will make this s photo-walk/errand run. There is this park close to where we shop, and spent some time at the park on this rainy afternoon. Needless to say, enjoyed my photo walk – it’s relaxing and no need to worry about anything else – what all I had to do was walk, stop, come back, compose/recompose, and move on. Now I will be longing for my next photo walk

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