John Girt Photography: You Need To Change Your Feed - we have moved

John Girt Photography: You Need To Change Your Feed - we have moved: "Our new blog site is at blog.johngirtphotography.com , or you can use the shorter URL blog.jandmg.com . You will find a complete set of..."

You Need To Change Your Feed - we have moved

Our new blog site is at blog.johngirtphotography.com, or you can use the shorter URL blog.jandmg.com.


You will find a complete set of all previous blogs there. If you wish to change your curent feed, the replacement link will be blog.jandmg.com/wp-rss.php, blog.jandmg.com/wp-rss2.php, or blog.jandmg.com/wp-atom.php depending on your reader.


Hope to see you all there.


BTW Peculiar is a small town south of Kansas City just off US Highway 71. Apparently it was so-named by a Washington bureaucrat when the Postmaster of the yet un-named settlement reported that 'nothing peculiar happens here.'

Missouri Photo Trip 4 - Arrow Rock

 

Arrow Rock is a charming community in Central Missouri containing a State Historic Site and Park focussing on its 1830's buildings and surrounding old homes. It is not a museum but an active settlement with several hundred residents.

This photo, taken in 2008 in Arrow Rock, drew comments at my recent exhibition that led me to return on June 29, 2011 to take more pictures. 

Arrow Rock is only a few miles from Boonville and within an easy day trip from Kansas City or Columbia, Missouri. It is close to passing holiday-makers on I70, but it does not receive the visitors that it deserves. This is especially true this time of year when its residences are fringed with splendid flowers and its old trees are in full, fresh leaf.

Arrow Rock boasts a reconstructed 1830's Court House - the first shot below shows the view from The Bench - and quite a large Tavern that serves good lunches and evening meals. 

The shops on the Boardwalk sell drinks and antiques, there is a charming Post Office and an active theatre. The State of Missouri runs an informative Visitors' Center, and the route to the village is well posted on and from Interstate 70 and other highways. 

I have tried to capture the place in a new photo album on my Images of the MidWest website (click here). You will find other photos as well as the ones shown here. 

Include a visit to Arrow Rock on a trip through Central Missouri, you will not be disappointed.

Even the style and setting of the Jail is charming.

Click here to visit the Village of Arrow Rock's website

Prairie Wildflowers, June 10, 2011

Four years ago I sowed a sunny, clay bank on my property at Kingsville, Missouri with a seed mixture of native Prairie wildflowers and Prairie grasses. This year, I took these photos of the result to demonstrate the exuberance of tall grass prairie in late spring and early summer. 

View more photos of Prairie wildflowers taken at Kingsville this time of year at www.imagesmidwest.com

Exhibit, Unitarian Gallery, Kansas City June 5 to July 1, 2011

This image attracted most comments yesterday at the opening of my exhibition of photographs at the Unitarian Gallery, 4501 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri. I took the shot as the only way of eliminating cars from any street shot in Lavenham, Suffolk, England. The small town has a wonderful and contiguous collection of homes from Tudor Times, but the residents as well as visitors clutter the place with their cars and spoil the atmosphere.


To make the shot more interesting, I applied what is called a bleach bypass to desaturate the colors.


All the photos that I show at the exhibit can be viewed on my website using this link, from where you can visit any of the other albums that I have posted on my web sites.

Kansas Photo Trip 1 - US Highway 69 South From Kansas City

This is the latest of a series of blogs documenting photos taken on trips, mainly by car, around Kansas City. This one traverses three quite different areas found along US Highway 69 in Kansas south of Kansas City: the Marais des Cygnes National Wildlife Refuge, then the Fort Scott area, followed by the brief stop in the now abandoned coal mining area in Southeast Kansas. Wildlife, a western fort, and a colossal piece of industrial archeology - all in one trip - pretty good for Kansas. 


As usual the photos are available on my websites (www.johngirtphotography.com and www.imagesmidwest.com), where you can order prints of any that you like.


The first part of the trip south of Kansas City can also include side visits to the communities of Paola, Pleasanton, Prescott, Hume, and Appleton City which will be covered in another blog. If they are included in this trip then the last part of the itinerary to Southeast Kansas would probably need to be postponed to another time unless you were stopping overnight in Fort Scott, Pittsburg or the surrounding area.

Assuming that this is not the case then a visit to the Marais des Signes (Marsh of Swans) Wildlife area could be the first stop and involve leaving the Highway to visit Trading Post, and then to use the gravel road State Line to enter and tour the Wildlife Refuge itself.

Trading Post is claimed to be the oldest continuously occupied (European) settlement in Kansas. It has a museum (that has never been open when I was visiting), and a rather cute and well preserved school house - shown above.

Returning to Highway 52 which crosses US 69 just north of Trading Post my most interesting exploration involved driving east, away from 69 not crossing it, to the State Line with Missouri. I used this road to travel south into the Refuge not looking for waterfowl that do gather in the area during spring and fall migrations, but for other opportunities to photograph. I discovered hawks, and a number of abandoned homes and a car, as shown the following shots.

Fort Scott is a short drive south on Highway 69 from the Marais. It was the site of a US Army fort from 1842 to 1853. Later the fort was revived for the Civil War, and now it is a restored National Historic Site. After the Civil War for a time the town of Fort Scott rivaled Kansas City in economic activity, and the downtown area shows this to this day with an array of fine victorian shops and commercial buildings. There are more opportunities for photos than I show here.

Just south of Fort Scott on a recent trip I spotted this abandoned school house on the side of Highway 69. 

I have a series of interior and exterior shots at Images of the MidWest. Here is a shot of the front of the building not included on the link, and one of School's side with a vulture that conveniently decided to warm up on the roof just a I was taking the shot. I had 'fled' my home near Kansas City early to avoid hearing or seeing anything about the UK Royal Wedding in late April 2011, and was taking these shots quite early in the morning!

Driving south from this point one travels across an area that was once dominated by surface coal mines. On my first visit to this area that day in April, I found one remarkable attraction to photograph. You really need to see a larger version of this shot - click here.

This is Big Brutus, a dragline used to strip away surface deposits on top of coal seams. To give you an idea of the size of this 'brute,' nothing in the following picture is a scale model. The yellow dragline is the size of a similar piece of machinery that you might see working on a construction site. Both are now part of an indoor and outdoor display of mining equipment used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in this area.

To visit Big Brutus you need to drive south through, or around, Pittsburg,and take either US 400 West or Kansas 102 West. If you take 400 look for NW 50th when west of Cherokee and go south to join 102 at West Mineral. Signs point to Big Brutus from West Mineral and from 400.

If you are returning to the Kansas City area you could consider visiting Parsons a little to the west for a break in a pleasant town before continuing on 400 to US 169. Heading north on 169 will take you through Paola and back to Kansas City.

Summary of the trip: some great opportunities for interesting photos, but lots of driving; fortunately plenty of services are available in Fort Scott, Pittsburg, Parsons and on 169. Depending on your love of driving, either a two or a three star trip.

Broadway Bridge Album

 After finishing my last blog on a photo of the Broadway Bridge crossing the Missouri River in Kansas City, I realised that I had taken some other shots in the same vicinity back in March 2010. After working on some of these shots, I have put together a new album on Images of the MidWest of photos of the Bridge and the area it straddles. 

You can go directly to this album by clicking on this Blog's title.