St. Louis Art Museum

Even if a photographer never enters the St. Louis Art Museum, there is the likelihood of walking away with compelling images of the architecture and surrounding outsides grounds and sculptures. Your Digital Photo Academy instructor will help you develop a number of composition vantage points. Begin with an, up from the ground, “Worm’s Eye,” steep view of the various buildings, pasted surrealistically against the sky for a haunting effect. Then try a broader view and create a busy visual interplay between a number of components around the buildings, so the viewer’s attention darts back and forth within the frame of the image, first of a sculpture on the lower right of the image, sweeping across, along a sidewalk, leading a line of vision to the foot of the dramatic building. From there in the same image, your eye is led up the wall to the sky and back down to a tree on the left, back to the sculpture on the right and all over again.

Start outside, but there is no charge to enter the museum and once inside more photo ops await, each bathed in light streaming down from oversized windows that hug the 20+ foot ceilings. Other spaces are lit with sky opaque sky lights and your instructor will demonstrate and supervise techniques to work with artificial light.

You will find a series of dramatic rooms, some cavernous, some womb-like but each a compelling visual sensation. Your instructor will help you to develop your own signature style of working with a dizzying array of colors, from brightly saturated hues found in a room themed with modern abstract paintings to soft shades of old-world scenes to transport you back to historical times. Learn how to photograph stark white walls that illuminate the art or walls painted to blend a space together. There is a science to color and an art to photographing it. The shapes of each room allow a variety of optical illusions. Hunt down a patterned floor or a series of repeating light fixtures and your viewer will become lost in the scene.

Enjoy the art, the visitors and yourself as you create compelling images that put you in touch with your own visual creativity.

Call Digital Photo Academy at 1 877 372 2231. Lots of people seem to hang up if our welcome recording comes on instead of a live voice, but we promise to return your message within a day or two if you leave one with your name and number.  It would be even better if you included your e mail address as well as the date and city of the class you are considering.  If leaving a voice mail message is not your thing, please email us at [email protected].

1 Fine Arts Dr, St. Louis, MO 63110