The next time that you’re in the St. Louis area and you have your DSLR, a tripod and some spare time, drive across the river into beautiful (NOT) downtown East St. Louis, Illinois, to the Malcolm W. Martin Memorial Park. There is a very cool three-story observation deck that provides an excellent view across the Mississippi River to the Gateway Arch and the downtown St. Louis skyline.

I took this photo, just after sunset, from the third story of the observation deck with my Nikon 610 and a Nikkor 28-300 f/3.5-5.6; ISO 100; f/14; with a neutral density filter at 1/13 shutter.

It took me about sixty minutes in post-processing to remove the four sets of double power lines that stretched across the frame, so be prepared to spend some serious post-processing time if you want to clean up the power lines.  You can get a cleaner photo by clicking here, and seeing the photo on my SmugMug page.

I took a series of six shots and stitched them into this panorama, but didn’t remove the power lines from this one.  I don’t have that much patience!  Click here to see a better panorama on my SmugMug page (the file size of this one was too large to load on the blog).

While you’re in Illinois, I strongly suggest that you take a short drive to Belleville and have the best barbecue and Brussels sprouts (Sprouts w/Belly) that I have found in the entire St. Louis area…at Beast Craft Barbecue.  If you are lucky enough to find that they haven’t sold out of Wagyu Brisket, get it!  It costs a little more than the other items on the menu, but it’s a bite that you’ll never forget.  And don’t leave without trying their Cherry Chipotle Barbecue Sauce.  There will be a container of it on the table, along with a couple of other sauces.

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