Cahokia

Explanation

This pair of pictures was taken from the top of one of the Native American mounds at Cahokia. Cahokia was located in the area around St. Louis around 1000 years ago as part of a civilization in that area that lasted around 400 years.

I first learned about Cahokia in the book Four Lost Cities by Annalee Newitz. Considering I live in the US and it was the only one of the four located in the US. The others are Çatalhöyük in modern day Turkey, Pompeii the famous Roman city besieged by a volcanic eruption, and Angkor of Angkor Wat fame.

One thing that's become increasingly clear to me is how little of American history is rooted in the people of America pre colonization. So learning about a quite large civilization on American soil is somewhat jarring. Obviously, Native American stories litter much of early American history, from fur trading to the mythos of Thanksgiving. But all of it tends to traffic in the interactions between Native Americans and European settlers. The stories of Native Americans themselves were and still are very much reduced to footnotes.

I think that's one reason I was drawn to coming to Cahokia. At some level, I wanted to look at and come to terms with the fact that, as a son of immigrants, the land I live on did not belong to us to begin with. That for most of America, this land is something taken, and that to be truly native born is something almost no one can claim. While I will always say I'm an American, that doesn't mean that my heritage can be tracked back to this land itself.

Now, Cahokia was largely abandoned before European settlers came to the region. As we understand, the region was still populated by many indigenous tribes, but the settlement and civilization surrounding Cahokia had largely dispersed by then. I don't remember all the details but it's still a testament to their existence that these mounds still stand.

Getting to the pictures themselves, these were taken from the top of Monks Mound. Though not super impressive to look at, Monks Mound is still some 100 feet high and is clearly a large man made structure. Both pictures overlook the Western side, facing St. Louis. The two pictures are actually a pretty good comparison of the effect of focal length on an image. Namely, the first picture was taken wide angle where the focal length is shorter than the film size. The second picture was taken telephoto, where the focal length is longer than the film size. The effect being that St. Louis looks quite differently sized in each of the two pictures, smaller and further away looking in the first, larger and closer looking in the second. I am pretty much the same distance away, plus or minus 10 feet or so, but the effect of something miles away is significant. When people talk about the "compressive" effect of a telephoto lens, this is the effect they're talking about.

So why did I pick these two pictures? Is it just because I wanted to talk about focal lengths? Not really, I just kind of like these pictures. The first picture is mostly a function of composition. Effectively, there are three sections to the picture being structured by the handrail. The left most includes the car crossing. The middle/right includes a wide view with St. Louis far in the distance. The top has a bit of lens flare and a sliver of sky. I feel like I remember waiting for that car to enter that left section, though maybe I wasn't thinking too deeply about it and am retroactively patting myself on the back for it. Either way, this picture is one where shooting wide angle works. It pulls St. Louis far into the distance, creating a really strong sense of depth. While it would be nice to have something in the foreground here, besides the handrail, it doesn't feel lacking and there's a clear sense of depth being created. On a side note, apparently the lens I'm using here, which I'll describe in the roll post for this roll, it's a story of its own, has 5 blade elements. That's why the lens flare is a pentagon. Just a random side note I'll mention.

Onto the second picture. Let's start with what I don't like. I hate the color on this picture. When/if you look at the roll post for this roll, you might understand why. If you don't, just know that this picture, for whatever reason, when I scanned it in decided to have a completely different color profile than every other picture on the roll. It's also strangely grainier than most of the other pictures.

That aside, I do like this picture though. If the other picture was a picture that showed off wide angle lenses, this one shows off a telephoto. Unlike the other picture where I wasn't sure if I intentionally waited for a car or not, I know for a fact that I specifically took this picture telephoto while waiting for the butterfly to enter the frame where I wanted it. I like that St. Louis is clearly in the background, with the Arch clearly visible. I do wish I had an even more telephoto lens though. I feel like the amound of the frame covered with the foreground plants is too much. Ideally I'd want it to take up somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of the frame instead of 1/2. This is a pretty mild telephoto picture, somewhere around 80mm. I feel like it would've been pretty easy to get up towards 200mm, where St. Louis would look significantly bigger and with the butterfly taking up more of the frame as well. Oh well, I didn't have a longer lens with me so this is what was possible at the time.

That's it for this post, there's one more for this roll before the roll post itself. Hopefully I catch up with all my posts as I'm quite far behind right now and I'd like to do these closer to when I actually take these pictures instead of 6 months later. That said, it's kind of fun to reflect on something from a long time ago as well so whatever, I'll do it as I do it. I don't really expect anyone to read these. This is more something for myself anyways, to analyze and reflect on the images I imagined and the pictures I took of them.