It’s always an interesting and challenging prospect—creating art from someone else’s art. Since I tend to gravitate toward landscape and architectural photography, I’m faced with this quandary just about every time I head out with my camera.

For me, the solution lies in looking beyond the beauty and form of the subject and analyzing how it relates to its environment. By reducing a building or a piece of sculpture to mere shape and texture, I’m able to see the work as a piece in a puzzle. When I’m looking through the viewfinder as I’m lying in the street, standing on a fence, or leaning over the ledge of a very, very tall building, and I find the perfect fit for that piece, it…well, just clicks.

Capturing the essence of St. Louis in photographs practically demands the inclusion of someone else’s handiwork. From the historic churches that spot our city to the sleek, shiny Trova sculptures that help define the Clayton landscape, these inanimate objects are as much a part of the lifeblood of this metropolis as the people who reside here; the balance of these subjects to their environment is as much a part of the story as the subjects themselves. The quiet isolation of the abandoned Lemp Brewery begs for a field of negative space to haunt. The smooth metallic finish of the Millennium Spire at Our Lady of the Snows is most at home shown reaching for the clouds that egg it upward. The historic majesty of the Saint Louis sculpture is quite literally placed high upon a pedestal in front of the art museum. Without taking into consideration the “soul” of these elements, we’d be left with just another snapshot of someone else’s art.

When he's not behind his camera, Aaron Segall can be found in front of his computer at his own design and advertising company, Grey Matters. He resides in Fox Park, a neighborhood of St. Louis.