Gerbes, West Broadway
Stephen Bybee
Columbia, MO
2013
I created this panoramic image of the West Broadway Gerbes in September 2013. At the time, Columbia had three Gerbes grocery store locations, including one on Nifong and one on Paris Road. The West Broadway location was the closest to my home, so I found myself shopping here a lot. This image, taken on a rainy evening in late summer, is a compilation of several different photographs taken on a Nikon D700, and then stitched together in Photoshop. I haven’t done many panoramic images in Columbia, but I wanted to capture the entire length of this very long building in one final image, and a multi-tiered panoramic seemed the best way to achieve this. This was our West Broadway Gerbes before the epic remodel of 2015 that brought us a Gerbes bar, a Gerbes cheese cave, and a Gerbes coffee shop. Before the corporate overhaul, Gerbes had a separate entrance and exit for the liquor store (brilliant), a relaxed interior design, and all of this wonderful lighted signage on the exterior, each individually lighted sign glowing in a warm but faded red lettering, describing a different facet of the store’s offerings. This once descriptive signage was greatly edited by the remodel into a more laconic and all-encompassing statement of the store’s offerings: “Food/Pharmacy.” If you have seen my photography of Columbia, on Facebook or on my website, you are aware that weather is very often an important component of my images, and this is apparent here. The rainy evening was chosen not only for the heightened sense of atmosphere, but also to enhance the glow of the building’s signage by reflections in the parking lot. These reflections bring dimension and detail to what would have otherwise been a dark and featureless foreground. The keen-eyed viewer will also notice that the alignment of the assemblage is not perfect. This effect is not intentional, but it is also something I don’t mind. It seems to bring a hand-crafted look to the final panoramic.