Archive for January 2008

8

Edina Theater - The Savages, Kite Runner

Three degrees today — a heat wave — almost warm enough to snow. The Edina Theater is in the cute upscale neighborhood of 50th and France. After trying several places, Bob Kupbens and I ended up here looking for a photo and I found one. Again this is the famous Tamron 11-18mm ultra wide lens. Believe it or not, this image is cropped. There was too much on the right and top, I wanted to center in on the theater. I love being part of the Daily World Photographing Clique, but I'd like to lasso a few locals too. By mentioning the movies playing here in Minneapolis: The Savages, Diving Bell and The Butterfly, Atonement and the Kite Runner, I'm curious if more people will find my blog by chance. If you came here looking for the movies, don't hate me, I'm just a daily photographer spreading the gospel of the World Photographers called the City Daily Photo Bloggers. See the world today! The Winter Carnival Starts this week in St. Paul. For those of you who were incredulous over the seat warmers, I'll try to document to the fine art of survival in the shadowy land of winter, so stay tuned, same Mitchster time, same Mitchster URL. A big thank you to Thein of Seguin (TX) and Halcyon of Jackson Daily Photo for giving me the You Make My Day Award. I'll go through my lists and put up my picks soon. Thanks!

4

Japanese Meditation Garden in Minnesota

snow falls gently down covering all that I can see where are my car keys arctic system hits sixteen below really hurts where's my hat and mitts as day follows night as hope follows tragedy summer will return Freshly minted haikus for you, thanks to inspiration from the frozen Jeep seats, the Japanese garden at Normandale College in Bloomington and my happily Caribou Coffee-addled brain.

7

Burr!

Burr, baby, burrrrr! It's cold outside! It's currently -16 in Minneapolis this morning. My little macro shot of some burrs seemed appropriate for today. Those little hooks on the burr are what the air feels like out there too. You know it's cold when you get in your vehicle and bump your head on the ceiling because the car seats are frozen solid. Yes, foam apparently freezes — pop on the seat heater and slowly sink down.

6

Spoonbridge and Cherry

Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen

Time to start revving up for the CDPB Theme Day. This is the famous Spoonbridge and Cherry in the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden. This 700-pound utensil was plunked down on the edge of our metropolis in 1998, a gift of Frederick R. Weisman in honor of his parents, William and Mary Weisman. I just discovered that Weisman gave this sculpture to the city and I'm now looking into the history of the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum on the U of M campus. I never realized the relationship before. As Peter Gabriel said, "all of the buildings, all of those cars were once just a dream in somebody's head." It's interesting to discover that the same person is in-part responsible for two of Minneapolis's biggest art landmarks.

7

35W Bridge Collapse - New Information

I've been waiting for an opportunity to post this picture that I took on the night of the 35W bridge collapse. After my little party yesterday I was afraid it might be a downer, but a little reality is good too. The NTSB released a report yesterday saying that it was a design flaw, not maintenance issues that lead to the collapse on August 1st, 2007. Though the investigation is still going, they found that the gusset plates were too thin. Those are the steel plates they rivet the beams together with. They should be one inch thick, but were only half-an-inch thick. There's more information about this at the local paper, the Star Tribune and the New York Times. In my humble opinion, if they knew this before hand, there wasn't anything that could be done, you really can't replace those things. They might have been able to weld something to them, but it would have been a big deal to replace them without causing the bridge to collapse in the process. Back to the picture. I took this at nine pm that night. While everyone was clamoring to try and see the bridge, the first responders had the whole area fenced out. There were thousands wandering around. Everyone was so quiet and polite, We all felt like we had to come down and see; to be part of the event, but stay out of the way of the people trying to do their job. There were emergency vehicles everywhere, helicopters, news trucks and big spotlights. It was a massive event, but everyone was totally calm and serious. I spoke with several people there; some wanted to tell what they felt, others asking for information, many just talking like one does at a funeral; polite, expressive, telling tales of earlier times that they had been on the bridge. All of us wanting not to be gawkers, but to be with everyone else. All in all, it occurred to me while I was there that all my pics of the bridge area didn't show anything new, the landing helicopters weren't unique. What really struck me about being there was all the people just wandering around trying to stay out of the way, staying in the shadows. That's what I wanted to capture with this image: a major event that you really couldn't see. And all the people wanting to be there, but quietly. When the solid waste hits the rotary ventilator, I want to be in Minnesota. People just don't freak out here. They calmly do what they can and don't get in the way. Car horns are rare. Our 'natural disasters' are just something you have to deal with. It's no one's fault, just get your shovel out, work your way through and then check on the neighbors.

35

Minneapolis Daily Photography Turns 100!

Mitchster, the Minneapolis Daily Photo Blog, celebrates it's 100th post today. I've had a lot of fun over the past 100 days. If you have a daily photo blog, you know how much work and dedication is required to maintain a daily schedule. It's driven me to shoot a lot more pictures than I normally do and that has been worth it alone, but I've met many really nice people along the way and learned a lot about blogging and photography as well.

Here's some of my favorite posts:

Oct. 26 Hydraulic Crane - post processing gone crazy and no one has yet answered my question. Oct 31. Adventures in a railyard - not only one of my favorite abstract photos, I went on to tell the tale of almost getting clobbered by a train. Nov 9. The Blue Bridge - an all around crowd-pleaser, I learned to, as President Bush would say, choose the time and place. I went to the grand opening of the Sabo Bridge the day before and the lighting sucked. The daily papers published pictures from this gray, gloomy time like the one at the bottom of the post, but I chose to come back that next morning at 5 and got the beautiful shot at the top of the post. If the light sucks, spend the time scouting and go back with the right gear at the right time and try it again. Nov. 26 Minneapolis Skyline - back when 35° seemed cold, I braved the morning wind and found the hole in the fence over 35W to get the ubiquitous skyline shot. This post holds the record for the most viewed, stumble upon (the little green SU circle under my posts) got hung up on it and sent me thousands of viewers. If you get a chance, clicking on the social bookmarks at the bottom of the posts can cause a photo blog to get lots of traffic! Dec 14 - Caribou Coffee - I've done quite a bit of portrait and corporate photography, but this is the first time I crashed an event and directed people for my own interests. I felt like such a renegade! Dec 18 - Rice Park and Night Photography - another cold moment, it was near zero and I forgot the good gloves. I had fun playing with the Christmas lights and ended up writing an extensive article about night photography. I'm trying to carve a niche as the photo blogger with photo tips; this was the post that inspired me to create a category for Photo Techniques. Dec 12 - Holidazzle Parade - the last in a series of photos of this odd Minneapolis commercialism, moving fits of light at night, mmm, tasty. I like to call it the Festival of the Iluminati — if that term means nothing to you, then you probably don't watch the skies for black helicopters. I took these holidazzle shots with Greg from View from the Tundra. Dec 27 - Raccoons - though I took this earlier in the year, I loved this pic and had so much fun taking 257 pictures of the same thing. Digital Rocks! You can get a good shot if you take enough of them. As my dad says, a good photographer only shows you the good shots. Jan 1 & Oct 21 - Sarah's Greenspace - I chose this as my best of the year, so obviously I like it. That's just a quick list, I wanted to reflect a bit & pick a few to point back to. As far as telling the experiences of photblogging, well, I already did that on the last day of the year. So I won't burden you with that here, but I talk about my personal history with photography and how moving to a DSLR changed everything (including my bank balance). Reflecting is good, but I want to think about the future as well, though this is a milestone for any web venture, I am not stopping! There's much more to explore around here. I plan on diving further into infrared photography, night photography and try to find new options to make some $ from this obsession. In fact, I do sell pictures, squirrel pictures for that matter. I haven't mentioned them to you guys because I need to rebuild the site for them. I have them in a few stores, but need to back up and retool my approach with them. I also want to explore selling or giving pictures to local media for the exposure. Have you done this? How did it work out for you? Comment! Thanks to the CDPB for instantly hooking me up to a great community of bloggers. It's a great place to see the world — not the view on TV where everything os going wrong 24x7, but the happy day-to-day world of the people who live there. Thanks to you the reader for visiting this site and keeping me going with comments and suggestions. You always see broadcasters thanking the viewers which always seemed a little trite to me, but now I get it. An audience is an amazing thing. As I've accumulated experience here on the planet, I've discovered that the success of communication is more dependent on the listener than on the speaker. Don't believe me? Ignore someone while they are telling you something important to them and see how that works out for you. So thank You, - Mitch

10

City Daily Photo Blog - Monthly Theme Hints and Tips

Monthly Theme day at CDPB is a great way to build your traffic. Not only is it a great way to challenge yourself, but it helps you to feel a part of this amazing community, or as I describe it to my friends: a mutual admiration society. The CDPB'ers have a wide range of skills and interests and an especially wide range of geographical locations! But they all have one thing in common, they encourage each other in a very positive way. They all know how much dedication it takes to keep taking pictures and posting them day after day. I've found that even one comment like "great job!" or "I love the little whats-it in the corner, cute!" can put a smile on my face and keep me going. So if you are running a daily city photo blog, go sign up and join the theme day. Once you are signed up for the website, go to the forum. When you are signed in as a blogger, you will have more options in the forum. The theme day is the second option in the second block. Click on the first thread: "how to join." There are two steps, you first join the theme as soon as possible then, on the first of the following month, go back and copy the list of links and paste them into your post for the theme. That's it! Now you are part of the group, you have linked to them all and THEY HAVE ALL LINKED TO YOU. This brings lots of traffic and shoots your ratings up like a rocket - over 100 blogs linking to you at once! Besides being part of the community, my attempt at contributing is to write about photography techniques and offer tips like this one. Not everyone in the CDPB group is a a professional photographer or web designer, they do it because they love it (the best reason to do anything!) But I am a professional photographer and web designer, so I want to help out by offering advice and information where I can. I hope my articles are useful, if you enjoy them, please link back to them and tell your friends. More of my articles are found under the categories "Photography Techniques" and "Building Traffic." Tomorrow is my 100th post, so please stop by and join me in celebrating this little milestone! P.S. Gerald asked me to add that you can join the CDPB without having a blog. Also, if you join the monthly theme, make sure you post the theme with all the links. If you change your mind after you join, you can remove yourself from the list.[/lang_en]

2

Foggy Minneapolis Night Photography

Night Photography Tutorial | Photoblogging Tutorial Post 98 — Mitchster.com turns 100 on Tuesday January 15th!

2

Fellow Ice Wanderer

Any idea who this is? I came across him near the shore on Cedar Lake. Take some time to improve your blog, read my post of photobogging tips from yesterday. If you read yesterday's post, you'll know what this is: Beautiful San Diego California This is post 97, so 100 is only days away — come back for the party!

7

Trees for the Forest - A Closer Look at Photo Blogging

Every day I get up and trudge over to my Caribou Coffeeshop and pound away on the blog. My 100th post is coming very soon, today is 96. Why do I do this? Sure, coffee is a good enough reason, but what started as a timid toe-in-the-pond experiment has turned into my first thing in the morning ritual. By choosing to post daily I have set a high standard for myself, but it has brought many benefits. I've met some very cool people around the world and in my own backyard. I've also improved my photography and because of my style of commentary, learned to explain what I am doing and think through my shots more fully. A lot of my visitors are other photo bloggers and I wonder what got them started. Photography hobby, interest in their own city, desire to meet others around the world? Are you a fellow professional photographer? What got you into it? Let me know in a comment. I started blogging to learn how to build a custom blog for my client Paul Fricke, I'm a designer by trade. Since he started, we talk a lot about motivation and site traffic is a big one. Thankfully the CDPB and it's theme days has brought me lots of traffic, but like every other ingrate, I want more. The more people who see what you do, the more value it has. It's one thing to read about photography and it's another to take a good picture everyday and post it to a world audience. I'd like to investigate traffic-building the same way — not theory, but practice. And I want to bring you with me. The main force behind improved ranking and thus traffic is links to your site. The Theme Days are incredible for this, so if you are a CDPB'er, make sure you join in on this. Another powerful force for bloggers is technorati.com. If you aren't registered there, do it! It's easy. You'll thank me later. Once you have an account, you can 'favorite' other blogs. Just search for the blog address on technorati and click the 'favorite it' button (it's red). I'd write more about it, but this post is getting long and like photography, I recommend learning by doing. So here's the 'assignment' for learning by doing. Go get on technorati if you aren't already. Then favorite the blogs you like and as a bonus, if you favorite mitchster.com, I'll favorite you right back. If you link to mitchster.com in a post, I'll also return the favor. Technorati also has an 'authority' number and a ranking, but I'll talk about those next time. I know a few of you aren't interested in traffic and rankings, but how about a few new friends and some more compliments on your pics? It's not a race, it's a fun run. Smile, and enjoy the day.[/lang_en]