Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.
Leave something outside long enough, something is going to happen.
Today’s my eleventy-first post! How often does a LOTR fan get to use that term?
My friend Paul has some pretty good posts this week.
Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.
The City of Lakes Loppet is a week away. Soon cross-country skiers will be shuffling up the hill right by my home in Uptown. A loppet, as you may have guessed, is a cross-country ski race which requires snow. You’d think we’d be set, but the last few years have been a bust when it comes to snow. So here’s the solution. They set up snow machines like the ones they have at downhill skiing places, right on the shore of Lake of the Isles. In the land of winter fun, we have to make our own backup snow in case the real stuff doesn’t hold up.
The beautiful golden light in this shot is brought to you by the big city lights illuminating the cloudy sky. The icy haze of the winter nights scatters light instead of absorbing it like wet clouds do, so it’s frequently quite bright here at night.
Now for the entertainment portion of the program. While avoiding responsibilities last night, I found a video made by a couple in West Saint Paul. It funny, has a catchy tune and shows what this place looks like when the snow starts to melt. I go to great lengths to tart up my snow shots, but they went the other way. Oh dear…
On their website they say that it’s for a video competition at the Walker Art Center. They have a link to a higher-quality version too, so if you liked it, get over and see that one and learn more about them. Say hi for me while you are there.So there you go, a video about the convenience of an inner-ring suburb and the Northernest biggest city in the world making snow in case of emergency.Why live in paradise when you can light a good buzz just watching the cabin-fevered Minnesotans just trying to entertain themselves ’til the spring thaw.Oh yeah, I still need to get some new mittens…
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Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.
The moon threaded the Minneapolis skyline Tuesday night. After I captured yesterday’s picture, I went down to the sculpture garden to catch this image. Here’s the problem: I need better mittens. I was so cold that by the time I got to this location, my hands were so cold that I didn’t want to get the tripod out and set up outside. So I put the Image Stabilized Nikon 70-300mm telephoto on the camera and hand-held the camera out the window. With the aperture wide open I still had to get the exposure time down to at least a tenth, so I cranked the ISO up. Thus the noisy image. I might be able to fix some of it in Photoshop, but one of my goals for Mitchster.com is to only work in Lightroom.
Shooting the full moon this month was inspired by something that happened at my alma mater, The Prairie School in Racine Wisconsin. Sophomores Connor Leipold, Tim Pastika and Kyle Simpson discovered an asteroid. You can read about it here: Prairie students discover an asteroid. They were using technology provided from Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich., which is also the alma mater of the science teacher, Andrew Vanden Heuvel. I saw a PBS special about students using remote telescopes. Check it out, according to the website, students can use these remote telescopes for free. If you know anyone who has done this, let me know.
That PBS show also talked about “street astronomy” — groups of astronomers build inexpensive large telescopes and take them to the streets. They invite passers-by to look at the heavens. Pretty cool. Does anyone do this? Please comment! As a photographer, that much glass makes me, well, excited.
A little something fun for you: Moon Phase Gadget – Not my picture, this image updates to show the current moon phase. Cool, huh?
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Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.
I found a new perspective on the emerald city of the Northern Plains. You have to bike a lot or work for BNSF to know this location. This was one of my more planned out shoots; I tracked the moon for the last few days knowing that last night was a full moon. I searched this area for an angle that would get the moonrise in the frame with the city. I changed locations several times last night and will be showing them over the coming days. This was my first spot, chosen because it was the highest.
A lot of night scenes with the moon are photoshopped together. I wanted to make sure that this one was obviously natural. It was tricky to get the exposure right, because the moon is so darn bright. Had I exposed the moon correctly, the city would have been severely underexposed. So I chose to blow out the moon and enjoy the illuminated haze around it. One of the cool features of a sub-zero atmosphere is ice crystals. That’s what is going on with the moon, it’s not schmutz on the lens causing the halo, it was clearly a real-life effect. The glowing ice-haze ties the moon to the buildings; both compositionally and technically.
On the techy side, I set the exposure at 2.5 seconds and then moved the aperture up and down. I wanted to blur the traffic, yet keep the exposure times to a minimum so I could keep the moon sharp — the darn thing moves faster than you think!
This baby is the successor to the Thanksgiving Rush Hour I35 photo, which one do you like better? Let me know.
Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.
Just another stop on the way, the Bunge Grain Elevator sits quietly abandoned on the west end of the Union yards by the University. You can actually see it from 35W, but not many people are seeing it now. It’s visible from the stretch of 35W just north of the missing bridge. This is also the place where I had my near run-in with a train.
The Winter Carnival starts tomorrow, but the hunt for the medallion has already begun. On top of building ice sculptures, skating and general winter fun; the powers that be hide a medallion somewhere in St. Paul and then give clues in lyrical form in the local paper. The one who finds it enters local legend and wins a big prize. I’m still fuzzy on the details, maybe Kate can help me with the details. One element I love is that the clues come out at half-past midnight, so the locals are out digging up the parks in the middle of the night. Gotta be hard-core to play. If you have any details or links to share, please comment!
This photo has a lot of angles. The composition is relatively static, but the tracks, trees and the silos are at angles. Another element I enjoy is how everything is mostly white. It seems like a black and white picture, but it’s not. I’ve done this before here and here. I warned you about it here. It also obeys the rule of thirds.
I’m headed over to St. Paul to find some images of the Carnival, so keep in touch to find out what we do around here to avoid cabin fever. Please feel free to comment some links to green things for me; I’m starting to crack. If I can just make it through February…
