Archive for February 2008

3

Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Walker Sculpture Garden

Here's a new perspective on the Spoonbridge and Cherry Sculpture by Claes Oldenberg and Coosje van Brugge. There's more information about this sculpture in this post with a night photo of the sculpture. Tomorrow is the first of March and time for the City Daily Photo Blog Theme Day! The theme this month is Graffiti, so stop back and see what I've found in the railyards.

1

Bits & Pieces

Perched on the hillside opposite the life-giving Mississippi river from the city, this monument to modern art, the impenetrable Walker Arts Center looms high over the Minneapolis skyline, guarding the Kenwood neighborhood. Deconstructivism rules the day at the Wlekar Atrs Ctener, take anything apart and put it together without the instructions and you are good to go. Don't get me wrong, I like the place, but continuously commenting on the scariness of the modern world can make you pretty scary yourself. The Walker's collection of modern commentary reminds me of the line from one of my favorite books, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance: "When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten." Check back tomorrow for a new perspective on the Spoonbridge and Cherry Sculpture from the Sculpture Garden.

1

Fake Snow Pile

Space Management - the art of arranging snow piles in a manner that allows for more snow. Sometimes so much snow falls here that it becomes an issue. The piles on the boulevards fall into the street, pushing the parked cars so far from the curb that the streets become narrow cow-paths. In the past, the city has declared one-sided parking for the season because the fire trucks can't get down the street. This pile of snow is actually fake. It was made with snow machines down by the lake, hauled in by dump trucks, laid down on the streets, and then a few days later scraped up and stacked here near the bike trail. OK, some nutter stacked the small pieces on top, but the whole pile of snow is a Minneapolis Parks Department creation. Why? This is the long-term effect of the City of Lakes Loppet. That cross-county ski race that went through my neighborhood. They made a perfectly-groomed four-block-long trail right through uptown out of fake snow. Yep, imported man-made snow in Minneapolis. As we Minneapolitains would say in the local dialect, "huh, that's different."

5

Leopards and Tigers and Sharks, Oh My!

Minnesota? Yeah, the Minnesota Zoo. This guy was in the aquarium with the puffer fish. The fishies at the Minnesota Zoo are much more tame than the ones at the Mall of America Underwater World. A month ago the tiger shark there got a hold of another shark, here's the video. I should warn you that it's a little disturbing, but the other shark survived. It's not an attack, it's just one shark hanging out of the mouth of another.

3

Number 4771

Trains, glorious trains. This beastie is sitting quietly in one of the many railyards in the Twin Cites; specifically one next to a round house just off I-94 in St. Paul. It always amazes me how many freaking railyards there are and how many there used to be. Like looking for ancient meteor craters, you can find them on google satellite maps and see the familiar shape (long wedge shapes near tracks) with new buildings, sometimes town-homes or a shopping center. I love how the face of ol' number 4711 iridesces in the morning light, must be something in the paint as it fades. Have a great week, it's warming up in Minneapolis and Mitchs are much more active when it's warm. Watch for your daily photo here and please, look both ways before crossing the tracks.

6

Cell Phone Sunday

At the behest of my friend Dave, I am instituting Cell Phone Sunday. Dave Taylor, a videographer I've worked with on several projects including one for Billy McLaughlin, pointed out that my skills as a photographer may appear to be the result of my good equipment, so I should get a cheap camera and prove otherwise. Chris Marquart of Tips from the Top Floor Podcast has also made the point that it is the photographer, not the camera that makes the image. I suggested my cell phone camera, because it has a simple 640x480 camera and I always have it with me. "Perfect" Dave said,"now do it." So now after months of taunting from Mr. Taylor and finally figuring out why my cell phone wouldn't sync with my computer (had to reformat the micro SD card), Cell Phone Sunday is here. Simple rules: only uncropped, unedited images directly from my cell phone.

18

How to Photograph a Lunar Eclipse

Took the big lens out last night and shot the moon! It's a film lens, not a digital one, so there's a little chromatic aberration going on. But you gotta love a 2000mm lens. The red is real, the reason to try to photograph a lunar eclipse is the color and the darkness of the moon.

How to Photograph the Moon

You need a big lens, the bigger, the better. Except during a lunar eclipse, the moon is really bright. Mixing it with other elements like the skyline is difficult. You either take two pictures to expose the moon and the earth-bound objects separately or let the moon burn out, like I did with this picture of the full moon over Minneapolis. To get the exposure right for the moon, check out this chart I found or just wing it and look at the LCD. The moon isn't going anywhere, so experimenting isn't difficult. If your camera has a histogram, make sure you use it with night photography, it's easy to underexpose the image since the LCD looks brighter to your dilated pupils at night. Make sure you chose a clear night, in February in Minneapolis it gets pretty cold at night. Last night it was below zero and the nice thing about that is that it's too cold for clouds to form, so it's pretty clear (snow pants rock). Back to the list: big lens, a good tripod, cable release or camera on timer mode and flashlight (cell phone works as a light too, a pretty good one in fact). The moon is on the move, so keep the shutter time down. That's not an issue with the moon normally, but it is with an eclipse. This one is at f8 (crappy lens) and 4 seconds. You can see the moon is blurred slightly in today's picture because it moved noticeably in those 4 seconds.

2

Cold Morning in Minneapolis

Another cold morning in Minneapolis today, 15 below zero Fahrenheit — that's 26 below Celsius for the rest of the world. Thank God, there's no wind. I climbed up on the roof today for this picture. When it's this cold, the air is very clear, visibility is great and it would be nice clean air if it didn't sear your lungs with cold. This is my home.

2

Fire and Ice

Time to attack the Buckthorn. The Minneapolis forestry department is setting the islands on fire this week at Lake of the Isles. Well, actually they are only burning the buckthorn, which is an invasive species that does really well here. I enjoyed walking around watching them work and chatted with a few of the guys as well. They were really friendly and seem to enjoy their work. I heard somewhere that the guys who run wrecking cranes have the highest job satisfaction, I wonder if cutting down trees and setting them on fire has the same effect. Note to DCPBers, the bigger your camera, the more likely people are to think you are from the news and want to talk to you. There are some perks to getting older too, when I was a kid out exploring, I'd get chased out of places, now I'm doing the same thing, but people want to talk. Maybe it's the camera — like Rodney Dangerfield's routine about tying a pork chop around a kid's neck so the dog will play with it.