Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

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 640×480 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.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

Thanks everyone for all the comments yesterday, I appreciate it! It was fun shooting the moon and getting such a great image. I’m running behind on work, so I’m just putting this pic up and going back to work. This is a branch with ice on it; when the humidity is high at night the ice will form on the trees, it’s not an “ice storm” just a cool form of frost — Minnesota dew if you will.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

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.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily photos of Minneapolis. Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains composition and techniques.

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.

Today’s composition was chosen to show the Minneapolitains (that’s what we are called) all huddling below the horizon, while the cold hangs above. I split the image right down the middle to emphasize this. While I was pondering the image in Lightroom, I cropped it down. Here is the larger one:

The long dark street on the far right bothered me. But on the other hand, the blue roof line is interesting and the street seems more desolate to me. What do you think? Would you have cropped it differently? Does the image change in mood to you by this simple change? Leave a comment and let me know. Stay warm!

Bookmark It

Hide Sites