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

Winter is dragging it’s claws across the Minnesota landscape. Spring has arrived and the battle is in full swing; this morning’s new snowfall is causing traffic accidents and the recent high temperatures (48°F!) have lead to the thin ice on the lakes claiming unsuspecting victims. Spring is a dangerous time in Minnesota, the weather can swing 60° in a day, the weather is completely unpredictable and everyone is so freakin’ sick of winter that we will go running in the 35° rain in shorts. Lock up the firearms and don’t put the shovel away yet.

P.S. I spent a good stretch of time this week retagging all the photos. If you look to the right, you will see a list of tags. It was fun going back through the collection and re-evaluating it. I came up with some new tags like “simple” which are the simple compositions. Check it out.

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

Crossing over the skyway into the Hennepin County Government Center (home of the last SMZ) I found this incredible interplay of light and reflection. All the glass buildings were reflecting light on each other and off the far side of the skyway I was in. Even managed to catch a cloud trying to cross the street a block down (must have missed the last bus to St. Cloud).

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

Cranes are great photo subjects, not only do you get a good vertical, but they are usually very colorful. This one serves as the focal point and since it was hemmed in by the barricades, I thought a nice claustrophobic composition would help, so I cut off the horizon and kept the framing close. I’m impressed that they managed to carve out a worksite in the middle of the street like this. The little orange cones add some dynamism as well, they are like little soldiers standing guard around the crane. The thin ones are scouts and the big ones are the bodyguards.

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

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

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

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

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

Today’s your last day for free cookies and punch at the Hennepin County Government Center. That big building that goes over 6th? This is their atrium. I was there this past weekend with the gang from Tips from the Top Floor. Fourteen photographers wandering the skyway looking for interesting things. Turns out most security guards don’t want you photographing the interiors of the buildings. This is a government building and it was ok; we stood right by the security desk and he didn’t mind.

I took most of the color out of this image because the abstract shapes were much more powerful in B&W. It’s a great space when it’s empty and quiet. A very bright, cheery place actually. This was the first time I was there when I wasn’t doing paperwork that I didn’t want to. It’s a very different experience. Go take pictures or just hang out at the DMV, you might like it.

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

On the news this morning, I heard that last night the low temperature was 35°F, the first time above freezing since November 16th. Spring is coming and soon these bare trees will have some leaves and the rolling hills of the tundra will be alive with the color of green.

Thanks for all the great comments on yesterday’s post about cairns. I continue to be amazed at how quickly information can be found on the web. So many trips to the library avoided, so many projects not held up. I’m now starting to take a serious look at my extensive book collection and ask it why I have to share my space with it. Sure, I’ll always keep the fine-printed art books, but so many reference books haven’t been opened in years.

Soon I’ll be posting pictures I took downtown with the Tips from the Top Floor Group. My freind Bob Kupbens took a shot of me while we were there that I like.

With the warming weather, the ice on the lakes is melting and soon we’ll have open water again. Just follow the ducks.

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

Off in a corner of Afton, on the far side of the snowshoe trail, on a ridge in the woods lies a cairn collection. Someone started stacking rock and either couldn’t stop themselves or started a movement. There are at least a dozen little cairns on the stumps.

I did a little research today on the word cairn. I knew the word, but couldn’t spell it (it’s pronounced like Karen). I tried every variation that I could think of and discovered that there are a lot of rocker chicks who like to misspell Karen (search: Karyn or Caren rock). That’s why I used a descriptive title on the post today in hopes that I can help someone else. Once the true spelling revealed itself, I was delighted to read about them on wikipedia. Now I want to build more of them when I’m out hiking. They have lots of purposes, but one of them is to denote a path. Often a pointed rock is included in the stack that indicates the direction of travel. This kind of cairn is called a duck or duckie (I know!) because the pointed rock indicating the route looks like a beak. How often does someone who uses a duckie as a trademark find something like this!

The Wiki article also includes a neat term: two rocks do not make a duck. Meaning that a lost hiker might think they see a duckie, but it could just be one rock sitting on another rock. I like that. It reminds me of researching on the web — you want to find more than one or two sources. How many rocks does it take? When you five rocks of different origin neatly stacked, you can be pretty sure you have a duck.

So stay the course, enjoy the journey and mind the ducks.