Archive for March 2008

0

Cell Phone Sunday

Snow can make a great projector screen — the sun was playing shadows across the park along the East shore of Lake of the Isles. What's Cell Phone Sunday?

1

Confined Space

Danger - confined space, enter by permit only

5

Out of the Box

This image appealed to me today after a full day of working on the design of mitchster.com. A nice comforting box. With all the complex angles and layer, if feels like a CSS XML layout. So many similar forms with variations in form and color, yet all working together to support the valuable content. I'm settling in on the design of mitchster.com that you see now. It's been a long time coming — months of notes and research. Let me know what you think. I can't believe that I've been running this photoblog for over 150 days now. This coming April 11th will be my six month anniversary. I'll have to think up something special to do to celebrate, winter should be on the run — I will have survived my first winter of photoblogging. Normally I hide inside and try to ignore the really cold days, but this project kept me out there. Hopefully I will be able to show you why we all put up with winter, the summers are enjoyable, not too hot and with all the lakes and rivers, it's very beautiful here.

2

Change is in the Air

Spring is in the air, the woodpeckers are on the wing, snow is trying to melt, and mitchster.com has a new theme! I am working on changing the look of mitchster so that I can add a lot of new stuff, like the recent comments and posts on the right, and articles about other things besides photography. I was having fun with the old look, but this one is bigger and gives me more flexibility. I have plans to bring back the glow-in-the-dark duck (that's him in regular light above), but I needed to make this layout work first. Let me know what you think! This Downy Woodpecker was singing and fluttering around Lake of The Isles with a friend of a feather. Can't tell if they are mates, I haven't figured out the difference between the males and females. Good thing I'm not a Downy Woodpecker eh? I found a neat factoid on WhatBird.com — A group of woodpeckers has many collective nouns, including "a descent of woodpeckers", "a drumming of woodpeckers", and a "gatling of woodpeckers." I have a big list of animal group names, I'll have to find it and post it soon. I'm pretty excited to be working on Mitchster.com a little more now, I just completed a few websites and have some more time during the day. If you are curious, here's the three jobs I just finished:

• Carolyn Francis Studio - Fine Art Landscape Oil Painter
• Kathi Tunheim - A Leadership Speaker and Coach
• MJ Marketing Group - A retail marketing services company who works with Mass Merchants, Food Wholesalers.

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Eating Crow

The most complicated exposure yet. Black crow on white snow in flight. Got it!

2

Vanishing Point

24 paths diverged in the woods and I — I took the one less traveled by (it's the one on the right that leads to the ammunition factory). The tracks are pretty close together in a railyard, you wouldn't want to get caught between a parked train and a moving one. Trust me on this. If you haven't read about my adventure to that end, Intermodal Shipping Containers and A Near Death Experience is one of my favorite stories.

2

The Orpheum Theater

The Orpheum theater sits on Hennepin Avenue in Downtown Minneapolis. I love the layered effect of all the signs and buildings. It reminds me of pictures I've seen of the old skid-row that used to be on the other end of Hennepin but was demolished in the late 50's to make way for some really horrible buildings. Minneapolis is known for the great buildings that have been destroyed in the past, especially the Metropolitan.

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Theme Day - Graffiti

I found this image on the retaining wall of Interstate 94 just East of the Mississippi river in St. Paul facing a small railyard while I was out shooting with my friend Larry Mishkar. I chose it for today because of it's striking contrast, representational style and a simple composition. Also, as a photographer, I like the eye theme. Speaking of themes, Graffiti is the theme for this month at the CDPB. My favorite past theme day photos include the Midtown Greenway Bridge and Best Photo of the Year 2007. If you haven't seen it, my most popular photo this month was of the Total Lunar Eclipse shot with a 2000mm lens. The big event this month in my world was the City of Lakes Loppet.