Archive for June 2009

3

Cardinal

Just a Cardinal in a tree. That's all.

1

Lil' Charlie Out for a Walk

Out for a walk with m friend Karen and her new pooch Charlie. He's a Maltese-poodle mix with a lot of energy.

6

Who's the Minneapolis Cairn Builder?

Imagine my surprise walking around Lake of the Isles to find not one, but seven cairns on the shore. These are nice ones too, much nicer than my stumbling, awkward attempts. This took some time to build. These are not far from the big one I found a few weeks ago in Cedar Lake. More information about Cairns, or Stacked Stones.

6

Waterdog

What else you gonna do on a hot summer day?

0

Lake Street from Across Lake Calhoun

600mm lenses can get more in a frame than you realise! More about how I did this...

3

The Bronze Rabbit

Along the Minnehaha Creek bike trail, where it crosses Portland Avenue, there is a large bronze rabbit. It showed up in the past few years and I have no idea what his story is. I was biking past him while talking to my dad (yes, on a mobile phone, yes I know). I mentioned the rabbit, which is kind of hard to explain, so here is a pic. Also, the cottonwood trees have been dumping their cotton for the past few weeks, you can see that I managed to get a fluf in the photo: see that white spot at the base of the tree behind the rabbit? It's an out-of-focus cottonwood seed blowing by.

2

Jump!

Come on, 'lil guy, you can do it! And there he goes.

3

The Demise of the Doomed Tree

Remember the Doomed Tree? It's day finally came. Thought you should know. Instead of sending flowers, the neighboring trees request that you go hug a beloved tree today.

8

Minneapolis from Across Calhoun

I love the odd effects of telephoto compression, the opposite of the shallow DOF of a wide-open aperture, a telephoto at this range (600mm & several miles) compresses everything into a nice flat surface. The Calhoun Lake Beach house is three miles from downtown, but the telephoto pushes it all together. One issue that is hard to deal with is what is known as the 'prismatic effect', which is the loss of yellow and the shift toward blue of the light, specifically shadows (it's caused by the humidity in the air, the further away an object is, the more water is between the two of you). This eats away at the image's contrast. It's a nice effect to show distance if you have foreground objects, but in this case, it's just a nuisance, so I increased the contrast in post.