Archive for December 2009

3

Waiting for the Holidazzle Parade

Back to the streets again for the Parade. Friday night is definitely busier than Thursday. The streets filled up pretty quickly, you can tell that this photo is from before the parade because the lights are still on. Just before the parade begins, they cut the street lights and the bus shelter lights, but the Christmas lights on the trees stay on. It's very different with the lights on, the lights on the big buildings light up the low clouds so it almost feels like you are indoors on Nicollet, 'cept of course for the bitter cold.

1

All Roads Lead to Powerball!

A standard winter weekday in my fair city. the last snowfall wasn't the storybook fluffy stuff, it was more like sugar and in clumped up and stuck to everything. No matter how much they plow, it won't come up. I like that his part of Minneapolis has several streets that are misaligned. The downtown street grid is actually 45 degrees off-kilter, so off in the corners where it meets the normal grid, the streets don't line up so good.

2

Kid's Choir at Crystal Court, IDS

While out on a photo safari with Dan & Dusty, we found a children's choir singing Christmas songs in the middle of Crystal Court. This seemed like a fun time to show the full range of lenses from the 11mm wide-angle above, to the 300mm with Dan's 1.4 teleconverter below. I didn't bring my 500mm, seemed excessive for a skyway tour. I really like the close-up photo of the kids, in the wide shot, they all look the same, dressed in white shirts and black pants. But in the close-up they all look so different, even their white shirts don't match. Pretty cool how we can all work together but yet be such unique individuals. Have you seen the movie "Up"? Doesn't the little red-head in the bottom-right look like the young Elle?

2

Macy's 8th Floor Christmas Display

The 8th floor Christmas display at Macy's downtown is fun, but not as big as I expected. When I was a kid growing up near Chicago, we'd go see the Mashall Field's display and it seemed to go forever! This is just a quick little loop through a few displays and off to Santa. I think the most disturbing thing was the singing trees diorama. Not only are they a but creepy, they just sang "Tree, Tree, Tree", like opera singers warming up (mi, mi, mi). Good place for the kids, make sure you have a flash, it's dark in there!

3

Ornaments at MOA

I love these giant Ornaments at the Mall of America! And so did Dusty, Dan and Mickey. Yep, that's Dusty and Dan on the left. I left the relative safety of the second floor to duck down under the beast and get my buddies in the frame. And, as my fellow Nikon aficionado says, "I got the shot!"

4

Christmas Lights

Some more lights at the Mall of America; I love out-of-focus Christmas lights.

2

Christmas Lights at MOA

Long gone are the days of giant Snoopy decorations, the Mall of America has a very subdued theme this year: birch branches with frosted pine boughs (the green thing on the right is a giant wreath). I guess it's a recession thing, like lower hem lines. My favorite are the long sheets of light strings hanging the full height from the ceiling. This shot is across the length of the west end. For more on Christmas light photography, check out this article I wrote a while back.

3

Cookin' Up Elf Snacks

Hey Santa, I just cooked up another batch of ornaments! These are better, I baked the oregano first — they are really nummy! In fact, this is all that's left, the other elves couldn't stop eating them! Um, what?

4

Ready for More than Tomatoes

Monday at the Mall of America, they were ready for more than just tomatoes.

Sarah Palin at the MOA

Sarah's book signing was scheduled for from noon to four, but she arrived twenty minutes early, got right up on stage and started signing books. My gang of photographers (Dusty, Dan, Mickey) and I camped out a good location and then security booted us just before she got there. This was shot with a 300mmVR from the third floor between the escalators on the far side of the atrium: f5 and 1/15th of a second ISO 1600. The line wound all around Nickelodeon Universe, we stopped and talked to a few people, everyone was pleasant and surprised by the turnout and all the media. TLC's show Mall Cops was filming all the skuffles with the mall cops. They really didn't like us taking pictures of them, so, um, we didn't.