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

Back last Friday when I was looking for a shot of the falls for the theme day post, I wandered down in the river valley across from Minneapolis and found this miserable, desolate area right in the middle of the city. Everything down there was dead, brown and dirty. It actually made me miss the snow. Then on Monday when it snowed six inches of very wet slop & slush, I got over it.

Thanks again, for all the great comments on my April First Hoax.

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.

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

The calm quiet of snow settles on the misty plains of the Northern Forest that is my home. The eagle drifts silently by, heading for open water — eyes fixed on the small rivulets. Close observation reveals the occasional rabbit or squirrel bounding through the drifts. The subdued colors of the sumac trace the shorelines, giving dimension to the dark and brooding burr oaks. Will this idyllic nightmare ever end? It’s at least two months until something green pops up. That’s 60 posts. Stay tuned, if I crack, you’ll see it here first!

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

snow falls gently down
covering all that I can see
where are my car keys

arctic system hits
sixteen below really hurts
where’s my hat and mitts

as day follows night
as hope follows tragedy
summer will return

Freshly minted haikus for you, thanks to inspiration from the frozen Jeep seats, the Japanese garden at Normandale College in Bloomington and my happily Caribou Coffee-addled brain.

Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow presents daily Minneapolis Photography. Minneapolis Cityscapes, People & Perspectives: Mitch explains photography, composition and photo techniques.

Yes, this is 1:00 in the afternoon. It’s fun living in the biggest most northern city. I was out between the islands on Lake of the Isles, wandering on the ice when the clouds shifted. Overcast high cirrus clouds changed over to lower cumulus clouds with a brief moment of open sky.This was at thee beginning of the transition.

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

This morning I drove through some amazing fog to get to Caribou and it got me thinking about this picture that I took in the fall. If you look closely, you will see that the three shore lines drop in value and the shadows become bluer as they step back. This is an atmospheric effect caused by the scattering of light by the air and humidity. You can also see the effects of the reflecting light on the water. If I was out with my oil painting kit, this is a place I would set up camp to work.

I studied Plein Air oil painting with Joe Paquet for a couple of years. The main thing I learned from Joe was how to see what was going on. Once you have studied landscape oil painting, photography becomes a lot easier. I’ve hung up the easel for a while, but I still spend time talking with Joe and also photograph his paintings for him. Below is one of his paintings I shot earlier this week. I’ve been meaning to show some of his work and this seemed to be a good time to do so.

You can see the same effect going on here with the ridges as they recede, only Joe is making decisions continuously to add depth and make the design of the image work. When he showed me his original field study, the mountains were in different places; he ‘moved mountains’ to balance the design and improve the effect of distance.

When I photograph a scene, the viewer doesn’t question the odd uneven appearance of surfaces, but with a painting, if something seems slightly out of place, they think the artist made a mistake. So Joe has to make every surface tell you what it’s doing as well as work with the painting as a whole. I’ve tried doing this, it’s really hard to keep it all in mind.

But then, that’s why he paints and I photograph. I learn a lot working with him and I think he’s learning a little from me.