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

Another cold morning in Minneapolis today, 15 below zero Fahrenheit — that’s 26 below Celsius for the rest of the world. Thank God, there’s no wind. I climbed up on the roof today for this picture. When it’s this cold, the air is very clear, visibility is great and it would be nice clean air if it didn’t sear your lungs with cold. This is my home.

Today’s composition was chosen to show the Minneapolitains (that’s what we are called) all huddling below the horizon, while the cold hangs above. I split the image right down the middle to emphasize this. While I was pondering the image in Lightroom, I cropped it down. Here is the larger one:

The long dark street on the far right bothered me. But on the other hand, the blue roof line is interesting and the street seems more desolate to me. What do you think? Would you have cropped it differently? Does the image change in mood to you by this simple change? Leave a comment and let me know. Stay warm!

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

Remember way back in the fall when I said that you better enjoy the colors because soon there will be only one? Well, here you go. This photo is from about the same area. It’s not black & white, well, at least I didn’t remove the color.

The land without color is now in full swing. Living here at this time brings out the sensitivity for subtlety. It’s like going from being a sugar junkie to a wine connoisseur. Winter brings a palette of softness and fine details. A quick glance for something striking will come back empty, but taking a moment to look across a frozen landscape will reveal the marvel of nature, not only to remain beautiful, but to survive.

What caught my eye here were the islands and the far shore. I love how they get less visible as they recede. I was trying to get a view through the trees without climbing through the snow when I realized that instead of getting the trees out of the way, I could plop one dead-center. This is usually something that I go to great lengths to avoid. Dead-center subjects are usually a compositional snoozer, but the tree isn’t the subject, the shorelines are. By placing that tree right in the middle, it grabs your attention right away. But then you see the shores and try to see around the tree. I find it comical that when I look at this picture I keep swaying my head from side to side trying to see around the tree.

More subtlety is on it’s way today, but supposedly only a couple of inches.

Back to the Rails. Rail yards are such a great land of contrasts. There is so much activity, yet nobody is around. I am drawn to them by all the big equipment rolling around, but I’m nervous about either scary people or getting in trouble with the railroad bulls or simply getting killed. My only recent solution is to bring someone along to keep an eye on me.

This composition sets up a little tension in that the graffiti and the dark detailed rails are at the bottom left, yet the only place for your eye to escape is at the top where one can see just a little beyond the boxcar. I modified the image to sharpen the corrugation and introduce a stronger vertical effect to pull your eye out of the bottom of the image. The numerous diagonals also add dynamism to the image.

Often people (like my dad, sorry pop) center the subject, which leaves the eye sitting in the middle and getting bored. If you see something interesting, like the graffiti, look around it and find a near-by compliment. In this case it is simply the open space above the boxcar. The two spaces support each other as positive and negative. So next time you see something, look around it and find it’s frame — something bright needs a dark, something sharp needs a smooth. The word frame also hints to “frame of reference” so something to give scale or location helps, but put the two opposite each other in some way, not one surrounding the other. If I had pulled back and centered the graffiti, it would have been boring, just enough space above the boxcar is enough.

So what is the effect I’m applying to the image? It’s called Direct Positive. It’s mimicking the old photography developing technique. The effect is saturated colors, blown-out blues and wicked contrast. Now it can all be done in post with photoshop or lightroom. Lightroom actually has a preset for it and I use it to start from and then tweak it to match the image. I’ve done this before.

Let’s watch the comments and see if my dad catches the slight. Even better, maybe he’ll finally put a picture on flickr to prove me wrong.

The last day has arrived for the TFTTF Workshop (explained below Oct. 11). The assignment was: Go find the object from the first assignment and take another picture using the things we leaned in class. So back to my little Fire Plug I went.

This time I used the dark wet ground as a background. We learned that light objects on dark backgrounds sand out better than the reverse, and I also used Joins to create crossing lines through the image. Throw in a shallow DOF and I think it worked!