Professional Minneapolis Photographer Mitch Rossow shares daily photos of the city he loves. Exploring Minneapolis through Photography while teaching composition and techniques.

An early morning on the shore of one of ten thousand, this little Spotted Sandpiper carefully studies the continental breakfast buffet. So many choices, but they are all still bugs. How can I tell that this is a SPOTTED sandpiper? He wandered off to the side of the sun and I caught this photo.

He sure was busy, darting around catching bugs. He’d hunker down low and chase them! It was fun to watch until I had my fill of bugs too. It’s hard to hold a big lens still while you have bugs crawling on you. I’ll have to work on that I guess.

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

There’s a reason to get up at 4:45am, you get to see this!

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

Olde time city hall, with a modern parking garage.

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

I captured this vista during my hike on Sunday at Afton. It’s amazing what a wide-angle and some clever processing can do to a cold Minnesota plain.

The ultra-wide-angle lens that I have been using for a while now has some interesting characteristics when it comes to distortion. It’s an aspherical lens that has almost no fish-eye effect, but it tends to stretch lines that go to the corners. Also, if you point it anywhere that is not the horizon, it tilts everything causing “falling lines.” This means that I have to shoot landscapes straight on, placing the horizon boringly dead-center. So now I look for compositions that can handle these conditions an here is one of my favorites. I was able to through some great diagonals across the image with the path and the clouds. Turn up the post processing to emphasize the lines and I think it works.

Also, the way I processed it is close to a lightroom preset called “direct positive” that I have used before. It made the image look like a photo my dad of my grandparents standing in a wheat field taken in 1966. The direct-positive look mimics the way that color photos were processed in the 1960s. It’s pretty rough on the image, but when the right opportunity comes along, I love to use it.

And now for the grand finale of the Holidazzle parade with the IDS Tower in the background. That was Santa’s sleigh with all the reindeer that just went by.

Learn more about Night Photography techniques in this post.

I really enjoyed working with the lit floats in the Holidazzle parade — this one had lots of red lights and I managed to start the exposure just before it entered the frame. If you look at the center bottom you’ll see a blue and purple light. That’s a woman selling lighted wands, you know, for kids — she’s got a box full of them.

This is the same perspective that posted earlier, you can learn about the exposure and the scene on that post. Though they are the same scene, the lighting and processing are different. On the previous one I tried to keep the color as close to real as possible, but on this one I was going for the effect of the light.

Up the street on the left is Sam’s Red Popcorn Wagon. As I mentioned earlier, Greg and I stopped by to take some pictures and Sam offered us Cider and Hot Chocolate. He’s a really nice guy and enjoyed us taking pictures of him and his wagon. I finally have a photo processed that I like of him and here it is:

As you can see, this was some tough lighting conditions, I had to give up my long exposures for the portrait. I was confronted with a real-life Edward Hopper indoor/outdoor subject. Only difference was that the inside was much brighter than the outdoor. I wanted the buildings in the shot so I had to get down low. So even though the photo was a challenge to take, Sam was such a nice guy that I wanted to get this picture posted.

If you get to the Holidazzle, stop by and get some chili from Sam.

Yes, I am still showing pics from my night at Gaviidae. My cold persists and if you look to the right and see the temperature here in Mill City, you will see why I’m staying inside.

I talked about Bokeh recently and this is another example of that effect. The subject in the foreground is a big star decoration and the glowing circles are from small Christmas lights in the background that are out of focus and causing the bokeh circles. You can see everything in focus in the wide angle photo. Another term for these glowing out of focus disks is The Circle of Confusion. The light coming through the lens is has not focused to a point yet by the time it hit the sensor and is thus “confused.”

You might be suffering from this on a regular basis with other aspects of your life. Now you have a great term to use to describe it. Note: The Circle of Confusion is diminished with a wider perspective of the subject.