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

Cell Phone Sunday is an on-going project. Both to prove that “it’s not the camera” and for the creative challenge, these are pictures I take with the simple 480×640 camera in my cell phone. As opposed to the Nikon D200 that I use for all the other pictures, the only button I use on the the cell phone is “capture.” That’s it, no compensations or zoom or aperture. More point & shoot than point & shoot, is our motto. Of course, I still work on them in Lightroom a little.

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

Another beautiful April day in Minneapolis

Antarctica Expedition Update

Thank you all for your outpouring of support for my upcoming expedition to Antarctica to photograph radioactive glow-in-the-dark bunnies. If you haven’t figure it out until now, please don’t hate me — it was an April Fool’s hoax. Though I have to say, after all the encouragement and great comments, I may have to go anyhow! In fact, I think a few people are getting ready to send me there in a crate after they realized that it was a hoax.

I had a great time writing and learning about the Antarctic. It would be amazing to go there, I think imagining going there helped me write it. My original idea was to just claim to be going to Antarctica for the summer, since I have been complaining about the cold up here for four months. But my friend Karen said that it needed an impossible twist to make it an April Fools — she came up with the glowing bunnies. Thanks go to her, and my other friends Paul, Tom and Jeff, and my sister Sharon for listening to me and providing their ideas as well. Tom told me about the BBC penguin video in yesterday’s post. Also, as far as friends go, I may have lost a few over this. I might have to buy a few lunches.

All the links in the story do go to wikipedia articles and other sources that are real. McMurdo did have a nuclear reactor and it was decommissioned in 1972, but not because it had a meltdown. Earnest Shackelton sent a crew to Ross island, but he wasn’t there himself and his third mate was not Avery Chicane. I made up that name, chicane means to defeat someone through trickery or deceit; deception and Avery is a man’s name close to April. Also, Mark Buffer, the guy I “convinced it was true” was made up too, buffer is slang for the target of a con, similar to the term mark.

The traffic and number of comments were an all-time record for my site on Tuesday and it was enough to push my almost-six-month-old blog’s pageview count over 25,000. It was a great day for me; all day I laughed at the funny comments and answered calls from friends, both close and old that called to congratulate me along with several anguished relatives and clients.

My best call ever was from the Meteorologist Christine Clayburg from Fox 9 News who wanted to interview me on the air during the news Tuesday night. Unfortunately I wasn’t home when she called, but we managed to talk on Wednesday. She wanted to schedule me for next Tuesday. When I confessed that it was a hoax, she cracked up! She couldn’t wait to tell everyone in the news room. What a great sport, we talked for a while and hopefully I will be able to come up with something she can use on the air.

Also, earlier in the day, mnspeak.com linked to it, which might be how Christine found me (I forgot to ask) — thanks Aaron!

On Wednesday morning, I received an email from Sharon Schmickle, former Star Tribune reporter, now writing for Minnpost.com. She too wanted to interview me about the trip. Like Christine, when I confessed, she rolled with laughter and enjoyed it. It’s nice to know, that if I ever do decide to go to Antarctica, I have some friendly reporters to talk to. I know what you are thinking, I should have played along and got some press. But, as my dad says: Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.

Later on in the day, my friend Karen discovered something we didn’t know about earlier — someone actually made a glow-in-the-dark rabbit. Truth is stranger than fiction… here’s the article: Alba the glow-in-the-dark bunny.

Thanks again, take a moment to read the comments from the First, they are a lot of fun; the mix of people who got the joke and those who didn’t, all rolled together.

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

Winter is dragging it’s claws across the Minnesota landscape. Spring has arrived and the battle is in full swing; this morning’s new snowfall is causing traffic accidents and the recent high temperatures (48°F!) have lead to the thin ice on the lakes claiming unsuspecting victims. Spring is a dangerous time in Minnesota, the weather can swing 60° in a day, the weather is completely unpredictable and everyone is so freakin’ sick of winter that we will go running in the 35° rain in shorts. Lock up the firearms and don’t put the shovel away yet.

P.S. I spent a good stretch of time this week retagging all the photos. If you look to the right, you will see a list of tags. It was fun going back through the collection and re-evaluating it. I came up with some new tags like “simple” which are the simple compositions. Check it out.

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

Thanks everyone for all the comments yesterday, I appreciate it! It was fun shooting the moon and getting such a great image. I’m running behind on work, so I’m just putting this pic up and going back to work. This is a branch with ice on it; when the humidity is high at night the ice will form on the trees, it’s not an “ice storm” just a cool form of frost — Minnesota dew if you will.

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

The last luminary from the City of Lakes Loppet both literally and figuratively. This was my favorite shot from that night; it was on the wall as we were climbing out of the lagoon. Worked out real well too, since my camera battery gave it’s last for this shot before it froze up. Yes Virginia, camera batteries will freeze.

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

Recoiling from the shock of pure daylight, we return to the safety of the night. Here are a few more of the luminaries (look to previous posts to see what I’m talking about). I really enjoy this image, it has a real gothic feel to it.

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

Here is a close-up of one of the luminaries from the City of Lakes Loppet that I’ve been talking about.