Category: landmarks
Minneapolis and Saint Paul have some pretty cool landmarks, like the Spoonbridge and Cherry, the Cathedral, The Guthrie, Rice Park, the Grain Belt Sign and the Saint Anthony Bridge to name a few.6
Thanksgiving Rush Out of Minneapolis
The shining emerald city of Minneapolis offers it’s best view from 35W, in fact, if you are a fan of the movie Fargo, you will see this angle as the guys drive in from Brainerd. Actually, if they were coming from Brainerd, they would be coming the other direction, but the view of downtown from the North isn’t nearly as spectacular. Unless you were there on the first of August. Long exposures is one of the many benefits of night photography. To learn how to take photos like this and many more photography tips, please stay tuned to my daily photo blog, where I publish a photo from Minneapolis every day. Learn more about Night Photography techniques in this post.2
Walker Art Center at Night
In the great words of James Lileks, it's the Rock'em Sock'em Robot, and he's pissed. Why is there a giant robot trying to eat Minneapolis? This image has not been edited; this thing really exists. The Walker Art Center is an aluminum-encrusted monstrosity that actually scares me — this is about as close as I dare get. Just below Mr. Rock'em is a tunnel. This allows Interstate 94 to go under one of the busiest intersections in the area. It's not the big dig, but it's pretty cool. The pedestrian bridge I'm standing on is insanely loud; the sound coming out of the tunnel/acoustic shotgun blasts straight at the bridge. Aside from the cold, going deaf and being chased by an angry giant robot, I had a good time.3
Weisman Art Museum — Frank Gehry
And they said you couldn't take a good picture on a crappy gray day. I was out shooting Sunday with Bob and went to an old classic, the Weisman Museum. This Frank Gehry masterpiece is snugged up on the edge of the UM campus and overlooks the 35W Bridge collapse site. This building is beautiful on a blue sunny day and glares like a frozen lake. Bob and I were there on a completely overcast day and I wasn't sure what I would get. If you check out Bob's picture, you can see what that day really looked like. I abused Lightroom to get the color and texture into this image. I'm getting sufficiently jealous of all the other bloggers' twilight shots of downtown from the pedestrian bridge over 35W, so I hope to get out and try it this evening.2
Minneapolis Greenway Bridge Part Two
This is an additional picture of the Minneapolis Midtown Greenway Bridge. I spent some more time cranking the color balance around to get this bridge to match the Guthrie Theater colors (also known as Best Buy or Ikea colors). Minneapolis Metro Blog just featured my Greenway pictures on their site.5
I got up early this morning to go down and take these pictures. When the ceremony was over last night, it was too gray and dark to take any good pics, and since I biked over, I didn't bring the tripod for a proper night shot. I choked up the aperture to f9 at 15 seconds. I put the white balance at 5100k to get the car lights white and the bridge lights are actually blue. Noise reduction really helps the black, and yes, I like the lens flare very much, thank you.
The bridge connects two trails making it possible for me (and anyone else, God I'm self-involved) to bike from my neighborhood — Uptown, Minneapolis, MN all the way to the Mississippi river on trails. The trail system in this town is pretty impressive, ONE can bike all around the cities on trails. I regularly bike to St. Paul and back on trails, a round trip of forty miles. Mayor Rybak said last night that Minneapolis is the second most biked city in the country.
Lean more about the bridge and the event at the Star Tribune
So hooray for Minneapolis, enjoy the new bridge and river access, I'm going back to bed.
Here's the far side of the bridge — not many pictures of this bridge include the far side because it isn't that interesting. It's mostly a ramp. The cool big cable tower is there to hold everything up, because there's no room on the other side. The bridge goes over the light rail tracks and under the big powerlines.
Minneapolis Midtown Greenway Bridge
The Minneapolis Midtown Greenway Bridge is now open to the public! It's true, I went to the Grand Opening Ceremony last night. The mayor was there as well as all the officials that made this impressive bridge possible. It's unique in that on the side opposite of the cable stay tower is a light rail line and a power transmission line. The bridge actually threads between them. It's something to see, but not at night.
I got up early this morning to go down and take these pictures. When the ceremony was over last night, it was too gray and dark to take any good pics, and since I biked over, I didn't bring the tripod for a proper night shot. I choked up the aperture to f9 at 15 seconds. I put the white balance at 5100k to get the car lights white and the bridge lights are actually blue. Noise reduction really helps the black, and yes, I like the lens flare very much, thank you.
The bridge connects two trails making it possible for me (and anyone else, God I'm self-involved) to bike from my neighborhood — Uptown, Minneapolis, MN all the way to the Mississippi river on trails. The trail system in this town is pretty impressive, ONE can bike all around the cities on trails. I regularly bike to St. Paul and back on trails, a round trip of forty miles. Mayor Rybak said last night that Minneapolis is the second most biked city in the country.
Lean more about the bridge and the event at the Star Tribune
So hooray for Minneapolis, enjoy the new bridge and river access, I'm going back to bed.
Here's the far side of the bridge — not many pictures of this bridge include the far side because it isn't that interesting. It's mostly a ramp. The cool big cable tower is there to hold everything up, because there's no room on the other side. The bridge goes over the light rail tracks and under the big powerlines.4
The Guthrie Theater Observatory
At least they call it the 9th floor. From the ground floor, you take a four-story escalator (sic) to 5 where the Endless Bridge is and then up an incline to the next floor that is called 5R. Then there is an elevator. Bob and I got to the elevator just as the play Jane Eyre got out. We pushed the up button, but the elevators going up went past us and only stopped on the way down to pick up the blue hairs. We gave up and took the stairs. Only four floors up right? After a brief moment of terror upon sighting the sign that said "first floor access only" we went up. And up. There were at least three landings where there should have been a floor but there wasn't. Eventually, exhausted and confused we stumbled upon the ninth floor. What a space! (art speak) Every space with a view in this building comes with a bar, no exception here. They carried on the Walker Art Gallery's use of cold, square box rooms. Odd how the lack of a baseboard can make you uncomfortable. If you have ever been to this room, you will notice right away that I made a significant change to the picture above. The Guthrie is suffering from either a Best Buy or Ikea color infestation. Everything is blue and yellow, vast fields of blue and yellow. The windows are tinted, and maybe it was because I was wearing my sunglasses the whole time, but it's really dark in there, and a yellow-dark is a weird sensation. So what did I do to the picture? I shot in camera raw mode. Why? Color. Specifically white balance. A digital camera can capture far more color information than the eye. With a raw file, you can adjust the image for the light, be it daylight, cloudy, tungsten, etc. The windows in the observatory were tinted Best-Buy-yellow. With the raw file, I was able to remove that and make the window look normal. Also, I under exposed it to keep the details outside and to make the people silhouettes. Why? It matches the soulessness of modern art and because of the lighting in the Guthrie and possibly my sunglasses, that's how everyone looked to me. How about the Endless Bridge? Next time...0
November 2, 2007
Posted by Mitchster in Daily Photography, Lake of the Isles, Photo Techniques, Saturday Moment of Zen
Don't Follow that Horse too Closely
It's still funny. Every time I see this prank I laugh. You're young, you're bored. Go get some soap and watch the fun. It's better than setting something on fire or tagging a building. Yes, this picture was not taken today, it's from this summer. I said I would post a picture everyday, not necessarily take one everyday. This fountain on the North West corner of Lake of the Isles is a drinking fountain for horses — but not today. If you manage to dart through traffic to this little fountain in the middle of the road, you'll see a plaque on it stating that it's a horse drinking fountain dedicated to the horses of a specific artillery regiment in World War One. Now there are no horses pulling the rich and powerful around the lake on Sunday morning, but there are still mischievous whipper-snappers running around it at night. My how times have changed and stayed the same. I composed this image to include the lake and surrounding elements to show that it is in a park with an idyllic setting to contrast the sudsy subject. The angle to the sun was used to give dimension to the fountain and the soap bubbles. The bubbles were really hard to get a shadow on, they came out as just white blobs until I got the exposure down far enough. I really don't like dead-centered subjects (just ask my dad). But I centered this one intentionally. A centered subject is very static, which can be boring. Having the subject off-center, ideally on a third line, gives the image a dynamic quality, moving the viewer's eye around and adding interest. By centering the fountain, I was contrasting a calming composition with the humorous subject matter of the soap bubbles. So grab that camera! Get out there and have some fun taking some pictures! If that doesn't do it for you, bring a box of soap.1