Category: landscape

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Sinclair Dinosaur Crossing Sign

Hard Shadows, crooked road

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Standard Station, Nowhere, MN

The only guy around here with a job is the mower.

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3 Pumps for Hump Day

Thee gas pumps stand guard over the old station at the Log House Pioneer Village. This is where I realized that the place was too clean. A building like this should be surrounded with weeds and have a few rusting hulks 'round back. The gang and I are planning some excursions to find ghost towns around the area. If you are interested to joining us for an adventure, or have some suggestions of locations to check out, let me know.

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Prairie Grain Elevator - Pioneer Series

It's Monday and time for another series! This grain elevator and the following days' images are from the Log House Pioneer Village. A very interesting place discovered by my friend & fellow blogger Dan. — more about that place as the series unfolds. As much as I enjoy the rolling hardwood forest lands of Minneapolis, getting out on the flat surrounding plains is a welcome change. I live near the lakes so I can see a good stretch of horizon ever so often but out in these lands you can see for miles. Not as bad as North Dakota, where you can watch your dog run away for a week.

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Enemy at the Gates

Our perennial nemesis, more virulent than the piggy sniffles, pours over the fields — like short Mongolian hoards with puff-ball heads.

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Infrared Zen Bike

OK, OK, I'll give the infrared a rest. But since today in my "Moment of Zen" day, where I try to stop your thoughts with an odd image, it fit. Here's my TerraTrike. It's a recumbent trike, loads of fun and a joy to ride. The best part is that I can haul my big camera around in the saddle bag and use it as a table when I am setting up my gear. Plus it's funner-n-ell in the winter; I go looking for ice patches to slide on. This is Fort Snelling State Park just south of the MSP airport in the Minnesota river valley.

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Infrared Bridge

Another stop on the amazing Minneapolis bike trail system. This is one of over a dozen little bridges over the Minnehaha creek. The trail follows the creek from the base of Lake Harriet to the Minnehaha Falls. I'll post a photo of the falls sometime, but it's a perennial favorite of photography students and tourists, so I am a tad reticent to shoot it. Maybe I should see what it looks like in infrared... I explain how to take infrared photos here.

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Infrared Path

This is the path from Minnehaha Falls to Fort Snelling. I love this path, it's a destination bike ride for me. The surface is a little rough, but it's fun to imagine the old trains chugging up this route on their way to Minneapolis. The new light-rail commuter train is just up the hill and you can sometimes hear it in the distance. This is life in the Northern Deciduous Forest of Minnesota, a contiuous canopy of oak, beech, ash, aspen, maple and cottonwood trees surrounded by a wide variety of ground covering plants. As horrific as this place can get in the winter, summer more than makes up for it. I explain how to take infrared photos here.

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Infrared Greenway Bike Trail in Minneapolis

Here's yesterday's location, only in infrared. I keep forgetting that I can do this. I waited all winter for the bright green foliage of summer so that I could take my infrared camera out. As you can see from these two photos, the foliage reflects infrared light so they appear as crystal white masses. The sky goes black and the clouds go white. There are special cameras for taking infrared, but a lot of point-and-shoots can do it. I'm using a Sony F828 for this. If your P&S has a "night mode", then it probably does a decent job of infrared. The easy way to test it is to point your TV remote at the camera lens and push a button. If you see a light coming from the remote on the screen, your camera see IR. Then you need a filter. Light colors are measured in wavelengths and the filters are numbered accordingly, 720nm, 820nm and 1000nm are the common ones. The first two do a good job, the 1000nm is hard to work with, with so little light, you need a tripod. If y'all like these, I'll take some more...

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Dark Oaks

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.