Category: night
Darkness. In the world of light, night brings in contrast and color, focusing the eye to the human-created features of the landscape. I'm not often encumbered by a tripod, so my night photos are frequently hand-held, so my choices at night are selective and usually shot with wide-open apertures.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.4
Darkness Descends over the Lake
If you breath deep, listen to the silence and and try to become one with the universe, you can hand-hold a camera still enough to take a shot like this. 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.0