Category: skyline

8

Minneapolis from Across Calhoun

I love the odd effects of telephoto compression, the opposite of the shallow DOF of a wide-open aperture, a telephoto at this range (600mm & several miles) compresses everything into a nice flat surface. The Calhoun Lake Beach house is three miles from downtown, but the telephoto pushes it all together. One issue that is hard to deal with is what is known as the 'prismatic effect', which is the loss of yellow and the shift toward blue of the light, specifically shadows (it's caused by the humidity in the air, the further away an object is, the more water is between the two of you). This eats away at the image's contrast. It's a nice effect to show distance if you have foreground objects, but in this case, it's just a nuisance, so I increased the contrast in post.

2

Minneapolis Cityscape Compressed

Telephoto compression of the Minneapolis Skyline featuring the Qwest tower.

1

Lake of the Isles Sunrise

The sun begins to make it's ascent while a Great Blue Heron fishes along the shoreline. Sunrise is much later now with the oncoming winter (tomorrow's at 7:19am). This photo was taken just a couple minutes after Twilight, which is at  6:49am tomorrow. The leaves should begin turning soon, I'll try to keep up with them for you.

3

Happy Bastille Day!

OK, this is from July 4th in Minneapolis, but I wanted to wish our fellow revolutionary brothers & sisters a bon quatorze juillet! France is, after all, the home of the City Daily Photo Blog, thanks Eric! Believe it or not, I took this night photo hand-held with a telephoto lens. Yes, it's the Nikon 70-300mm VR to the rescue. 1/6th of a second at f/4.5 and a focal length of 165mm. If you breath slow enough, you don't need a tripod! It's possible that my former co-worker/mentor Mike Smith was right that if you drink enough caffeine, you jitter fast enough that you appear still. Either way, VR or Image Stabilization rocks!

1

Cell Phone Sunset & Rainbow

Thank goodness for the cellphone, if not, I'd have had to just stand there and enjoy the rainbow. What's Cell Phone Sunday all about?

14

Antarctica Expedition Update

Another beautiful April day in Minneapolis 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.

5

On the Move

Keepin' real busy these days, 2008 is off to a good start. This week I've finished a few websites. Kathi Tunheim is a leadership coach, I built this site to reflect her style and the collegiate world. Zididada is a Danish rock band. I'll be developing a website for them over the next few months, but until then, I customized a myspace page for them. I was up working on it until 2am yesterday morning, so I'm still a little groggy. I have five more projects in progress, so that's why I haven't been writing as long of posts lately. But fear not, spring is in the air (it was only 8 below this morning!) and I'm itchin' to get out shooting the magic of spring in Minnesota. As soon as it warms up, this place pops to life!