Week 33 - On Top of the World

A few weeks off. Summers been brutal around here. High's in the 90's and humidity that can melt paint. Everything feels wet.

Last weekend, I took some time away from home to spend with good friends and poker bloggers in downtown Minneapolis. I brought my camera with, cuz, well, that's what I do. We went to a Twins game and spent a great deal of time making sure we tried every beer available.

Not sure why, but this was favorite shot. Catching Drizz hamming it up with some of the guys lounging in the background, all of us, enjoying the rooftop. A wonderful summer night.

On top of the world

This is the first runner-up in the 52 week challenge. While contemplating the just how good Surly beer was, we played beanbag toss on the roof. I just love this view. Minneapolis is such a beautiful city.

Not sure how, but this and the photo of Drizz were both hand held at low light. Pretty sharp, I think I got lucky.

The hand light, the black roof, and the bright lights of the big city just make for an interesting view. A tripod and a trigger release might be handy. Anyone have a favorite compact travel tripod?








This last one I did with my bendy tripod. It's pretty little and it was hard to use on the roof. I really do need to get a trigger release. I try the timer approach but it takes forever to get shots set up. This is more of a close-up of the downtown. What a great view.

You can check out the rest of this set at my Flickr site. Night shots, day shots, but when ever it was, it really was a fun weekend. Enjoy what's left of summer!

Burning River

Memorial weekend, I took some 450 pictures. Not quite a personal best, but still, that's a lot of frames. A great many of these shots were at my niece's first birthday. She's sooo cute!

The picture on the right, is a shot I caught in Zumbrota Minnesota at Covered Bridge Park. In fact, this picture was taken from the covered bridge out one of it's windows.

The Zumbro River looks like it's on fire, that's actually just the reflection of a street light. It was a pretty long exposure, 6 seconds.

I'm still processing the pictures from the weekend and will be posting them as I finish going through them.

Niagara Falls Ferris Wheel: Redux

Here's the ferris wheel I shared with you a few weeks ago. This time, I chose to place a neon sign in front. Niagara Falls is quite, shall we say, touristy.

The striking contrast and the saturation of the colors from the neon just made this shot irresistable to me.

Niagara Falls Ferris Wheel

The stark contrast of the intense white Ferris Wheel against the pitch black sky was just awesome.

The Ferris Wheel at Niagara Falls

This past weekend, I enjoyed a wonderful trip to Toronto to hang out with friends. On Sunday, we ventured down to Niagara Falls for a bit of sightseeing. This Ferris Wheel overlooks the falls but is actually quite beautiful itself. The park near by provided the beautiful green glow.

Welcome to Las Vegas

We started our parent mini-vacation here in Las Vegas. My camera has been with me the whole time.

I haven't much time to process anything yet. The Bellagio is an amazing hotel. I took a ton of pictures there last night. Let's hope some of them will turn out.

Here's a sampling of what I've gotten so far.

The weather here...absolutely perfect. Its 80 degrees during the day and 65 degrees at night. Maybe we'll sell the house and change address'. Or not.

Return of the riverboat

The American Queen docked in Red Wing, Minnesota on Saturday night. Wow...two posts for two different subjects from the same day!

Shooting this boat at this time proved to be really challenging. If you look around the top of the boat, you'll see some spotlights. These things were in the absolute worst possible spots.

From each location I tried to shoot the boat, there was usually one spot shining directly at me. In this particular picture, I seemed to miss the spots, but just to the right of the paddle...a big lit sign from a bar accross the river.

My only other option - get wet and jump in the Mississippi River.
I just went through the history of this blog and realized that I have never posted when of my all-time favorite pictures.

It's a picture of the paddlewheel on the Delta Queen. A much small and older riverboat that was anchor in Red Wing a few years ago.

These next to pictures are new attempts at capturing something I find really fascinating.

This first one will look familiar to the first paddlewheel I just mentioned. One big difference this time is the fact I'm shooting at night. That posses some real challenges.

This next picture I found I really liked when I was going through all my pictures.

The lighting is a bit harsh at the bottom, but the contrast really makes me look deep into this frame.

I found it really hard to shoot for another reason, my family was exhausted in the car. We've had a long couple of days and now Dad is off taking pictures of a boat.

It was still fun and I think the results were worth the effort.

There are some days I definitely miss living on the river. Rochester doesn't really have any rivers. Guys...the Zumbro is much closer to a creek than the Mississippi River. Now that's a river!