Several years ago, some one published a shot of the Minneapolis skyline from under the Stone Arch Bridge.  Since then, It has become somewhat of a popular photographic destination.  It is only a matter of time until the city puts a "Scenic Overlook", or in this case a "Scenic Underlook" sign.

Because it has been so widely captured, it is a bit of a challenge to get a unique image that is different from all the others.  Adding an element can help.

The classic shot of the city is actually from the other side of the bridge, but we crossed under to get this one.  There is a staircase to help you get down there although it is a bit of a workout.

We have a lot of bridges between Minneapolis and St. Paul.  They are all different and really great to photograph.

Camp Menogyn is a YMCA camp that is located half way up the Gunflint Trail in northern Minnesota. 

http://www.ymcatwincities.org/camps/camp_menogyn/

It is where I stayed when I went up for the Plein Air Artists' Retreat organized by The Art Colony in Grand Marais.  It was so special to me that I found a way to go back again, the last weekend they were open.  I took my Mom and youngest daughter with me.  Here are a few images from that trip.

I hope you are enjoying the last days of winter too.

Originally published Feb. 14, 2013

When I think of the color to represent Valentine’s Day, red is the first to come to mind.  Big red, ooey gooey hearts and Cupid and Cupid’s arrows and all that good stuff.

Not the cherry red color of cop car lights!

I have to admit being in a state of shock since I couldn't really believe I was getting pulled over.

The facts stacked up like this though.  We got a fresh blanket of snow last night and traffic was backed up a lot more than usual.  Even our local paper, The Star Tribune, says:

"A heartbreaker of a commute on Valentine's Day"

yes, and then the article goes on to say:

Twin Cities motorists were feeling no love this Valentine's Day as even modest snowfall overnight bogged down the morning commute from one side of the metro to the other.

Tell me about it.

I was about a half a block away from needing to take a right turn, and since it was all backed up, I got in the turn lane a little before the turn lane actually started.  I think.  The problem was you couldn't see the turn lane because the entire road, turn lane included, was all covered in snow.  So, I figured oh, what the heck.  I'm just going to sneak along the side here and make my turn.

Now, if I had seen a cop car ahead of me sitting in the right lane of traffic at the stop light I might have waited a little longer.  But I didn't see him and so I proceeded to crawl up the right side of the road, also known to cops and the rest of the driving public as "the shoulder" of the road.  Then, out of nowhere, straight from the sheriff's department, there's a cop car.  My thought process went something like this:

"Oh crap, there's a cop car.  Should I drive past him?  I have to drive past him, I can't just stop here.  He won't pull me over.  You can't even see the turn lane.  Oh crap, he just turned on his lights (and siren!).  He's pulling over behind me.  Maybe he wants to get around me.  Just keep driving.  Turn your blinker on.  QUICK.  He's still behind me.  Take a right turn.  Don't stop here, it's the street.   Pull into the library parking lot.  For safety.  Maybe he's going somewhere else.  Oh crap, he's pulling into the library behind me.  Did he stop?  Maybe he has a book to return.  Nope, he's right behind me."

Now I hope somebody out there is going to at least give me some credit for being optimistic right up to the last second.

I roll the window down and get out my wallet.  My heart is racing so fast I don't even need a work out anymore.  Here he comes.

The cop:  "Do you know why I pulled you over?"

Me: "To Wish me a Happy Valentine's Day?"

Just kidding, I'm not that dumb.  I used my intelligence and said "Cause I was taking a right turn?"

Cop:  "Because you were driving on the shoulder of the road.  Can I see your driver's license?"  He looks at the license.

Cop:  "C'mon Lisa, you're from around here, I know there's a lot of snow but you know the turn lane hadn't started."

Me, continuing to play dumb: "I know but I was going to take a right turn, really, I'm just going to the club."

Cop:  "I know the traffic is backed up today but if you start driving on the shoulder of the road then a third lane of traffic will start because other people will see you doing it and they'll follow you.  That creates a hazard for emergency vehicles that need to use the shoulder.  Can I see your insurance card?"

Cop:  "That's expired."

Unsure of whether or not to correct an Officer of the Law, I sheepishly point to the expiration date which says Sept. 24, 2013, hoping to save myself from another violation.

Cop:  "Oh, ok.  Just a minute."

He goes back to his car.  I don't know if I should cry or laugh.  I have tears about to well up in my eye, but I kind of feel like laughing too.  I mean, who has this kind of luck on Valentine's Day?  This is not exactly what I had in mind when I imagined what kind of great things might happen on February 14.

Cop:  "Lisa, I'm going to let you off with a warning today, but I made a note in the computer."

Me, continuing to plead my innocence:  "I really was just trying to go to the club."  I start wondering if I should pull out my club card and show it to him for proof that I at least am a member there.

Cop: "I know but you need to stay off the shoulder of the road."  He starts to walk away.

Since it's not really clear to me what's going to happen at this point, I have to open my mouth again.

Me: "Can I go then?"

Cop: "Yes, you can go."

Me:  "Thank you."

I know, I know, I should have wished him a Happy Valentine's Day.  He was too far back to his car though and I figured I could only make things worse the more I said.

I figure it's either good luck or bad luck, but I'm going to look at it as some kind of good fortune.  I have to admit feeling kind of hesitant about driving anywhere else today though.  No one can get pulled over twice in one day though.  Right?

Well the day is only half over, so on that note I truly wish you all a Happy Valentine's Day and I hope your day has all the right colors of red in it.

This post originally published Feb. 9, 2013

When I went up to the BWCAW (Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness) last week, the purpose of my trip was to attend a Plein Air Artist Retreat organized by The Art Colony in Grand Marais, Minnesota.  This was my first time attending an event where the majority of the participants were painters.   I have always admired painters and the work they create and when I visit a museum, I tend to gravitate to the old oil paintings.  They are so captivating with their shiny, glossy texture that make the painting come to life.  The fact that many of them have survived the test of time and are still beautiful after hundreds of years is amazing to me.

I learned a lot from watching this Plein Air group of artists.  Unlike capturing a photographic image, which can occur in a hundredth or even a thousandth of a second, it can take a painter several hours to recreate a scene.  Certainly there are those who can do it faster and some take longer.  It almost made me feel careless about my work, moving about so quickly here and there, one composition after another.  Like I wasn’t studying hard enough.  Painters, on the other hand, set up their tripod (easel) in one spot and there it stays until the piece of work is completed.

Painters must spend a lot of time engaging in an in-depth study of color.  If they are trying to replicate what they see with their eyes, they will mix their paints, adding and taking away, until they find the right match for each element in a scene.  I think they must develop an intimate relationship with color, fully understanding highlights and shadows, tints and shades, intensities, chroma and saturation.  Photographers concern themselves with these things too but not to the extent that painters do, at least in my personal experience.  I’m sure there is a photographer or two out there who would argue that they work just like a painter does.  I’m just not one of them.

Something else I learned is that many of them prefer static light.  It is challenging to paint a scene where light is rapidly changing, such as a sunrise or sunset time of day.  Where do you stop the color shift and start the painting?  It reminds me of how a mood ring changes color.  As a photographer, I can attest to this color blending effect as the sun rises in particular.    I will take many exposures as the light changes in the sky, especially if there are clouds.  Cloud color can go from dark blue to gray to orange to pink and white in a couple of minutes.  If you want to show this progression in your images you will be making a lot of captures very quickly.  When the sun sets, this happens in a slower and reverse fashion.  Clouds will go from white to pink and maybe orange, perhaps purple to a gray/dark blue mix.  A painter must also consider the color of the sky ranging from dark to medium to light blue to pink on the horizon line.  The degree of lightness and darkness in those colors alters very quickly over 15 to 30 minutes as well.

This week, instead of showing my photographic work, I’d like to post website links for the painters who have them and for the rest, I will put a link to the work they made during the retreat that is currently showing in an exhibition at The Art Colony.  There are some artists I did not meet because I left before the event was over, so I am only putting up links to the ones I met.

I hope you enjoy the work of these very talented professionals.  They are listed in alphabetical order.

Scott Lloyd Anderson

http://www.scottlloydanderson.com/

Lee Englund

http://leeenglund.com/

Ken Marunowski

http://www.mnartists.org/artistHome.do?rid=231462

Neil Sherman

http://www.neilshermanart.com/

Kristin Blomberg, Ron Dietman, John Franz and Carol Holmblad do not have websites that I can find, but you can see Kristin’s, Ron’s and John’s pieces from the event on the Art Colony’s Facebook page.  It also includes work from all the artists who attended the retreat and gave pieces to the Art Colony to exhibit.  Here is a link:

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151404843684264.494997.11726089263&&l=3985555793

Thank you for visiting!

Originally published Feb. 2, 2013

I finally made it into the BWCAW (Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness).  Living in Minnesota, I really have zero excuses for not having previously been there, but somehow I managed to rack up over 40 years of them.  The BWCAW is a pristine 1 million+ acres of wilderness covering the northern most part of Minnesota and runs 150 miles along the border with Canada.

It’s a big deal to go there. You need to get permits which are given out on a limited basis to control human impact on the area.  Access is either by foot or with a canoe at designated entry points.  There are no motorized vehicles allowed.  No motor boats, no cars, no snowmobiles.  There is no cell phone service.  There is no internet or electricity or toilets.  There are no power lines running through your photos. There are no man-made structures, except for maybe a handful that were grandfathered in when the BWCAW was first designated in 1964.

In other words, you cannot book a hotel or lodge or cabin in the BWCA.  If you go in overnight, you will be setting up camp.

There is one road that runs between two BWCA areas.  It is called The Gunflint Trail.  Look at the green strip that goes in between the two purple areas in the upper right corner of the state.  I’m pretty sure that is where the trail is located.  Along here there are lots of lodges, cabins, homes, and electricity lines.  I was staying along the Gunflint Trail but I was able to walk into the BWCA, where I proudly filled out my first and second Self-Issued Entry Permits.

I have a lot to say about that trip, but the most ironic thing happened on the way home.  In my last post I talked about a little ice storm from Lake Superior waters and showed some images of boardwalk structures coated in ice.  Well, wouldn’t you know I had a car problem and my royal chariot ended up in a repair shop in Duluth.  Here’s where the irony comes in.  The hotel I ended up staying at was the very same spot where I had taken those images two years earlier.  I didn’t know it until the next morning because I checked in at night and it was dark.  Sure I knew I was in the general area, but since my reservation was made over the phone, I didn’t exactly know where I was going until I got there.  Same hotel, same bench, same light post that I had photographed before.

I’ve always wanted to spend some time in Duluth.  I wasn’t quite prepared to do it this week but then car breakdowns have a way of altering schedules and life like that.

When I woke up the next morning, I could see that there were ice chunks floating in the water.  Water freezes at the edge of the lake but as the waves pick up force from time to time, the back-and-forth motion breaks up the newly formed ice from below the surface and that is why you see these various shapes of ice floating around.  Sometimes they start stacking up on top of each other and then if a person can get the sunlight coming through those stacks they might be in nirvana because they just got some very beautiful photographic images.

I was about to do that, having seen two small stacks of those ice configurations, but decided to do a couple other things first.  When I came back a few hours later, I was shocked to look out my hotel window and see that ALL the ice had melted or somehow disappeared.  Look at the difference in these photos.

Then the call came that my car was done.  It had been two days and I was ready to go home.  The weather was changing though.  The temperature was dropping and ice was starting to form again at the edge.  I would have to wait for another time.

Originally published Nov. 4, 2012

Fall as a season is about 3 months short for me.  With all due respect to the calendar’s dates, here’s how it goes in Minnesota:  Spring 3 months, Summer 3 months, Fall 4-6 weeks, and Winter 5 months.  There’s a couple extra weeks in there but this is a flexible calendar.  Following is a more detailed analysis, if you are curious.

Spring lasts from about April to June so I’d say 3 months, give or take a couple of weeks.  Summer runs from somewhere in June until maybe sometime in September, so a good 3 months there as well.  Fall is from sometime in September through pretty much most of October making it the shortest season at about 4 or 6 weeks tops.  Winter can kick in during October but most likely early November and lasts through March, sometimes even into April making it the longest season here at 5 months plus.

When Fall rolls around, it is an intense and concentrated period of color and if you are into capturing it with a camera then one must get busy and focus.   Fall also has the same issue as Spring, that being the wind.  If one subtracts all the days when it is too windy to shoot, I’m guessing half of those possible 30-40 days of the season just went out the window.  If only Fall was Winter we could really kick back and enjoy it.

At any rate, one day while I was enjoying the display of colors, I got to thinking there sure is a lot of competition out there for attention.  When we survey the landscape, which color grabs our eye the most: red, yellow or green?  (I didn’t have any orange in my test acreage.)  I guess it’s the hidden psychologist/marketing director inside of me that wanted to know the answer to this question.

Here I tried to find trees in order of Green-red-yellow,

Green-yellow-red,

Yellow-green-red,

Yellow-red-green,

Red-green-yellow,

and finally Red-yellow-green.

What color did you notice first?  Did it matter what order they were in?

The tree color I noticed first was:

Green
Yellow
Red
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The tree color I noticed second was:
Yellow
Red
Green
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The tree color I noticed last was:
Red
Green
Yellow
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Then I got to thinking some more.  Perhaps my experiment had too many variables such as size of tree, number of leaves, and percentage of frame each tree occupies.  So I thought I would try it on a smaller scale with one leaf representing each color.  Do you notice any differences now?

Green-yellow-red,

Green-red-yellow,

Yellow-red-green,

Yellow-green-red,

Red-yellow-green,

and last but not least, Red-green-yellow,

The leaf color I noticed first was:

Green
Yellow
Red
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The leaf color I noticed second was:

Red
Yellow
Green
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The leaf color I noticed last was:

Red
Yellow
Green
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Perhaps another variable could be whether you are female or male.

I am:Male
Female
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Thank you for taking my polls.  Maybe this will help you make your next marketing decision, at least as far as color is concerned!

Originally published Oct. 29, 2012

I made it to the Mill City Farmer’s Market one more time before it closed last weekend.  I wrote about it in August and at the time was most delighted that I had finally found squash blossoms.

The surprise of my October trip was this vegetable called Romanesco.

I’ve never seen it before but love the name and the appearance.  It looks like a cross between broccoli and cauliflower.  The guy told me it is best roasted.  Out of curiosity, I tried a fresh bite first and I would say that it tasted like cauliflower but a little sweeter.  The texture is very much like cauliflower.  So, I followed recommendations and roasted it with a little olive oil and salt and pepper.  It was really delicious.  I recommend trying it if you find any at your farmer’s market.

Breads and Pastries from Solomon’s Bakery in Minneapolis

I’ll try to get back early in the spring next year to see what I can find then.  Here are a few other images from my trip.

These breads and sweets are from The Salty Tart, also in Minneapolis.

Originally published Oct. 26, 2012

Big change in the weather here this week.  It was in the 70s Monday and snowing Thursday.  It is definitely a challenge to adjust to downward temperature swings that cover 40 degrees on the thermoscape.

Even the birds will have to wait for the predicted lunchtime high of 40 degrees to get a drink.

A store I went in yesterday was putting out ice scrapers.  I’m trying to look at the bright side of this.  At least it wasn’t snow shovels.  They still have rakes out.  We won’t talk about their being relocated to the clearance section.

I know there are some out there who are high-fiving each other and woo-hooing it and revving up their Ski-Doos.  I, on the other hand, am boo-hooing it while I wash up the long johns and stock the pantry for the big one that’s coming in.

Although I am initially resistant to this particular change in the seasons, the other good news about this is that I can finally focus on indoor work again, having been pleasantly distracted on a daily basis with photographing fall colors and leaves.  A “job” which reminds me every minute why I love what I do.  More about that later.

Hope you are keeping warm wherever you are!

Originally published Oct. 1, 2012

Southern Minnesota is quite beautiful at this time of year.  Much of the land consists of farm fields populated with corn and soybeans.  The harvest stage of these plants is to turn a dark yellow, maybe even golden in color while some are the color of straw.  Set this against the periwinkle blue sky, sprinkle in some clouds, and driving through those farm fields in September is very lovely indeed.

As a child I felt differently and quite detested these flat fields that seemed to go on as far as the eye could see.  It would have been so much more interesting to view mountains or oceans than corn and soybeans.  So I’m not sure at what point I turned over a leaf and had a change of heart about this part of the world I grew up in.  Now instead of ignoring it, I wanted to photograph it.

How many of you see something while you are driving and you want to take a picture of it?  This happens to me all the time.  Usually I think “I’ll come back and photograph that later.”  On long trips though, the opportunity might only present itself once.  Maybe next time you come back it will have changed somehow.

Then, if you decide to stop and do it, you might find yourself thinking “that wasn’t so bad” and you might find another spot just a mile or two down the road, and then maybe another.  It becomes impractical to keep stopping the car, especially if there are other passengers.  It’s also fairly dangerous to be standing on the side of the highway.  One time when I decided to pull the car over and get out (I was even on a gravel road meaning a lot less traffic), a farmer and his wife hurried out in their car to see what I was doing.  It was a little more attention than I wanted – I was only photographing some hay bales.  Now I wonder if they kept their gold bars in there or maybe something else?

Anyway, sometimes it seems easier if I could just operate the camera while driving.  I know, this is a terrible idea.   I really should have someone else driving the car but my 11 year old can’t reach the peddles yet.   I’ve tried looking through the view finder while driving the car.  Even though I’m still looking at the road, the perspective is different and it’s just plain dangerous.  Sometimes you want to stop but there is nowhere to park the car.

This is when you must get creative.  This time I did the shooting somewhat randomly by not looking through the viewfinder but trying to do the best I can to frame the image while keeping on my side of the road and clear of the ditch.  I shot at a very high shutter speed since I was traveling at 55 MPH.

I’d love to hear how any of you manage to photograph things you see while traveling down a road or highway.

Originally published Sep. 8, 2012

Barred Owls often announce themselves with a familiar hooting call of “Who Cooks for You, Who Cooks for You?”  This time of year it seems they come out of hiding and can often be seen hanging around my neighborhood.  Last September, this one was directly in the back yard and it was quite comfortable being photographed, allowing me to get vertical and horizontal images in a variety of different compositions.  Anyone who has photographed a bird knows to be thankful if it sticks around for longer than a minute.

Several things that work well in this image are first, the quality of light.  The daylight was indirect and soft at this point having passed over and behind the roofline of the house.  The rust color of the dead pine needles ties in nicely with the rust colored stripes in the owl’s coat.  The wave-like, flowing and repeating angles of some of the tree’s branches add rhythm to the image.  Would you agree?