This past weekend we focused our night shooting on the Walker Art Center’s famous Sculpture Garden, in particular the “Spoon & Cherry”.  Our goal was to capture the Spoon with the Minneapolis skyline in the background for use in our annual calendar.

We had a couple of surprises in the process; we had not been to the Sculpture Garden literally in decades so the first surprise was the actual size of the spoon compared our memories when the garden first opened. Naturally in the time span since our last visit the plantings, which were an integral part of the garden’s overall design had grown to maturity drastically changing the scale of the entire visual experience.

The second surprise was the abundance of  goose poop, which should not have surprised us since it is a pretty regular occurrence here for migrating Canadian geese to stop over on their way south.

About the light

One of the interesting things about night photography is the ability to capture the underlying colors of the night sky, which in many cases is not as it appears to our eyes. In this case digital sensors are far more capable of capturing light than the human eye and definitively a wider spectrum than film could ever have hoped for. The pinkish sky in some of the spoon photos below were the result of multiple long exposures at different f stops, which in some cases were blended using the HDR technique, others where the result of changing  the color temperature setting in the camera at the time of capture.

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How we got the shots

Because the photos were taken at night very slow shutter speeds were necessary to capture the night time ambiance so each of out cameras were mounted on tripods. Getting the right exposure is basically a trial and error process unless you have an ambient light  meter, which I normally carry but decided to leave behind for these shots. One of the first and  important things to do is to turn off auto focus either in your camera or on the lens. autofocus systems work by detecting contrasting light and since there is that much of it at night, a lens left on auto focus would be continually searching for something to focus on…something that really doesn’t work to well for long exposures.

Our average exposure from the bridge was around 1-2 seconds depending on the lens used. I used my Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8 zoom while Marsha used her 17-55 f2.8. when I switched to my fish eye 10.5mm f2.8 the exposures shortened because more light was let into the camera.

One of the important things about long exposures is stability of the camera, something that can be taken care of to a certain degree with a good tripod, the other source of stability is use of a remote. While tripods and remotes can take care of a lot of stability issues the one issue that is hard to eliminate is camera shake from the mirror flipping up and down caused by tripping the shutter. Some DSLRs are being produced to allow for mirror lock up but unfortunately ours do not allow it.

Since we shoot in RAW mode ( capturing only light information) all of our images require processing for color correction etc. Then the fun begins! I use a wide range of software tools to bring out the image I had visualized, sometimes I just pop the color, I like saturated colors, these images were processed first in Adobe Lightroom (my favorite editing program) then I used Nik software to bring out the details etc.

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There are two spectacular seasons along Lake Superior’s shores: Fall and Winter. Fall is the time of year when the North Shore becomes a major tourist destination as folks from all over make their annual “leaf peeping” pilgrimage to witness Fall in all of its’ glory.

The other major season is Winter; while mostly attracting winter recreation, winter on Lake Superior can be a magical time of continual inspiration for visual artists especially photographers. The texture and mood of Superior’s shore line continually changes depending on the mood of the lake itself.

Almost alien in its’ nature lake ice can form everything from a Kryponite like landscape to one that appears glazed in glass.

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The other major season is Winter; while mostly attracting winter recreation, winter on Lake Superior can be a magical time of continual inspiration for visual artists especially photographers. The texture and mood of Superior’s shore line continually changes depending on the mood of the lake itself.

Almost alien in its’ nature lake ice can form everything from a Kryponite like landscape to one that appears glazed in glass.

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Originally built as an aerial transfer, ferry, or transporter bridge,   was completed in 1905, the Aerial Bridge’s design centered around a gondola that could carry 350 people plus wagons, streetcars, or automobiles. A trip across the canal took about one minute, and the ferry car moved across once every five minutes during busy times of the day. However, it wasn’t long before the city was forced to remodel the bridge to accommodate increasing demand from tourists and expanding population.

The bridge re-design included  a lifting platform; construction began in 1929. Since tall ships still plied the waters of Lake Superior the bridge needed to be able rise above the tallest masts.  To accommodate this requirement and keep to the existing land right of way the re-worked bridge incorporated large counter  weights that permitted the road deck to lifted vertically as a complete section instead of two sides opening in the middle.  The new bridge first lifted for a vessel on March 29, 1930.

The bridge can be raised to its full height in about 3 minutes, and goes up 25 to 30 times daily during busy parts of the shipping season. The span is about 390 feet, or 120 meters. As ships pass, there is a customary horn-blowing sequence which is copied back. Long-short-long-short means to raise the bridge, and Long-short-short is a friendly salute.

As with much of the construction during the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Duluth Aerial Bridge is full of intricate details some of which appear to be spontaneous acts of creativity. One such detail can be seen in the flower pattern created from rivets and echoed in other locations with punched holes. These details are what being a human connection to other wise industrial object. One of the key reasons bridges were designed and built the way they were was because most if not all were designed by architects. Architects understood human scale and important it was for the objects present in our landscape to relate to us as humans.

The photo gallery on this page represents the beginning of a series documenting the elegant details that made and now make our everyday lives more human.

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The Skagit River Valley in Washington produces the second highest crops of spring bulbs next to Holland. The Tulip Festival is held annually during the end of March and beginning of April, to say that it is colorful is an understatement! Despite the lack of sun the colors in the tulip fields were saturated with reds, yellows and every combination each, the scale of the crops can only be comprehended by standing in the middle of a field, regardless of which direction you turn your eyes will be bathed in color.

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Anyway, our first day of shooting was along Highway 24; our destination was Twin Lakes. We were not prepared for the radiance of the Quaking Aspens as they turned almost florescent yellow in the early morning sun. The brilliance of the morning seemed to add an extra level of saturation.

For the most part we focused on shooting HDR or High Dynamic Range; a process that involves capturing 3-7 bracketed images that would later be merged using special software. The benefit of this technique is that it comes the closest to any technique to duplicating the range of light our eyes capture. By capturing a wide range of light exposures of the subject we can produce final images that have rich colors and well defined highlight and shadow detail.

A standard exposure generally captures mid tones with either end of the light spectrum either over or under exposed resulting in loss of detail in shadows or highlights, never both.

On the Road to Twin Lakes

Our first day of shooting took us along Highway 24 south towards Twin Lakes. We started out early so we could get the ealy morning sun, both its' warming effect and back lighting through the yellow Aspens.

13 Photos

Maroon Bells

Our second day of shooting was focused on Maroon Bells National Monument and home to the regularly photographed Maroon Bells, three beautiful peaks reflecting into Maroon Lake a short distance outside of Aspen. We aimed for sun rise and came very close to it, more importantly we beat the crowds so we were largely able to shoot unobstructed by touristas. For the most part we shot HDR, with only an occasion single shot.

13 Photos

Maroon Bells National Monument

After shooting for several hours at the base of the three Bells we headed off to explore more of the National Monument. We both were focused on finding some good Aspen groves with good filtered light in the late morning sun. A high sun angle through the Aspens would produce an intensely glowing effect that would be perfect for HDR giving us cloud detail in the sky and shadow detail of the floor of the grove. As you can see the results were pretty amazing.

14 Photos

Mount Evans

After Aspen and Maroon Bells we needed a break from yellow Aspens so the third day we pointed the car towards Mt. Evans. We intended to drive to the summit, however, the road conditions were not the greatest so we stopped at the Ranger station just short of the summit. While the views were nice the sun angle was not, however, our stop was full of high altitude plants and ancient weathered pines.

12 Photos

Betty Ford Garden

16 Photos

Rocky Mountain National Park

22 Photos

One of the fun things about using the iPhone 4 as a point and shoot is the availability of photo and video related apps. One of our favorite is the Hipstamatic which comes very close to duplicating the old plastic Holga and Lomo cameras used during our film days. Without having to fool around in a dark room the Hipstamatic app produces some truly funky surprises!

The first collection below is a selection of recent images shot December 2010…enjoy.

iPhone

46 Photos