The bridge is coming down

Well as I've alluded to in a previous entry the Dunn Memorial Bridge in town is coming down sad but necessary as it may well fall down. Work has now started a feeling more like myself after a mornings rest I drove down to riverside park to see what was going on. Here's a few shots of the start of work.

Above and below: Sides are as good as removed

Above: This pillar remains to hold up a safety cable
Above: Excavator works at dumping rubble into the river for some construction purpose

Quite the caboose

As you may know I'm a railfan and I do like to photograph trains, in fact there is close to a 100% chance that tomorrows picture of the day will be of a train. Anyway as I drove into work this morning as I passed through Osseo I saw a quite unusual sight. A caboose. A bright blue caboose. Now cabooses. cabeese/cabii (take your pick) are are a rare sight since the introduction of through braking on trains and to see such a swish looking one was a surprise. It had been holding the crew of the Schnabel car that had taken a rather large piece of equipment up to Monticello Power station the night before and had rested here, in Osseo, overnight. Alas I missed the Schnabel car but you don't see a bright blue caboose everyday now do you?

Watertrails

One type of picture I really, really envy are those pictures of water running over rocks where a long time exposure has been used to turn the water, once bouncing and splashing over the rocks into ghostly trails. But I've never been in the right place at the right time to do anything about it. Whenever I've been in waterfall locations it's always been in bright sunshine and I've not been able to get a slow enough shutter speed to blur the water. Until today. This afternoon I went out for a drive looking for pictures and ended up passing by Elk Lake near Baldwin Township. The afternoon was cloudy and I wasn't expecting much until I drove past the end of the lake and saw the water dropping (plunging is too much of a word the water only fell about 15 inches) over the outlet. I immediately knew what I was going to try to do. So I had enjoyable 40 minutes or so just trying things out with as slow as possible shutter speeds, adding an ND2 filter etc: to try and get the effect I wanted.

The pictures aren't exactly how I'd like, the water trails aren't as "ghostly" as I'd like. That might be down to the amount of water or the shutter speed I don't know yet, but for a first attempt they keep me happy.

Shrub and mulch

I'm going to quit photographing plants just as soon as I can. But as you walk to the office door and are greeted with these crazy colours you can't pass it up. I think there is more to get out of these colour combinations. But I didn't have time to do much more than a grab shot as this is a high traffic area at work

Red Columbine (pad 46)

Yet another example of doing things I wouldn't normally do for the sake of the picture a day project.

I don't know how many of you are familiar with the wildflower the Red Columbine. I didn't know what one was myself until this morning. I saw one while I was out on Friday at Sherburne and it took an email from my brother in law this morning to tell me what one was. So now knowing what it was I decided to try to get another picture of this plant. As you have seen from my friday shot the flower points down and I though it would be an interesting shot looking upwards in the structure of the flower. We have several of them in our back yard in the shade of the house so you'd think getting a picture would be pretty easy.

You'd be wrong. Most everywhere I tried to shoot from the eaves of the house got in the way, (the plant likes shade). It took ages to contort myself into a position where the roof didn't destroy the bokeh. Then it took at least another half an hour to get a shot I was happy with as the flower got blown all over the place in the breeze. To be honest though I wonder if this is the right shot. I've focussed on the wonderfully twisted stamen of the plant. I now wonder if focussing on the backlit petals with their delicate veins might not be a better shot. Decisions decisions... But this shot does make me happy so you'll have to wait for another day for some delicately backlit petals.

Prairie Violet (I think) p.a.d.45

I am a changed person since starting this picture a day lark. I go out in the rain and photograph plants I hate, for example.

Then today I went out and took a shot of this what I think is a prairie violet in our back yard which I was more than happy with until I got it on the computer and looked at it closely. All of a sudden the bokeh bothered me and as much as I tried to cut the corner and hit "upload" on photobucket, I couldn't. I had to go out there and do a bit of gardening around the plant to make the bokeh less obtrusive and re shoot the image. Now some of you might still not like the bokeh but now I do and I think it really makes the flower pop. Actually, it's not so much of a pop more like a BOOM!

Dunn bridge on The Rum River (p.a.d. 44)

This morning, I was out bright and early looking for a picture in the morning light but nowhere I went for a picture "spoke" to me. Them some clouds rolled in so I headed home with the thought of a six mile run ahead of me. As I drove into town I saw that the water level was well up in the river so I thought it worth investigating. As I roamed about Riverside Park a sucker hole appeared in the clouds and lit up the bridge. There we go there's my picture.

As the bridge is due for demolition and replacement with a new structure this summer the picture serves as a nice scenic memento.

Lilac in the rain (p.a.d. 43)

Harumph.

This picture a day project makes me do things I wouldn't dream of doing.

Take todays picture for example.

Lilacs.

I hate them. With a passion. Smelly weeds. I say.

Then what on Earth am I doing stood out in the rain for 30 minutes scrutinising the Lilac blossoms for a picture? I wouldn't do this in the dry, but the wet? Anything for a picture...

Not a bad picture at that...

Half a barn. (p.a.d. 42)

Bit of an oddball shot for Wednesdays contribution to the pad. On the way home from Duluth I was struck by this scene. I don't know why. Was it the half a barn? Was it the bright red end of the barn firing up as the sun shone on it? Or was it that plain old weird sky in the background? I have no idea. But when an opportunity like this strikes you take it.

Driftwood and Rocks (p.a.d.41)

I was looking forward to today. For today we headed over to Ely, MN to visit the gallery of world famous nature photographer Jim Brandenburg. The weather was dull and overcast so I knew there would be no opportunities for landscapes with beautiful blue skies in them. But this presented me with the opportunity to concentrate on individual elements in the scene. To that end there were many, many photo ops. So many in fact I doubted we'd get home we stopped so many times and back tracked to get a picture. When we returned to our lodgings I couldn't select a picture for the pad. So I left it to my wife to select one. She chose this one of some driftwood and rocks near Lake Kishwashiki (spelling?) I reckon she made a good choice.

Split Rock Lighthouse (p.a.d. 40)

As we are away on the North Shore of Lake Superior for a few days there was ever only going to be one subject for todays picture a day. Split Rock Lighthouse.

Tranquility (p.a.d. 39)

I awoke up at the lake on Sunday morning ready to do a 12 mile run (and no I didn't have to use the outhouse) and was greeted by the glorious sight of mist burning off the lake. The lake was mirror calm and I knew I had to take a picture. The mist was burning off very quickly however and by the time I got my camera and made it down to the lakeshore the scene infront of we was quite different to the one I originally saw. It still says tranquility though I think.

Outhouse (p.a.d. 38)

Few things say "Up at the lake" more than the outhouse.

Really a vestige of the past more than anything as modern septic systems and waste management make them a bit of an anachronism. But many folks keep them "just in case" and they will get used a few times a year. Owners individualise them with painting and decorations. This is the one at my in-laws lake place.

Pot-Pourri (pad 37)

It's raining out there been raining since I got up. It's going to start snowing soon.

Snow in May.

So today I am resigned to shooting some kind of still life inside. That's tough. Still life takes lots of thought, technique and equipment I don't have so I plod on and try my best shooting in the cold natural daylight of a rainy day. I tried half a dozen different subjects and angles and treatments before settling on this.

This pot-pourri is actually the remains of the first bunch of roses I sent my soon to be wife on our first Valentines day. So there's a little added backstory for you

A nature lesson (p.a.d. 36)

So after yesterdays experimentation. Something a little more normal.

I've often wondered just how pine needles grow and over the past few weeks I've had a chance to discover how.

What I thought was a baby pine cone (like in p.a.d. 22) would appear to be a pod from which the needles spring from. Perhaps some of the pods do turn into pine comes I know not. I'll be keeping a close eye on the pine needles for a while.

Anyhow this picture illustrates the development quite well with some pods burst through and one not quite done with.

Messing around again

I'm soon going to loose count on these pad numbers I think...

So to todays experiment for thats what it is. There was a bit of planning involved here as the weather forecast for the day was unsavoury and I didn't expect to get outside and photograph.

So I was looking at the top of this lampshade the other day and I thought that the framework at there might make some kind of interesting composition. So I took the picture first thing this morning and messed around with it when I got in from work.

The file is a RAW original and I can't tell you exactly what I've done but the most important thing I did was set the clarity at -100 and I really liked the effect that gave by softening everything up. This was quite the opposite to what I was planning to do with it. I thought I'd be saturating it and increasing the contrast to make the centre "matchstick man" stand out but for some reason the opposite appealed to me.

Anyway I'm quite pleased with it. You don't have to like it but if it makes you think a bit then thats OK

New light through old window p.a.d. 34

As I was getting ready for work one morning last week I had cause to go into the garage and was greeted with this sight of the sunrise shining through the window. Alas I didn't have my camera or the time to take a picture then. So I had to wait another six days for the conditions to be favourable for the shot. I think the six day wait was worth it.

Hangars, Princeton Airport (pad 33)

This is a scene I've had my eyes on for a while. A selection of old hangars at the airport. I was originally planning a closer in view but then I saw the marvellous clouds working their way into the shot and couldn't pass them up

Not as easy as I first thought (p.a.d. 32)

Running 20 miles is tough. Pretty well saps your energy for the entire day. So please excuse me if I don't make all that much effort today. I was out at 6:30 this morning plodding around town. It was beautiful. Blue skies, low sunlight. Even the Taco John looked like a good subject. But it's now the afternoon. I'm somewhat recovered and the clouds have rolled in. So the best I can do is to hobble the 30 yards to the building up the road. With its striking evergreen on its corner, it's a subject I've had my eye on for a while.

But when I got there and set up the camera a whole host of problems appeared. The evergreen is not lined up perfectly with the corner of the the building. A little bit to the left and a window with an air conditioner in it appears. A little to the right and a tap/faucet and some pipes appear. Most annoying. This is about the best I could do and now the downpipe starts to annoy me. But I'm too tired to do anything about it

Northstar commuter Rail (p.a.d. 31)

And so another month begins. Will I make it through the 31 days of May with a picture a day? Hope so. It's quite fun.

One of my favourite subjects to try and photograph are trains. I'm a real trainspotter. But because of the original slow autofocus of of the E-P2 I'd held of photographing trains at speed. But now I have a firmware update as well as a panasonic 45-200mm zoom lens. I wanted to have a go. So a quick trip down to Elk River netted this neat shot of the Northstar commuter rail on one of its Saturday turns.

Notable for being a picture of a double headed train. On a 4 car commuter train this is overkill but the second loco Northstar 504 was dead and UTA #12 was doing the work.