Day 58...RR X-ing

RR X-ing

Working in St. Paul, it would be easy for me to post a lot of photos of trains, train tracks, and other train-related things.  And now every time I see train-related things, I automatically think of my dear friend Burdette.  Each time I post a RR photo, it's dedicated to her and her hard-working train man.

This one was taken at the Union Depot in St. Paul which is really a great place, and I can't wait to take photos (street photography) down there when the place gets going in full swing with the new light rail.  

I know I'm pushing the boundaries of my "theme" by shooting from the inside to the outside, but I'm seriously taxed with this subzero winter we're having.

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Day 57...Waiting for a Ride

WAITING FOR A RIDE

I don't know what it is that drew my eye to the bus stop.  Maybe it was the geometric patterns that the housing is made of, or the light coming from the top, or just knowing that waiting feeling for your ride home.

I don't think this is particularly a fabulous piece of art you'd hang on your wall, but street shots are always something that tell some sort of story.  I think you can look into the bus shelter and wonder what each separate person is up to and what their story is.

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Day 56 ... CHEERS

CHEERS

A drink overlooking the park.  The snow and the cold are teasing me into thinking about summers on the deck.

A friend (Barb Voto) posted a pic similar to this one where it's a wine glass capturing an image of the sunset.  I was surprised when I saw the park portrayed perefectly miniature inside the glass and it reminded me of that photo.   

This photo is again taken with my iPhone due to time constraints in the day, but, again, cool pic nonetheless.

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Day 31...Nap Time

NAP TIME

I'm so thrilled that I've made it through month one of my project!  I know there are days when I don't feel like my shots are that great.  They're hurried or uninspired, but even then, I try hard to see something good in the less inspired shots I take.

Reflecting back on the month, I feel like I really have stretched myself at times.  I also feel like in the next 11 months, there are going to be so many more amazing opportunites and while sometimes doing a photo EVERY day can be a little more than I feel I can handle, I'm so glad I did a 365 and not a 52 project. 

Today's photo is one that caught my eye early.  I was walking through the Square between St. Peter Street and Wabasha Street.  It was yet another subzero freeze.  I was gazing at the bright blue sky and appreciating that it was at least sunny, and as I looked up, all along the ledge of the building, the pidgeons were sleeping.  If it wasn't so cold, I would have attempted a panorama so I could get the whole line of them.  There were at least 100 little puff balls all curled up and napping.  I kept wondering how they could stand the cold.  

With them all lined up and perched on the ledge of this old building with it's beautiful style, it reminded me a bit of the old Disney movie, The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  

Now that January is over, I'm hoping it will warm up a bit and give me a little more time to spend being creative.

Day 28...Cold Urbanscape

COLD URBANSCAPE

Icy cold.  This winter is brutal.  But for some reason, it makes the city look amazing.  As I was driving in this morning, I just loved how the steam was hanging in the frozen air.  There's just something about how that cold air sharpens everything.

I don't think St. Paul is a standout gorgeous cityscape compared to some, but it's my city and it has it's own quirky and quaint beauty to it.  It's our capital, so that makes it cool, right?  

This shot was taken through my windshield while I was stopped on the off ramp coming in to the city.  I did add a little hdr-ish enhancement to sharpen it up and give it some pop.  I think one thing I love visually about any city is the varying heights, widths, and positions of the buildings and other objects of the city as well as the springkling of colors from signs mixed with the buildings, smoke, and sky.

Now, enough with the cold.  I'd like to have more time outside without the fear of frostbite on my trigger finger!

Day 24....Mickey's Again

Mickey's Again

It really is just such a cool place.  It's completely out of place where it is, so it stands out and begs to be photographed.  

When I walked out of work, it kind of looked like a blizzard, and for some reason, I just felt like I was in another era, backward in time.  And when I looked at this photo, it really seems exactly how I saw it and felt, old-fashioned.  

I don't really want to post the same sites or images more than once, but this one stood out more than the others I took today, and the conditions were so different than my last Mickey's shot so I do think they're very different. 

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Day 21...Is It Happy Hour Yet?

IS IT HAPPY HOUR YET?

After the weekend and today, I really needed happy hour, and through window of  Great Waters Brewing Company in downtown St. Paul, I felt I was being beckoned to come in and have a taste!   (Though I actually had my happy hour at The Bin)

This is absolutely not the image I had intended to post tonight as I had kind of a cool night shot I took, but somehow in the process of transfer, I lost the images that I took this evening, and in the end, I'm actually kind of glad, because when I went back and looked at the shots I took from today, I decided I like this.  

This is definitely me stretching myself from the ordinary things I do.  The outdoor theme is becoming a little more challenging for me as winter turns to gray frozen muck in most places.  And if it's not gray frozen muck, it's a winter snowscape, or sunrise or sunset....becoming cliche.  I'm sure I have enough of those left in me in the more that 300 days left, but I do want to expand myself.   So in a way, I'm a little happy my other shot disappeared.  

What do you think?

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Day 19...Sleepy Winter City

SLEEPY WINTER CITY

I'm not sure how I'm really feeling about this image/post at all.  I really want to try to get away from landscape and city shots all over the place.  But today was another one of those days that would have been perfect to strap on some snowshoes, go for a walk, and find some fantastic wintery wonderland to photograph.  However, due to the extreme inconvenience of me having to work full time at a JOB that is not photography, I just didn't have a decent amount of time to do what I would have liked to obtain my shot of the day.

But as  I was headed out to pick my daughter up, I saw the sun going down.  I really did NOT want another sunset photo.  But I thought if I waited just a bit longer, I could catch the blue hour, and I know how sparkly St. Paul can be when the sun goes down.  There are so many places around the city where I would love to position myself to get a good angle of the  city.  However, a lot of them aren't friendly to foot traffic, or I'd have to park far away and walk across a bridge or something that wouldn't exactly be safe.  

So tonight I decided to head up to Mounds Park and see what the city would look like right when the sun sank under the horizon and everything went blue.  This is what I got, your typical cityscape skyline.  I think it's nice, but I'm going to try to go in a different direction for a while and do what I set out to do in this project and stretch my imagination and creativity and skill so I'm not constantly posting photos of the sun coming up or going down, or photos of all the iconic buildings of downtown St. Paul.  

My goal this week is to do at least one great black and white shot and at least one great street photo.  We'll see how it goes!

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Day 17...The Sunny Bridge

THE SUNNY BRIDGE

If there's other positive things I can say about my photo project aside from stretching my imagination and creativity, I'm also getting in some pretty fantastic walks.  Today I started off at lunchtime to see what I could find to photograph.  I wasn't having the best luck finding anything very interesting, so I just decided to wander down to the river.  It was a gorgeous day.  And when I got the the river, the sun was shining so brightly.  It took me way out of my way from the office, but it was worth the fresh air and endorphin production.

The river in downtown St. Paul has at least four notable bridges, one which I've already used in this project, the High Bridge.  There's also the Wabasha Street Bridge, the train bridge (I don't know what else to call that), and then today's photo, the Robert Street Bridge.  I took photos from a few different angles of the different bridges, and this one came out the front runner.  

I love bridges, and I'm actually pretty pleased that my walk took me to this very place today.  
 I really like this shot.

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Day 16...The Cold Capitol

THE COLD CAPITOL

At the risk of seeming like a tourist, I'm coming dangerously close to being cliche with my photos.  There are just so many visually cool buildings in St. Paul, and since they're outside and I have 365 days to shoot outside and much of my days are spent in St. Paul, this is where I start, I guess.

With that being said, I LOVE the way this shot turned out.  The wind was howling and the snow was blowing around me, but the Capitol stood out so beautifully.  I did very little aside from cropping to edit this image.  Aside from being very cold, it was a beautiful scene, quiet, snowy, somewhat serene.

Maybe when this project is over, I'll have a little coffee table book of all of St. Paul's great sites.

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Day 15...Sparkly Park

SPARKLY PARK

Today, I kind of feel like this image is a compromise, but I guess every day is not going to produce perfection.  This is where I wait for the bus in the evening.  This is as close as I could get to capture the essense of what it's like when the sun goes down there.  This is the same park I took yesterday's shot from but I'm facing south with the Landmark Center to my back.  

Rice Park is another one of those St. Paul spots that is just a place you love to go during nearly any season or weather.  The City took down the big blue tree that's normally the focal point of the lights during the holidays, but since the holidays are over, now it's just all sparkle in a non holiday way.  

Tonight it was snowing as I waited for the bus, and it was such a pretty winter evening, other than the fact that I was nearly freezing to death trying to get the right angle on my shot!  The reason I'm not significantly pleased with the shot is it just seems a little grainy, and just not as beautiful as I'd hoped, but it was the best of what I got today.  I think I've concluded that night stuff, unless I have more time, is just not my forte.

I would love for warmer weather to come now, and time for me to shoot something that is not so "St. Paul."

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Day 14...A Snowy Day in the Park

A SNOWY DAY IN THE PARK

Rice Park and Landmark Center, gorgeous really at any time of the year.  I've been there several times during the holidays when it was all lit up and sparkly.  I love that state of existence for the park.  But today, the park was magical in a different way.  It was covered with a fluffly blanket of snow with a bright blue sky surrounding it from above.

With the blue sky, I debated doing this photo in color, however, I think the black and white version definitely emphasizes the snowiness of the moment.  The Landmark Center is just one more of those very photographed architectural icons of St. Paul given that it's such a beautiful building and set across the street from such a wonderful green space in the middle of the city.  I'm sure that the St. Paul Winter Carnival will be invading the park soon, so we'll see if it produces some fascinating images of classic Winter Carnival scenes.  

I know that many of the sites I've shot during this project have been photographed many times over, but I'm thoroughly enjoying adding all these great places to my own portfolio and at the end of the year, I may have to look through all my shots and print some enlargements to hang in my surroundings.  

I can't believe that it's already week two of this project and I've easily come up with great things to photograph every day as well as experimenting with methods I've wanted to try all along anyway.

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Day 10...GRAFFITTI!

GRAFFITTI ! !

I had several images today that I was trying to decide between.  I could NOT decide, so I introduced them to some of my favorite people, and asked them which they liked the best.  The above image is what they chose!  I love it, but I love all the others I took today, so I'll post them below.  I can't help myself.

So I set out on a walk today at lunch.  I started thinking that perhaps I should have titled my project "St. Paul" since I spend a significant amount of time there.  And when I started today's adventure,  I thought certainly that it would be something very "St. Paul."  

It was a dreary afternoon.  It was slightly drizzling, and very, very gray.  I had my mind made up that certainly today's image would be black and white.  

I made my way across the Wabasha Street Bridge and down to Raspberry Island.   I was enjoying the misty skyline and envisioning the gray scaled city.  And out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of color.  There it was, the train and all its colorful graffitti.  

So today's image was different AND colorful.  

These are the others I was trying do decide on.....

THE TRAIN

THE PARK

THE CITY

What do you think?

Day 9...A Silhouette

A SILHOUETTE

I think silhouettes are always appealing.  Not 100% sure about the composition of this one, but it was the best I could get today.  This was actually taken from the window of my bus on my ride home today.

I actually ventured out to try to FIND something to take a photo of, and it was kind of a dreery day, and everything looked crappy and cold and colorless and blah.  So I figured I would just wait until later and maybe venture out for another evening of lights.  Then...there it was...right in front of me.  I was lucky enough to catch this shot out the window as the bus flew past.

I like this one because I wasn't really looking for it.  It just popped in front of my face and said, "HELLO!"  It is, of course, the beautiful St. Paul Cathedral.

I feel pretty happy to combine two of my favorite types of photos, Golden Hour and silhouettes, which I guess kind of go hand in hand often.

I did actually venture out this evening to try to get a glimpse (and possibly a photo) of the Aurora Borealis.  I drove far, far north of my home to where it was pretty dark and turned off onto a side road where there would be no city lights.  And then the fog hit.  So no luck on that tonight.  Oh, well.  I think I'm pretty satisfied with this shot.

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Day 8...One of My Favorite Views

ONE OF MY FAVORITE VIEWS

If you Google "St. Paul High Bridge," you will see many, many people have photographed this bridge.  I have photographed it many times myself, from many angles, and in all seasons.  This scene was taken from the Wabasha Street Bridge on the edge of Downtown St. Paul.  It's one of my favorite views of the river in the whole city.  

It was another sunny and gorgeous (yet cold...-5 degrees) when I went out to get this shot, so it is not your typical Minnesota scene with little to no color.  Maybe in the spring, summer, and fall during this project, I'll do a few more shots of this lovely scene showing its seasons and other angles.  One thing I have not done yet is taken St. Paul bridge night scenes.  I guess it's time to invest in a decent tripod since I have 357 more days to fill this project up, and I LOVE night shots!

I may even post twice today, because I'm going to pass some time after work right at the Golden Hour today and I may see something irresistible.  

That's not against the rules, is it?  Oh, I made my own rules for this project...so we'll see!

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Day 8 ... Part 2, One of My Favorite Views, in Gold

ONE OF MY FAVORITE VIEWS, in Gold

The same view of my first Day 8 post a few hours later.  I knew it was going to be a nice sunset, so I stopped by the bridge for another try.  Stood in basically the same spot, and this is what I got.  BONUS SHOT!

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Day 7...The Sky in My World

THE SKY IN MY WORLD

I'm fascinated by the sky.  I love the clouds.  I love the sunrise and the sunset, Golden Hour or Blue Hour.  I've taken hundreds and hundreds of photos of the sky during sunrise and sunset and previous to storms or after storms or on just fair-weather days where there are puffy white clouds and bright blue sky.   So today, I was so excited when I walked out of work and this is what the Universe gave me!

It wasn't quite sunset, but you can see it was coming near, and I imagine if I had waited for another 20 minutes, the colors would have been just as wonderful in a different shade.

Sometimes I feel limited in my ability to capture the sky because in Minnesota, we don't have "big sky."  But if you look hard enough, and frame well, you can get the sky in with objects around, like this gorgeous church, and it's beautiful.

This shot is of the Downtown St. Paul sky and Assumption Catholic Church.

Day 6...A Classic Icon in the City

A CLASSIC ICON IN THE CITY

If you've been to St. Paul, you've likely seen it.  It cries out to be photographed.  Mickey's Diner.  Despite the subzero temps today, I did manage to get outside, and something about that cold, cold air seems to make things stand out so clearly.

If you look close, you can see a cook in the window.  That's what I was trying to capture, and when I looked at the result, I got these amazing reflections and total pops of color.  This likely won't be the last photo of Mickey's you'll see from me in the coming year since it is right across the street from the building I work in.  Somehow, I like this version of Mickey's as much as I like the photos you often see of the whole place.

What do you think?

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