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 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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