October 10 - Interior #3 - Landmark Center

Had some time to walk around with the camera today over lunchtime. The Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul is a pretty cool building. It was built in 1902 and was originally the Federal Courthouse and a US Post Office and was almost torn down in the 1970s. That would have been a shame, they sure don't build them like this anymore.

The central portion of the building is an open atrium from ground level to the top (about 5 stories) with a glass roof (which lets in lots of lovely daylight) and is often rented for weddings.

The column capitals near the top of the building caught my eye for this photo:

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EXIF: Canon 5D, TS-E 90mm/2.8, f/2.8, 1/160, ISO 800
Exposure Date: October 10, 2008

Quetico....Father and Son fishing

My friend Dave is the one that invited me on the Quetico trip. Here he is with his son, fishing beneath a falls. If there's a walleye in the lake, chances are pretty good that these guys will find it.

Thanks again for a great trip, guys.

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EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 100-400 4.5-5.6L IS @ 250mm, f/5.6, 1/1600, ISO 800
Exposure Date: September 30, 2008

October 9 - Interior week derailed...

So much for doing a theme week....just too busy of a day to get out and shoot until I got home this evening, so I turned to one of my absolutely favorite subjects...Miss C! She's my 4 year old daughter and is a pretty good poser. :)

The TS-E 90mm from Canon is a pretty fun lens, I like how it allowed me to keep both of her eyes sharp in this shot while having everything else out of focus / nicely blurred. Exactly what I was hoping for out of this lens.

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EXIF: Canon 5D, TS-E 90mm 2.8, f/2.8, 1/25, ISO 800
Exposure Date: October 9, 2008

October 8 - follow the light

I know I said I was going to shoot interiors all week, but sometimes an opportunity presents itself and you just go with it. This morning the warm waters of the Mississippi combined with the cool, humid fall air to create quite a blanket of fog over downtown St. Paul on an otherwise cloudless day. Since the fog and light created good conditions, I went outside for a few minutes to try and make some good photos. I will likely post a couple bonus photos later as I think I got a few good ones, but this one struck me the most.

As I was walking around, I looked up the hill and noticed the St. Paul Cathedral was almost completely shrouded in thick fog, but every so often the gold cross at the top would catch the light of the rising sun and glisten through the shrouds. I got this by exposing to the right to create a fairly light photo, but then darkened it back down in postprocessing (using Lightroom 2.0) to isolate the cross even more. I really like the result:

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EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 70-200mm 2.8L IS @ 200mm, f/3.2, 1/1600, ISO 400
Exposure date: October 8, 2008

October 7 - Interiors week #2 - headed for home

Got this one as I was waiting for my carpool. The "pickup" area is at street level and exposed to the outside on either end, and is dark, dirty, has awful acoustics due to all the hard surfaces, and it's terribly lit. Tried to capture all that in this shot, with some other folks headed for home as well...

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Definitely not one of St. Paul's more scenic areas, but I like how it came out anyway.

EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 17-40mm 4L @ 17mm, f/4, 1/20, ISO 800
Exposure Date: October 7, 2008

October 6 - Interiors week #1 - skyway

Since all of last weeks shots were outdoors, I'm going to do some interiors this week, mostly (if not all) from St. Paul.

This was shot from approximately knee level as I walked to the office from my parking ramp. One of the things about downtown St. Paul is that there is a skyway network so one can walk pretty much across town without going outside.

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EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 17-40mm 4L @ 17mm, f/4, 1/60, ISO 800
Exposure Date: October 6, 2008

Quetico - end of the portage

Saw this shot just waiting for me as I came across a portage for the second time, so I grabbed my camera out of the canoe and walked back up the hill for the shot. This was one of the dry times, but I think it started raining again not too long after we made camp...

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EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 24-105 4L IS @ 24mm, f/11, 1/125, ISO 400
Exposure date: September 29, 2008

Quetico - fine dining

OK, so this shot isn't what I would consider a brilliantly artistic visual, but there is some genuine art in here, and it is how that pan of walleye fillets was prepared. The two days we fished hard on Kawnipi we really did well on walleyes, at least compared to what I'm used to. We ended up throwing back fish both days because we'd reached our possession limit. This particular day, for dinner we had walleye and northern chowder, pan fried walleye, and this dish you see here...something we termed "Walleye Fez", named after the man that created the concoction.

Basically the walleye was wrapped in foil along with the lemons, some butter and just a bit of salt and pepper, and then steamed in it's own juices. What a delicate, delectable dish. I will be attempting it next time I catch walleyes in the wilderness, that is for sure.

Too bad smells can't be captured and shared via photography the way light can...

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EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 24-105mm 4L IS @ 24mm, f/4, 2.5 sec, ISO 800, tripod
Exposure Date: September 28, 2008

Quetico - the first day

This is a shot I snapped from the bow of our "tow" boat that helped us get into Quetico more quickly. We hired Andy from Tuscorora Lodge to motor us across Saganaga Lake and drop us off at Hook Island to take about 9 miles of paddling out of the equation and help us get to our destination in 2 days. Precious Vacation time and all of that...

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Shots like this are made for an ultrawide angle lens, I wouldn't have been able to get this whole scene in without one as "zooming" with my feet was obviously not an option.

The blue sky is quite deceiving in this shot, we got hailed and stormed on by 3:00 that afternoon and must have had about 3" of rain by morning. Such is life in Canoe Country.

EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 17-40mm 4L @ 17mm, f/11, 1/400, ISO 400
Exposure Date: September 26, 2008

Quetico - Bald Eagle

We saw a ton of these guys last week, seemed like every time we started to fish we'd have one or two hanging out just watching us to see if there was a handout to be had. They really are magnificent birds.

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I shot this with my Rebel XTi instead of the 5D because of the increased pixel density, more pixels in less area. I'm pretty pleased with the results. The EXIF will tell you focal length, but unlike most of the shots I post, I cropped this one in post production as well because he was pretty far away and it left an awful lot of empty blue sky there.

Maybe one or two more Quetico shots today and later this week, but I will continue to do the photo a day as well.

EXIF: Canon Digital Rebel XTi. EF 100-400mm 4.5-5.6L IS @ 365mm, f/8, 1/800, ISO 400
Exposure Date: September 27, 2008

October 4 - My beautiful niece H

Snapped this one on the floor while my niece H was playing with my older daughter C. She's so beautiful! She doesn't like having her photo taken though, so I had to be sneaky.

Light levels were pretty low but I ended up bracing the camera on the floor which ended up acting like a tripod, otherwise there's no way I could have held steady enough to make 1/10 of a second work like this without a tripod or a lens with IS.

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EXIF: Canon 5D, EF 100mm 2.8 macro, f/2.8, 1/10, ISO 800
Exposure date: October 4, 2008