a Flickrwalk....

This week we went on a Flickrwalk and I counted that for my photo expedition for the week. Tim and I met up with a bunch of other photographers from the area, had dinner with them, and then we all went on a walk around St Paul. Everyone from Flickr was super friendly, and we enjoyed meeting everyone. I'm truly awestruck at the quality of photographs produced by this bunch of people.



We met a little before sunset so that we could catch the light of twilight and then do some night photography. I've done very little nighttime photography, so that was a lesson in itself. I also wanted to try something called HDR – I won't get too far into the technical details (if you're interested, there are many, many tutorials available by googling HDR), but the basic gist is that you take multiple exposures of the same image, and then digitally merge them. The result is more like what the human eye sees, because the human eye can adjust to see the details of both the dark and light areas of a scene. HDR images can be fairly subtle, or absolutely fantastical, and there's definitely an art to producing the image you intended.

Either way, I definitely broke most of my photo expedition rules this week. I didn't worry about how many images I took -- I just concentrated on using my tripod, taking photos in low light, and setting up shots for HDR images. And HDR requires a lot of post-processing work with Photoshop, something I'm usually loathe to do. So there's your disclaimer (as if anyone's particularly bothered by my self-imposed rules beside me....)



The area we explored was called Harriet Island Park – an interesting name considering it's not actually an island. It was once, but in 1949 the small channel that divided it from land was filled in, making the name a misnomer. The park once held a bath house and a petting zoo that were very popular summer attractions, but they were closed because of chronic flooding problems and the pollution of the Mississippi River. The flooding was fixed when levees were built, and the park now hosts docks for steamboats.



Across the river, you can get spectacular views of the St Paul Cathedral. So far, this is as close as I've come to the cathedral, but I've heard that it's far more beautiful from the inside than the outside. I read that F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that the cathedral looked like a bull dog sitting on its haunches – in other words, aggressive. Nonetheless, it seems to dominate the St Paul skyline, and I really like it. Especially in twilight. Maybe I just like it because it makes for such a good waymarker to help me find my way around the city.

Tim and I weren't dressed particularly well for the chilly Minnesota evening, so we called the walk a bit short. I'm hoping to meet the folks at from the Flickr crew again soon. Some of these images are HDR, some are just straight. I've got a lot I can learn about HDR, but for now I think I'll concentrate on reinspiring my photographic eye. Here are some more photos from the evening....