These are pictures I've taken of downtown Minneapolis, as seen from Boom Island Park. It's a view I like, and I'd eventually like to get the full set of seasons. You'll notice most are taken in full sunlight. That's not to imply it's never cloudy here, just that I don't like walking down to the park on cloudy or rainy days. As time goes on, the resolution of the images gets bigger since I keep upgrading cameras.
Initially, I tried to take these all with the same composition. I've given up on that, and started to vary things a bit more, at least partly on purpose.
And it looks like it'll be 2002 (or later) before I get a picture of the river with ice on it. This stretch doesn't freeze often, in fact Xcel Energy and the Army Corps of Engineers play with the river flow to try and prevent that. So when it does, it's a thin layer of ice that breaks up rapidly. There's just too much moving water, and it's all warmed by waste-heat from things up-river. But it does look really cool if you can catch it iced over.
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| January 2001 - A hazy day with a little ice in the river. There's also some pretty serious lens flare. I eliminated it in some of the pictures I took this day, but the best looking one had the most lens-flare. Go figure. | February 2001 - plenty of snow. Much of it in my boots in order to get this picture. But it's pretty, even if the river hasn't frozen the past couple years. |
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| March 2000 - The snow is just about all melted | April, 1999 - about two weeks from now it'll all be green. |
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| July 2000 - Summer in the city | August 2001 - Taken with the cheap camera, but it's a month I didn't have a picture for yet. The blob in the sky is a fingerprint on the lens. D'Ohh! |
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| October 2000 - The leaves are changing | November 2001 - A warm November. All the leaves have fallen, but it was in the high 50s this day. |
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| A different view! This is taken from between the two entrances to Hidden Falls Park (just a little upriver from Hwy 5), which is about 14 miles south of Boom Island if you follow the river road. To the left, you can see the Old Soldiers Home, then downtown Minneapolis, then the Ford Bridge, and on the right, the Ford plant itself. | December 2001 - Taken on the 4th of December, on a day when it nearly reached 50 degrees out. A few minutes before this, the sky was blue. Then the high fog (or low clouds) rolled in, and everything got grey, but it made for a reasonably good picture, I think. |
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| December 2001 - Taken two days after the hazy one. The weather got nice and sunny out. Of course the sun's so low in the sky that it's nearly impossible not to get lens flare from the sun, but once again, I liked the effect. |