A few weekends ago, my friend, Kristin, and I went to St. Paul for a photo outing. Since the forecast looked like rain, our original plan was to take photos inside at Union Depot. Unfortunately, we did not know about all of the construction downtown, the Farmer’s Market, or the Food Truck Festival that was going on. Traffic was a little crazy! Since we couldn’t see any rain, we decided to get out of the traffic and head over to the Cass Gilbert Memorial Park, around Robert and University. I had seen an overlook area on some of my drives in to work, and I imagined that there would be great views of the city.

Unfortunately, the park was unimpressive. It looked like there was some construction going on, so I’m hoping that it might be more interesting in the future. Now, it was just blocked off areas and construction trailers. There was a little walkway with benches that was cute, but they sat looking directly into the construction fence. And the view that I was hoping for? Not what I had in mind. The sky was really hazy, so visibility was not as great as it could have been. The only view that I really liked was of the St. Paul Cathedral. The trees framed it really nicely, but the haze either made the photos look bad, or really made my inexperience show, since I’m not pleased with how the photos turned out.

On the good side, while we were parking, we happened to notice a little sculpture park nearby. That was really cute. There were a lot of flowers and sculptures to take pictures of. I enjoyed it much more than the other park, but like I said, it’s not a fair comparison, since it could be due to construction.

To see more of the photos from this outing, check out my flickr page.

Last week, my friend from work, Michele, asked me if I could take some headshots for her. She recently started working at a yoga studio in St. Paul called Tula. I haven’t had a chance to go there, yet, but she has told me a lot about it, and it seems like a fun place. I’m excited to check it out!

We made the mistake of deciding to adventure for a location the day we decided to shoot. We headed to the Bruce Vento Trail in St. Paul, which neither of us had been to before. We had seen some pictures online that looked like they would provide a nice back drop. Unfortunately, the trail is somewhere around 6 miles long, and we didn’t know where those pictures were taken. After a lot of sweaty walking and passing some “interesting” people, we clicked a few shots, and headed off to Kellogg Mall in St. Paul.

I think the shoot went well and Michele has some decent photos to choose from, but I feel like all the shots are very similar. Searching for a good backdrop took a lot of time, and I think I would have been more creative if I had more time in each location. Rather than walking a bunch, getting really sweaty, and hastily picking some different spots. Good to know for next time!

Here are a few of my favorites from the shoot. These are the raw images. I haven’t had a chance to fix them up yet. They need some color balancing and a few of them could use some cropping.

This weekend my friend, Doc, and I went to take fall photos. It was a little late in the season, but this was the first time we were both available. We had a limited amount of time, so we checked a fall colors map online to find somewhere close. It said that Fort Snelling State Park was a great place to still see a lot of color. So we headed off! And man, was it wrong! There were a lot of golden colored trees, but most of the trees were already leafless. Bummer on the photo side of things, but good for the walking and talking!

I also thought it would be fun to play with a filter while we were out, since I don’t really use them much. I tried my polarizing filter. I couldn’t remember exactly what it would do, but I thought it would be similar to wearing sunglasses. (You know how certain sunglasses make the colors look really vibrant?) Well, I think the colors may have been more vibrant, but unfortunately, I did forgot that adding the filter meant that I would had to adjust the exposure. I ended up with a lot of blurry photos. Everything that you see here is filterless. Oh well, maybe next time.