04/28/2026
A week ago I posted an image of how water/moisture can make lights seem to glow in the city. If you haven't seen it, take a look below at the historic St. Paul Hotel from that original posting.
A little over a week ago, I returned to a spot that I discovered when I was creating images from a series of bridges in Minneapolis. The first night (before the return visit) was a bit of a disaster that led to me deleting every image made that night from 3 different bridges.
My camera had been without a battery for some time as I forgot to put a fresh one in after removing the battery that was almost out of charge. Apparently, if I don't put a fresh battery in within a certain time frame, all of my custom settings get defaulted to its original factory settings. While I confess that is an assumption, I did not mess with any settings or do anything to my camera between the time I took out a battery and put in a fresh one. A hard lesson but a crucial one that I learned and won't soon forget. At least so I don't think I will....🤔
That particular location (later in the blue hour by the time I reached it the first time)sparked a question as to it what would it look like if I went back when the sun was setting. So let me give a little backstory...
The building is the dramatically striking and abstract Weismann Museum. I'm going to share the Wikipedia description of the building as it does a great job...
"The current museum building was designed by architect Frank Gehry with MSR Design as architect of record and completed in November 1993.[2] It is one of the major landmarks on the University of Minnesota campus, situated on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River at the east end of the Washington Avenue Bridge. The abstract structure is considered highly significant because it was built prior to the widespread use of computer aided design in architecture.
The building presents two faces, depending on which side it is viewed from. To the south and east, it presents a brick facade that blends with the historic buildings along Northrop Mall. To the north and west, it is an abstraction of a fish and waterfall in curving and angular brushed steel sheets.[2] The stainless steel skin was fabricated and installed by the A. Zahner Company, a frequent collaborator with Gehry's office.[3]"
In the later blue hour, it was still reflective from the surrounding lights both direct and ambient. I began to ponder what it would look like in the setting sun. Adding excitement to my thinking was that fact that my particular vantage point looking at the museum was next to the bridge, not on the bridge. First, I have not seen an image made from that vantage point so maybe I was one of the first if not the first. Second, I was pretty certain that as the sun set, it would eventually be blocked by the bridge while still shining on the building. I began to visualize a tunnel vision of sort where it is darker looking out into a scene that is...GLOWING! "Oh yeah", I was thinking, "this could be epic!"
Back to the present afternoon of my return visit, I was blown away by something I had not seen before in any of my previous visits to this area. Next to the bridge is this tree full of shoes! What the...? I was confused and chuckling at the same time. No clue of the origin of this. Probably just a joker throwing someone's shoes on the tree from the bridge and it just proliferated over time. If you know the story, let me know in the comments below.
I set up my camera at several vantage points up and down a steep incline to minimize intrusion of branches into the scene from the aforementioned tree as well as other varying sizes of trees in the location. I finally found a position that worked the best; at the very top. All that up and down to no avail. Oh well, at least I got my exercise in. In my post-editing later on my computer, I was able to crop the image a little to remove more of the "offending" branches that distracted from the main focal point. There is still a medium sized blunt branch leaning into the focal point but I don't think it takes away from the image. It's just the way it is; nature doesn't move for us. We need to work around it. I was also able to crop past the shoes hanging down from the branches. It didn't add anything to for this image at least.
I settled in for the wait, as the sun began its descent, next to this kind of unique bridge. It is actually two levels. The top is a pedestrian and bike path that enters and exists the University of Minnesota. The bottom level is for vehicle traffic and the metro light rail. Every so often, I would create some images. I used exposure bracketing to capture images in both shadow and light to prevent under- and over-exposure. I also created two image panoramas to give a little more of the scene from left to right.
Finally, the sun entered the coveted domain of evocative lighting! The building shifted from a high white glare reflection to a glowing ember sort of reflection. A bonus was sunlight filtering through to light up portions of the bluff and the Mississippi River! Slowly, more and more of the building transitioned from its glowing ember feel until it was all gone and was now taking on the sheen of the artificial lighting in the area.
It was a great night of capturing what I hoped would capture! As Colonel John "Hannibal" Smith from the 1980's A-Team tv series would say, "I love it when a plan comes together!"
Enjoy the images!
