In this issue:
- what's new at MPS
- photo tip of the month ...White Balance
- safarian "image gallery"
- our current safaris
- history tidbits
WHAT'S NEW AT MPS?
Our regularly scheduled safaris on the St Anthony Falls
Heritage Trail and the St. Paul Capital area concluded for the season
October 31st. These 2 tours will resume April 2011. We will be posting
booking calendars for the 2011 season in mid November.
Our Mall of
America, Hiawatha Light Rail, and Minneapolis Skyway Tours run November
18th through March 31st.
We are also developing some new NIGHT tours as well as special tours for the Holidazzle and Winter
Carnival Events. As always, we offer private one on one or small group safaris. Watch our web site and newsletters for details.
OUR CURRENT SAFARIS NOW INCLUDE:
All of these safaris, except those that include the
Skyways, run Thursdays thru Sundays. The Skyway Tours run only Thursdays and
Fridays.
for complete schedules, visit our
Web Site
|
MPS PHOTO TIP OF THE MONTH
White Balance ... The Color Temperature of Light
The idea
behind white balance is very simple: it’s a way to
correct the colors in your image to take account of the light they were shot with. This is
because not all light
sources (bulbs, fluorescent strip lamps, sunlight, moonlight), produce
light equally
across the whole of the visible spectrum.
There are
several ways of making sure you get the white
balance right. The first is to allow your camera to select a white
balance for you ... the AUTO or AWB setting. You can also choose one
of your camera’s presets that is designed for the type of light you’re
working with. You may find that none of the presets give you the right
result. Morning or afternoon sun won’t match the "sun" setting, and
particularly light or heavy cloud cover won’t match the ‘cloudy’
setting, so camera presets have to be averages and
best-guesses.
A
better way of getting the right result is to set the white balance
based on the actual light you’re
shooting under. Most cameras have the ability to
set a manual white balance. This usually involves shooting a picture
of a white (or, better still, neutral grey), object under the lighting
that you’re working under. This teaches the camera electronics how to
balance the levels of the red, green and blue information that it’s
recording. You must remember to do this every time the lighting
conditions
change, though or you could end up with some bizzarre results. I
prefer to do the next step (using RAW format) when I shoot.
The final way of getting the white balance right is to correct it later. The best
way of correcting the white balance after you’ve taken your shot is to
save the RAW data coming from the sensor. Although some software will
try to adjust the white balance of jpeg images, the results are simply
not as good because there’s a risk that the data the software needs to
work with is exactly the data that’s been thrown away in order to make
the file so lovely and small. Shooting in RAW format allows you to
adjust white balance
As a side
note: Our experience on the Safaris has
shown us
that the "AUTO" or "AWB" settimgs on a large number of the cameras we
see works quite well. On our popular night tour, about 85-90% of
safarians use the AUTO settings on their cameras and get very good
results.
Bottom line: Try your AUTO/AWB setting first. If your results
are acceptable, this is all you need to do.
|
SAFARIAN
IMAGE GALLERY
 |
Our November
2010 image of the
month is from Margaret M. of the Twin Cities.
On a fall
evening, with the leaves off the trees, under an eerie fog or low
cloud cover Margaret produced this image of the Minneapolis
skyline at night framed by the famous Stone Arch Bridge. Margaret used
the naked branches of the mature trees in the area to create a nice
frame. This image was taken from the dark stairway we use to access
the lower part of the Heritage Trail on the east bank of the Mill
district. ... Nice work Margaret!
|
|
HISTORY TIDBITS FROM OUR SAFARIS
On the
East Bank (afternoon) Heritage Trail Safari, We visit the Merriam St.
Bridge
The
Merriam Street bridge crosses the east channel of the Mississippi River
between Main Street and Nicollet Island. The bridge was originally part of a
1887 four- span bridge built by the King Iron and Bridge Company of
Cleveland, Ohio which crossed the Mississippi at Broadway Avenue, a mile
upstream from its present location. When the Broadway Avenue bridge was
replaced in 1987, this span was saved, floated down the river on pontoons,
and installed at Merriam Street for pedestrian and light vehicular use. The
original open steel grating deck and wood-plank pedestrian walks have been
replaced with a concrete deck, and short steel beam spans have been added to
both ends to fit the bridge to its current location.
We combine Photography AND History on all of our
Safaris to help you visualize and compose your images of the historically
significant areas we tour.
|
