In mid-July, I took a personal vacation and visited friends from my hometown of Austin, MN, as well as the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Looking out of a window in an airplane just above the clouds, I made sure to grab a window seat each way. Other than my camera bag packed to the brim with extra clothes, I didn’t carry anything else with me. I stylized the photos above so it looks like I photographed them during twilight. There was something truly peaceful about being in this space.
When I arrived, my brother picked me up from the airport and we walked around the city. We went to the IDS Center for lunch, and I left my camera at his place because I planned to ride scooters later and wanted to travel light with just my phone for taking pictures. As of this journal entry, only a few of the images on this website were taken with my phone. I’ll admit it, I’ve been a bit of a camera snob, but the best camera is truly the one you have in your pocket (and is better than nothing!). After traveling light with just a phone, I have to admit that some of these pictures turned out looking pretty good.
The final image you see above has a really interesting “Davinci” sketch look to it using some Topaz software and I can see myself making more of these as a series.
That same day we met up with my friend Jeff and did a lot of running around Minneapolis using scooters we rented. I didn’t have my camera, so decided when I was editing these images to apply this effect on them again here. We probably rolled around for about an hour and visited a ton of cool spots.
The next morning, my brother and I headed to a nature path on our way to the Mall of America and caught this squirrel posing for us.
After we visited the Mall of America and purchased nothing we made our way to the real destination, our hometown of Austin, MN. We were heading there for a 40th reunion of a place both of us worked, Games People Play. I was excited to see my hometown, a place I hadn’t really seen (except at night one random time years ago) in nearly a decade. Seeing it in the daylight after all of this time was crazy. So much had changed and I remembered it being so much different in 2008 when I last lived there.
I realize that the images above doesn’t really depict a “hometown” vibe, but I honestly didn’t take any photos while I was visiting. I was busy hanging out with people and wanted to be present in the moment. However, before this, we had the chance to walk into Austin’s old theater in the Oak Park Mall. All the photos were taken with a Sony A7RIV camera using a 20mm f/1.8 lens, which allowed me to capture this vast space with great detail.
Meeting up with old friends was a blast, and I hope to get down to the city again and actually take some pictures in a good light 🙂
Traveling back the night before I needed to head back, Jacob and I found a really cool spot. Well he found it, I just photographed it. Anyways, this was an interesting space and had something to do with WWII. Now it’s slabs of concrete being overtaken by nature.
After returning to Minneapolis, we met Jeff again at the Guthrie Theater. I will soon upload more images from this place on the site, but for now, I want to feature just a few. The theater is an architectural marvel, with a 178-foot cantilever bridge that overlooks the Mississippi River. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any shots from underneath, but I did manage to take a good one of the river from above after riding up one of the longest escalators I have ever seen.
The last thing I did on this trip was take a nice walk with Jeff and Jacob. Here are a few photos I took along the way.
