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Adventures with Amber

It’s still cold on the lake.

Aaron and I were in Uptown this weekend. On our way back home I made us stop at Lake Calhoun because I really wanted to take a photo of the frozen lake. I thought it would be a good day for this as it was starting to warm up and it was very sunny out. Boy was I wrong. It instantly felt 10 degrees colder. The lake makes for a very cold and windy place believe it or not. I felt like I was back in Fargo with how windy it was! I snapped maybe 4 photos before I decided I was done. I’m pretty happy with this photo though. On our way out, we saw I giant ice sculpture in the distance. I quickly pulled over and ran out to take several more photos. I didn’t get nearly as many shots as I wanted because of the temperatures and because there were so many people there, I had to work around them. Bonus ice sculpture shots included below.

View in Instagram ⇒

Bonus ice sculpture photos:

dragon sculpture Ice Dragon ice dragon sculpture

Finding things like this is what I love so much about this city. There’s always something fun going on, even when the weather isn’t the greatest. The sculpture was made by the MIA – Minneapolis Institute of Arts. They are celebrating it’s 100th birthday this year and are promoting it in a variety of creative and unique ways, like this ice sculpture.

 

Photo specs:

  • taken with iPhone 5c
  • average number of tourists in the way of the magnificent ice dragon: 5
  • number of times I nearly died from slipping on the ice: 1
  • post processing: VSCOcam (KK1 filter) on the lake photo, nothing done to the ice sculpture photos

Sunset

View in Instagram ⇒

This photo was taken for the Mashable photo challenge called Golden Hour. The idea is that the hour just after dawn and the hour just before dusk give a golden cast to everything because the sun is less harsh. I like participating in photo challenges on Instagram because they force me to take photos of things or in a way that I may not have thought of on my own. I found this one to be particularly challenging because it’s winter here and the day they announced this challenge it was something like -15F out. Every photo I took, all I could see was the blue from the snow and they all gave me the cold feeling I experience while taking the photos. I knew none of them would work. I’d have to keep searching. I had nearly given up when I was leaving my apartment one evening and saw this amazing sunset through the trees. I’ll admit, even if I wasn’t doing the photo challenge I probably would have taken this photo. However it did force me to take it in a new way. I really wanted to capture the contrast between the orange from the sunset and the blue of the sky.

Throughout this blog you’ll see plenty of photo challenges, so keep an eye out for those.

Photo specs:

  • Taken with iPhone 5c
  • Photo challenge: #mashpics_goldenhour
  • Post processing: VSCOcam (KK1 filter)
  • Nnumber of other ideas scrapped: 4

Torte and tea.

View in Instagram ⇒

Aaron and I decided to stay in for Valentine’s Day this year. Neither of us really had any interest in sitting in a crowded, overpriced restaurant. Netflix and snacks. That was our wishlist for the day. We succeeded by watching excessive amounts of The Wire (okay so this is technically on HBOgo) and Doomsday Preppers.

For dinner, I wanted to make something that I have recently discovered a love for. Pirogies. These are mashed potato and meat filled pockets for those that may not know. And for dessert, I had pinned a chocolate caramel torte on Pinterest a while back so I decided that I was finally going to try and make that. As you can tell, it turned out great! Excluding the fact that this took nearly all day to make (something like 6 hours total) I would call this a success and a great way to spend Valentine’s Day.

Side note: this picture isn’t the best quality. I think my mouth was watering too much to get the phone to focus properly.

Photo Specs:

  • taken with iPhone 5C
  • shot in the living room
  • tea made: 1 earl grey, 1 cinnamon spice
  • post processing with VSCOcam (F2 filter), lighting adjustments in Instagram

Adventures with Amber

Hi, I’m Amber. Recently I’ve been trying to think of a way to share my photos and adventures with the world. So here we are on my first blog post. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the best writer but it’s not about that. It’s about a way to share my photos and the stories behind them.

For now I leave you with this image.

Abandoned Boxcar in Bismarck, ND

Abandoned Boxcar in Bismarck, ND

I found the contrast between the boxcar and the bright blue sky phenomenal. I took this while sitting in the backseat of an SUV, waiting in line at Big Boy, and the tint of the window created an interesting effect in the top right corner that I just love.

Photo Specs:

  • taken with iPhone 5C
  • shot in Bismarck, ND over Thanksgiving weekend 2014
  • pizza burgers (flying style) consumed = 1
  • post processing with VSCO cam (HB2 filter)