Adventures with Amber

March 22, 2015

Spring is coming

Okay so it’s actually here now (technically) but I posted this to instagram before it was spring…

I found a park the other day. I had been there before, but it was in winter so everything was snow covered and I assumed it was just a small grass area. It was so nice out last weekend that while I was driving around running errands, I decided I needed to get outside for a bit so I stopped over at the same park. Turns out its huge! It goes all the way down to the river and there are walking trails. The weekend hashtag project for the weekend was something about water so I was trying to get a good shot of something reflecting in the river. That didn’t work out so well because of all of the bushes in the way but I did manage to get this shot which I think visualizes my feelings of spring/summer coming. The sun is trying to peak out it’s just not there yet. Plus I have a tree photography obsession so this is a great shot for me.

View in Instagram ⇒

March 18, 2015

Puerto Morelos Part 1

As you may or may not know, I went to Mexico recently. I want to share all of my photos and memories from the trip on here. It turns out I have a lot to say about our trip so I’m breaking it up into multiple posts. Here is part 1, be on the look out for part 2!

Underground light rail stop at the airport. The stripes in the wall are different layers in the rock. So cool!

View in Instagram ⇒

Our trip included several legs of travel via various means of transportation: city bus > light rail > plane > charter-type bus > one of the scariest taxi rides of my life. Stop signs are more of suggestions in Mexico apparently. And then we had to do it all in reverse to get home!

Since the light rail stops at the airport, that was the easiest way to get there, besides paying hundreds of dollars to park my car in their parking ramp for a week. We only had to take one connecting bus to get to the light rail but it was about -5 degrees F so the wait for the bus was a bit chilly. Especially when we got dropped off at the underground airport stop.

This was my first time out of the US, if you don’t include that time I went to the International Peace Garden located on the North Dakota/Canada border. I was nervous leaving the country, especially since we were traveling to a non-English speaking country. What if I didn’t know enough Spanish to make it through immigration, and they send me back? Turns out, Mexico relies heavily on US tourism and the Cancún airport may as well be in Texas. Everyone at the airport was very friendly and spoke fluent English.

me, in shorts, standing in front of a palm tree at the airport

When we landed I insisted that I get my photo taken by a palm tree. Also note the shorts. It was so hot in the airport, I had to change into shorts immediately.

Once we landed, it was dinner time so we wandered around looking for food. I wanted something authentic, like tacos. We ended up at a place called T@cos.com. I think they pronounce it “Tacos dot com” but I keep pronouncing it “T at cos dot com” in my head. I think it looks silly. Excluding the name, it was exactly what I was looking for in terms of authenticity. I ordered a piña colada and I watched our server walk out of the restaurant, money in hand, to buy ingredients for my drink. I probably could have ordered literally anything and as long as the ingredients could be purchased near by, they would have made it for me. They had one guy cooking on a stove top in the front of the restaurant, where you could watch, and the whole place looked like it could be a kitchen in someone’s home.

It took a while to get used to the different currency. $1 USD is equal to about 14 pesos! I felt like I was rich.

Aaron ordered a margarita and our server asked if he wanted it “la roca”. I was super proud of myself for understanding that she was asking if he wanted it on the rocks. I should mention that my Spanish is limited to food items, and everything covered up through level 5 in Duolingo. Which is surprisingly not a lot of useful stuff. I mean when am I ever going to need to know how to say “my penguin” in Spanish? It’s “mi pingüino” for the curious. As a side note, I definitely would like to broaden my Spanish for the next time we go. Nothing screams, “I’m a tourist,” more than staring blankly at your cashier when they say your total in Spanish.

First drinks in Mexico. They really hit the spot.

The table we were at was outside on the sidewalk and I was enjoying people watching when I saw this guy carrying a huge string bass down the street. He then stopped in front of our restaurant and started setting it up. His two band mates then caught up with him and they started playing music for us. I’d later realize that a lot of locals do things like perform music in front of restaurants full of tourists to make money. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t annoyed by all of the performances yet, but these guys were really good! They were a lot of fun to listen to and it really added to the authenticity feel I was looking for.

This is the band that preformed for us.

This was how we got down to the beach from where we stayed. Talk about stunning.

View in Instagram ⇒

Be on the lookout for the rest of my Puerto Morelos story. You can also check out more photos from the trip on my instagram page.

Thanks for reading!

-Amber

March 3, 2015

It snowed this morning

So obviously I had to take photos of the snow on my car window. I actually didn’t mind that this snow started right before my morning commute, causing me to be late for work. Aaron and I leave for Mexico on Thursday so I figured the weather can do whatever it likes today as long as the weather improves for our flight.

View in Instagram ⇒

Photo specs:

taken with iPhone5c, through the car windshield
number of attempts made to get a shot like this: several
cameras packed for mexico: 1 iPhone, 1 DSLR, and 1 really awesome disposable film camera (don’t worry, I’ll post all photos from the trip on here!)

March 1, 2015

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:

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

February 20, 2015

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

February 15, 2015

Found some artwork on a grain elevator

View in Instagram ⇒

February 15, 2015

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

February 13, 2015

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

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)

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