Ric Rosow's Downtown Skyscrapers

Submitted by Ric Rosow

On August 29th a group of 20+ Mill City Commons (MCC) members took a 2-hour sidewalk tour of downtown Minneapolis buildings, led by MCC member David Evelo. David provided excellent commentary as we walked, and provided to each of us a multipage document describing each building.

On the walk I took the opportunity to experiment with taking vertical panoramas. Normally I take horizontal panoramic photos of the city from a vantage point giving me a view of all that lies below the horizon. In this instance I was of course on street level. Normally for a panoramic I would use a tripod to make sure the stitching of the images went smoothly. In this case I hand held the camera as I did not bring a tripod. For each series of photos that would go into making the panoramic I turned the camera to a “portrait” orientation. Taking anywhere from five to ten photos of each building, I started composing at the street level of the building and with each subsequent photo I raised the camera lens higher, taking care to overlap each image with the prior image. Photoshop then did its job of seamlessly stitching together the series of photos of each building into one image. I love the way surrounding buildings are reflected on the buildings that have a glass exterior.

150 S 5th Street

AT&T

Capella Tower

Foshey Tower

Four Seasons

Marquette Plaza

US Bank Plaza

Well Fargo Center

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I also took time to take a photograph (below) of the beautiful chandelier that hangs from the high ceiling of the first level of the Star Tribune Building. That is a building I worked in for about 20 years when it was known as the IBM Building. To highlight the beauty of the chandelier, in processing the image I masked out the surrounding ceiling and walls so that all one sees is the chandelier.

Downtown is a short walk from the Mill District, so anyone can easily take their own tour. Be sure to stop at each building and LOOK UP!