A golden view

So I’ve been a pretty good boy while here in Minneapolis, and have left my camera back at the B&B every day, focusing instead on important things like course prep. Yesterday, though, I gave myself one day of photography, focusing on St. Anthony Falls, the Mill District, the Mill City Museum, and the Guthrie Theater.

While I was in the Guthrie I made my first trip up to the 9th floor where the Dowling Studio is. The 8th and 9th floors are mostly for education and cutting edge work, and the architect felt that this called for yellow windows to ensure that the people working there always had a "sunny" view. I’m not sure I buy that argument, but I must say that they provide a really amazing view of the city, including this shot back across to the old Mill District and the great Gold Medal Flour sign. So the weird colors here aren’t my doing, and nothing in Photoshop, but are the result of shooting through several inches of yellow-tinted glass.

If you’ve been to the Guthrie, but never been up to the 9th floor, I definitely recommend it. To get there you have to catch an elevator at either the 4th or 5th floor (only staff can use that elevator to go to the 1st floor) and head up to the 9th floor. It’s totally cool to go there, because that’s how you get to the Dowling Studio, which is the third and much smaller theater at the Guthrie. I was there in the mid-to-late-afternoon, and the light was really interesting, but I suspect that it changes quite a lot all through the day.

In all my wandering around I also learned a ton about the origin of Minneapolis (which I’d known almost nothing about). I’d always assumed the Cities were here primarily because of the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers, but no! Minneapolis is all about the water power of St. Anthony Falls, the only waterfall of note on the entire Mississippi River. This initially powered sawmills which sliced up the northern forests into planks, and then drove the amazing flour milling industry that for 50 years made Minneapolis the largest producer of flour in the world.

Most of the old mills are gone, but there’s are bits of a few, including this old General Mills grain elevator and the shell of the adjacent mill that now houses the Mill City Museum.

Fascinating stuff, and a really fun day of taking photos.

Conveniently yesterday’s prompt from The Daily Shoot was

Make a photograph that features a sign of some sort today. Maybe a stop sign. Maybe an information sign. Or an advert.

Hey, I took a lot of photos of signs (many, in fact, of this wonderful Gold Medal Flower sign), so here you are.

I first noticed this sign yesterday walking home after my morning walk with Sub-Evil Boy. Presumably they’ve had some big lorries follow their sat nav system and get stuck down the end of this little road. Can’t quite decide whether I think this is hilarious or sad. Perhaps both. (Geotagging it on Flickr was a pleasantly ironic experience as well.)