Minnesota State Capitol

It was about 33 degrees and windy outside; this was about as

adventurous as I wanted to get.

While I have not been in this one, I have been in a number of state capitol buildings and they are always inspiring. It seems to me that they were constructed with such enthusiasm with a mindset that our buildings and institutions should rise above the low and mean-spirited. I honestly (read naively if you will) believed that the men who were contemporaneous to the construction of these early symbols of democracy had a sincerity in their belief that we could indeed rise above ourselves. To me that is what these magnificent structures said. Sadly, the buildings retain whatever purity they had, but those occupying the halls have time and again proven their unsuitability to labor under their roofs.

 

As to the image, it's a nice documentary.

Yes, it is hard sometimes to reconcile the politics with the surroundings. I mean, this is where Jesse Ventura worked.

 

And, as to the image, this is a celebration of having a wide angle again.

Dear Barry

very nice photo.

it's a question for me that why your photos are very soft without a bit niose and have nice colors?

how you change it? which software?

please explain me.

Best regards.

MsK

Thanks for the compliment! I use a digital SLR and shoot in RAW mode. For this image, I used the Adobe RAW converter to create two files, one exposed for the shadows, and the other for the highlights. I then blended the two files using luminance masking to get the best parts of each.

I love the blue/gold combination of colors - well done and i will try and learn about this luminance technique.

Luminance masking is where you select, say, the highlights of one image and then use that selection to make a mask, which allows the (better exposed) highlights of the other image to come through. It's a useful technique.