Midwest Guest

Passports with Purpose makes Room to Read

Among my favorite memories as a kid are the frequent trips to our local library with my mom, and I'm especially excited to help our travel blogging community's fundraising drive to build, not just one, but two libraries in Zambia as our fourth annual Passports with Purpose (PwP) project.

My mom helped me pick out a new batch of books at the library every couple of weeks, and I eagerly slipped into the little, wire Bertoia chairs our library's children's room to embark on an adventure with the likes of Curious George or Dr. Seuss while waiting for my mom to pick out a few books of her own to take home.

Those early library trips helped fuel what became a lifetime love of reading and knowledge for me. I love seeing Passports with Purpose working to extend the same opportunity that children like I had to enjoy a local library by supporting Room to Read.

Room to Read is a non-profit 501(c)(3) group with the mission of helping children in developing countries to develop literacy skills, with a special emphasis on helping young women complete their secondary school education. This year, PwP partners with Room to Read to build two libraries in Zambia.

I always check out groups I want to support on the Charity Navigator site, which rates charities based on their accountability and transparency, and I was pleased to see that Room to Read scored a four-star rating and high marks for the group's overhead-to-program ratio. Room to Read's own Web site contains details about their financials as well.

PwP, created by four Seattle-based travel bloggers in 2008 as a quickly organized drive that resulted in raising $7,500 to benefit Heifer International. I supported that drive, as well as one in 2009 that raised $30,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia and the third annual drive in 2010 that raised more than $50,000 to build an entire village in India.

The travel blogging community certainly doesn't think small!

How do we accomplish these grand goals?

Passports with Purpose bloggers ask their readers and friends to donate $10 to enter into a drawing for the prize of their choice from a great list of prizes furnished by bloggers and their sponsors.

Want to enter more than one drawing? No problem! For each $10 donation you make between now and December 16, Passports with Purpose enters you into the drawing for a prize of your choice. Note as you bid for prizes that shipping restrictions, terms, and blackout dates might apply in some cases.

PwP will notify prize winners on December 23, 2010.

All funds raised (minus a small Paypal fee) go to Room to Read.

There are plenty of great drawings to enter as the prize list goes live today, so check it out and help us build those libraries!

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Be my Midwest guest

The next couple of months bring something a little different to Midwest Guest.

I usually do a monthly post with a collection of links to stories I've enjoyed reading online during the past month. This month, I asked some of my travel blogging and Detroit-area blogging friends if they would like to write a story for Midwest Guest, and I'm excited about sharing their work here with readers over the coming weeks.

The list of story suggestions I've received from my blogging buddies sound great, and the different voices allow me to share a lot of stories about locations or subjects that I've not yet covered. I can't wait to post them.

Do you have a great Midwest-related story that you'd like to share with Midwest Guest readers?

I'm open to ideas for more guest posts this fall, so drop me a line @midwestguest on Twitter, contact me through my Facebook page or via email to dominique (at) practicalprose.com

Sunflowers at Detroit's Eastern Market...because they make me happy

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Midwest Guest discovers Ohio

I'm excited to announce that I recently joined the team of bloggers at the Ohio Tourism Division's Discovering Ohio blog.

My first story for Discovering Ohio is Punderson's Haunted History, which is a collection of spooky stories about the manor house lodge at Punderson State Park.

The manor house looks especially spooky to me during winter

I'm working on several more stories to post at Discovering Ohio in upcoming months, many of them with a connection to the state's history.

Yes, I know I live in Michigan, but Ohio is so close to us that Tim and I find ourselves making frequent trips south to spend a day or two on the road in Ohio. We've always found that state's history particularly interesting for its role in the westward expansion that led to development of states like Michigan and those further to the west.

You'll find many stories about our Ohio travels here at Midwest Guest, and I'm looking forward to discovering more great stories there to share with Discovering Ohio and Midwest Guest readers in the future.

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Midwest Guest turns three today!

Detroit Renaissance Center

The headline says it all--it is Midwest Guest's third anniversary today.

It's interesting to look at my first blog post from August 1, 2008, and to see how closely I've managed to stay with my stated vision for this blog. I always wanted to write about regional travel in the Midwest, even long before I began blogging, and I'm still far from exhausting the subject three years later.

Tim's brother-in-law was among the first people to offer me a suggestion via the comments on that initial post, and if you check out last Tuesday's post, you'll see that we recently did get to PNC Park in Pittsburgh to catch a Pirates' baseball game.

Thanks for the suggestion, Michael.

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and suggestions over these past three years.

Now, where shall I think about going next?

© Dominique King 2011 All rights reserved

Passports with Purpose: "Everything is possible"

So, how many travel bloggers does it take to build a village?

Well, check out the latest update over at Passports with Purpose, where you'll see that over 300 caring folks united behind the goal of raising $50,000 within a month to build an entire village are proving that "everything is possible".

We're on the verge of seeing our travel blogging community's one-month effort provide a lifetime of hope and self-sufficiency for at least 25 of India's poorest families as we reach our $50,000 fundraising goal.

Better yet? We have a few more days to continue the effort and make the future even brighter for those in our village as we surpass the $50,000 milestone!

How can you help?

Travel bloggers ask our readers and friends to donate $10 to enter a drawing for the prize of their choice from a great list of prizes donated by bloggers and their sponsors.

There are so many great prizes like travel getaways, travel gear, electronic goodies, and truly unique things (like a train set or ukulele) on the list, that you'll want to enter more than one drawing. No problem! You can enter a drawing for each, and every, $10 donation between now and December 13.

Note as you bid for prizes that shipping restrictions, terms, and blackout dates might apply in some cases. PwP will notify prize winners on December 17, 2010.

All funds raised (minus a small Paypal fee) go to building our village in India through Friends of LAFTI, a 501(c)3 organization. Check out the Passports with Purpose site for more information about LAFTI, PwP sponsors, and the fund raising drive's progress.

You need to hurry, though. We wrap up this year's Passports with Purpose drive December 13, so you've only got a few days to place those bids and help us make a lifetime of difference for so many others.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Passports with Purpose: It takes a community to build a village

So, how many travel bloggers does it take to build a village?

We'll soon know the answer to that question as dedicated travel bloggers across the globe work together to accomplish the goal of building an entire village in India as the third annual Passports with Purpose project.

PwP, created by four Seattle-based travel bloggers, harnesses the talent and social reach of the travel blogging community to make positive change in the world. The group started three years ago with the modest goal of raising $5,000 to benefit Heifer International and emboldened by their success in meeting and beating that goal by about $2,500 in 2008 with a hastily organized drive, they set their sights even higher for the next year.

In 2009, PwP raised $30,000 to build an entire school in rural Cambodia. You can see a few photos of the completed school and its eager students here.

This year, the PwP beneficiary is the Land for Tillers' Freedom (LAFTI), a non-profit group based in India seeking to help some of that country's poorest families achieve self-sufficiency by helping them establish strong farming communities.

How will the PwP crew accomplish this?

The group asks their readers and friends to donate $10 to enter into a drawing for the prize of their choice from a great list of prizes furnished by bloggers and their sponsors.

Want to enter more than one drawing? No problem! For each $10 donation you make between now and December 13, Passports with Purpose enters you into the raffle for a prize of your choice. Note as you bid for prizes that shipping restrictions, terms, and blackout dates might apply in some cases.

PwP will notify prize winners on December 17, 2010.

All funds raised (minus a small Paypal fee) go to building our village in India through Friends of LAFTI, a 501(c)3 organization.

There are plenty of great drawings to enter as the prize list goes live today, so check it out and help us build that village!

Thank you PwP sponsors: BootsnAll, LiveMocha, Round the World with Us, Hostelling International, Quintess, Raveable, TravelPost, and Uptake.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: The Bean and Me in Chicago

Chicago's massive "Bean" sculpture, the affectionate nickname for Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate sculpture in the city's waterfront Millennium Park, offers endlessly fascinating photo possibilities.

I included a handful of my favorite "Bean" images in yesterday's post, Chicago's Cloud Gate invites interaction, where I wrote about the sculpture, its meaning, and how it draws visitors into interacting with it.

Today, I want to share a few more Cloud Gate images and thoughts about photographing it.

 

There always seems to be a crowd around the sculpture on days best suited for taking photos, so people will invariably be part of any pictures you take. Having the crowd as part of the scene will give your photos a real sense of scale and a good idea of just how big "The Bean" is in relation to its surroundings.

 

 

One of the photos I posted yesterday looked almost like a black and white photo, although I shot it in color. I'm posting an alternate copy of it here that I created as a grey scale image in Lightroom.

 

 

I shot this image from a window in a room on the upper floor of a building across the street from the park. Look closely and you can see the birds perched on top of the sculpture!

 

 

Here I am shooting a quick self-portrait of myself as reflected in the sculpture.

 

 

Some of the coolest shots I got came when I took pictures from underneath the sculpture, where the concave surface created some great abstract-like images.

 

 

One thing that surprised me about my Cloud Gate images when I started going through them was the fact that all but one of the images I posted with today's post and yesterday's post were taken with a trusty little Canon PowerShot point-and-shoot. While I enjoy using my larger Canon EOS DSLR camera, I find that the smaller camera often gives me nice images more than suitable for using with my blog posts.

Check out my story, Shooting photographs for your blog, for a few tips and thoughts about the subject and a quick review of the book Confessions of a Compact Camera Shooter: Get Professional Quality Photos with your Compact Camera by Rick Sammon.

Thanks to Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby for creating and coordinating Photo Friday to link travel photos and blog posts across the Web.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Things To Do
Chicago

Midwest Guest hits the terrific twos today!

Mesopotamia, Ohio

Forget the "terrible twos"!

Midwest Guest reaches its two-year anniversary today, and I've had a terrific time sharing stories and photos of some of my favorite places, people, things, and events with you. I hope you've enjoyed the resulting articles as much as I've enjoyed creating this blog over the past 24 months.

Please let me know how I'm doing, and thanks so much for stopping by to read Midwest Guest.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Shooting photographs for your blog

I'm flattered when readers tell me that they enjoy my photos here at Midwest Guest, but I'm not a professional photographer by any stretch of the imagination.

I've had to take my own photos for stories many times over the years, and I'd like to pass a few things along to folks who worry that they don't have the time or talent to produce acceptable images for their own blogs.

Taking photos and working with them in a photo editing program can take a little time, but learning how to do so gives you more creative control over your content and how you chose to showcase your own words.

I spent several years writing columns for a chain of local weekly newspapers where the editor generally assigned the one photographer at the newspaper to news stories, sporting events, and big feature subjects.

Columnists usually relied on photos provided by those seeking publicity for events or ran their columns without photos. Neither option appealed to me.

I began taking many of the photos for my columns to provide the needed graphic elements to break up the print blocks and make it more appealing for readers.

I often took photos like this one of April McCrumb, who owns Catching Fireflies in Berkley, Michigan, to illustrate my newspaper columns

I owned a Sony digital camera-one of those little Mavicas that recorded your photos onto a 3.5" floppy disc. Those little cameras were still pretty revolutionary in the late 1990s, but they were slow and resultant images turned out grainy and unacceptably pixilated if you tried to increase the image's size very much. They worked all right for newspaper photos, where newsprint's rough often resulted in muddy images anyway, but only if the photographer was aware of the camera's limitations and compensated for them.

The newspaper eventually bought a digital camera for reporters to use, although one of them was shocked to learn it was a newer version of the same camera I had when she told me that my camera took much better photos than the newspaper's camera!

My photos are often acceptable to use as the small versions I use here at the blog, even if they may not be sharp enough or interesting enough to look good blown up or reproduced on glossy paper--and they allow me to advance my story lines with corresponding images.

 

How do you get started learning about photography?

 

• Take a photowalk. Check out my recent post about an informal Detroit-area photowalk I recently attended, or see the Worldwide Photowalk site to find a photowalk in your local area.

  
  
  Image taken at a recent Detroit Photowalk at Cranbrook Gardens in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

   

• Check Flickr to find photography groups that may hold shows, classes or other events in your local area. Here in the Detroit area, we have Flickr groups like Photowalks Detroit, which hosts local photowalks, and Exposure.Detroit, which hosts free photo exhibitions and other events around town.

   

• Read a few books geared to beginning photographers if you're new to taking photos. Tim has a short list of suggested reading for beginning photographers at The Wandering Photographer.

 

I'd add Confessions of a Compact Camera Shooter: Get Professional Quality Photos with Your Compact Camera by Rick Sammon to Tim's list of suggested reading.

Although Sammon's book talks specifically about using compact cameras and Photoshop Elements (while I often shoot with an older version of a point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot when I'm not using my big digital SLR, and I use Lightroom for photo editing), I still found plenty of useful information in this book.

Sammon encourages readers to experiment and to always carry a camera, sharing my feeling that a pocketable camera can be a viable alternative when going somewhere where lugging a big SLR would be cumbersome or get in the way of enjoying whatever you're out to do.

Sammon's side-by-side comparison shots of scenes taken with SLRs and compact cameras nicely illustrate what works best with the little cameras, what doesn't work well, and how to work with the small cameras' limitations.

 

And here are a few other tips I've picked up over the years:

 

• Always look for signs to photograph when you're out shooting. I learned to do so long ago after reading that such photos could serve as nice title slides for a show of your images. I also use sign photos to help me identify photos as I organize them after returning home or to advance a story as I'm putting it online. I also often use photos of historical markers or other informational signs in lieu of written notes when I'm out shooting.

 





• Working with a hand-held camera in low-light? Taking a deep breath just before you shoot the photo, and holding it during the shot, can help steady the camera by eliminating a bit of the shake caused by the movement of your own breathing.

   

  
  
  

• Don't have a photo? Sometimes you just have to get creative, like I did when I took this shot of toy ice resurfacing machines on my front porch to illustrate my story about a college hockey tournament.

 

• Always remember that one of the beauties of digital photography is that you can take as many shots as you want and simply erase the ones you don't like.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Midwest Guest is featured travel blog at Raveable.com this month

I was excited to see a tweet from @raveable yesterday on Twitter congratulating me for being the featured travel blogger on Raveable.com this week.

Raveable.com is a site featuring hotel reviews that links to a variety of travel blogs to complement and supplement their hotel information with personal accounts of attractions and information near rated hotels.

Each week, Raveable.com staff selects one of its featured travel bloggers to place on its homepage spotlight. This week, it is my turn in the spotlight!

You can check out my Raveable.com blogger page here. Be sure to check out the other featured Raveable travel bloggers, too.

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved