Midwest Guest

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

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

Midwest Guest is Site of the Day at Travelblogsites.com

I opened my email earlier this morning to find a pleasant surprise-a message from TravelPod.com community manager Louise Brown telling me that Midwest Guest earned their "site of the day" spot for today!

Travelblogsites.com is a directory of independent travel blogs affiliated with TravelPod.com, which became the first site to offer travel blog hosting on the Web in 1997.

You can check out a nice review of Midwest Guest here (thanks, Louise!).

Be sure to check out the list of other featured travel bloggers while you're at the site, too!

© Dominique King 2010 All rights reserved

Join Passports with Purpose in planting seeds for success

Travel bloggers working together through this year's Passports with Purpose fund raising drive quickly reached their goal of raising $13,000 to build a school in rural Cambodia.

Passports with Purpose is working with American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC), the organization founded by American journalist Bernie Krisher in 1993 and responsible for the construction of more than 400 primary and secondary schools in rural Cambodia.

That's all well and good, but what school is complete without a school nurse? Plus, how does a child without access to plentiful clean water and nutritious food concentrate on their studies?

With a week left in the Passports with Purpose fund raising session left, and plenty of great prizes to bid on, let's plant the seeds for serious success at our school by raising an additional $13,000 to provide a school nurse, a garden and gardener, a cook, and a water filter.

Check out Passports with Purpose's progress toward the fundraising goal by checking out the widget on the right-hand side of my blog.

Better yet, go to the Passports with Purpose site, select the prizes you'd love to win and help give the gift of a brighter future to children whose prospects are dim without the resources to become educated and build better lives for themselves.

For each ten dollar donation you make between now and December 21, Passports with Purpose enters you into the raffle for your prize of choice. Note as you bid for prizes that shipping restrictions, terms, and blackout dates might apply in some cases.

One hundred percent of the donations go directly to AAfC, a 501 (c)(3) charity.

Passports with Purpose will announce the prize winners on January 5, 2010.

© Dominique King 2009 All right reserved

Passports with Purpose drive to build school launches today

Travel bloggers demonstrated the reach and potential of harnessing blogging and social media to help others with the successful Passports with Purpose last year, tackling the even more ambitious goal of building a school with the launch the second annual Passports with Purpose drive today.

Passports with Purpose founders and travel bloggers Beth Whitman, Debbie Dubrow, Michelle Duffy, and Pam Mandel, inspired by the success of other blogging groups to raise money for worthy causes, launched Passports with Purpose in late 2008. The group raised $7400 last year, with very little lead time or advance planning, to benefit Heifer International.

This year, the philanthropic quartet chose American Assistance for Cambodia (AAfC) as the 2009 Passports with Purpose beneficiary.  The AAfC is an independent and non-profit organization dedicated to improving opportunities for the youth and rural poor in Cambodia.

Passports with Purpose co-founder, Debbie Dubrow of Delicious Baby, visited Cambodia and says that rebuilding the country's economy and intellectual society destroyed by the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s remains a strong desire among Cambodians, but limited resources to do so in rural Cambodia make those goals ever elusive. Lacking access to education, children in rural area are at risk of falling prey to poverty or becoming victims of sex trafficking.

American journalist Bernie Krisher founded AAfC in 1993, and the group lists the construction of more than 400 primary and secondary schools in rural Cambodia as one of its major accomplishments.

Those familiar with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof may know of his personal effort to build a school through AAfC.

AAfC has a donor pledged to foot half the cost of building a school, and this year's Passports with Purpose fundraiser aims to raise the $13,000 necessary to complete the project through raffling some great prizes at the Passports with Purpose site.

Check out the Passports with Purpose Web site for more information about the group and how you can help.

Select the prizes you'd love to win, and go to the Passports with Purpose link to make your donation. For each ten dollar donation you make between now and December 21, Passports with Purpose enters you into the raffle for your prize of choice. Note as you bid for prizes that shipping restrictions, terms, and blackout dates might apply in some cases.

One hundred percent of the donations go directly to AAfC, a 501 (c)(3) charity.

Passports with Purpose will announce the prize winners on January 5, 2010.

Meanwhile, you can keep track of Passport with Purpose's progress toward the goal of building a school by checking out the widget on the right-hand side of my blog, or visit the Passports with Purpose site.

Last year's prize list included some pretty fabulous items--many things that would make a great gift for someone on your list, even as you help give the gift of a brighter future to children whose prospects are dim without the resources to become educated and build better lives for themselves.

Help the travel blogging community help others, any maybe find some great travel blogs you'll continue to enjoy year round in the process!

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Travel bloggers exchange info, ideas at Chicago TBEX ‘09

Chicago did itself proud as host city for Travel Blog Exchange ‘09, rolling out the welcome mat for a small army of enthusiastic travel bloggers and making our first travel blogger meet up a rousing success.

Debbie, Kim, Maren, Carrie, Shanna and the rest of the TBEX team and sponsors did a great job with this first effort. I can’t wait to see what they do for an encore!

Check out excellent TBEX recaps by Jessie Voigts at Wandering Educators and Nancy Brown at What a Trip, or take a peek behind the scenes with the hard-working conference team with Debbie Dubrow at Delicious Baby.

I’ll use my space here to post a few of my impressions, what I might like to see at future TBEX meet ups, a few post-convention notes and thank yous.

Kim, Maren and Debbie managed to pull together an amazing group of speakers, sponsors and attendees to give us a great opportunity to meet face-to-face with folks we’d already come to know online, meet new colleagues and participate in forums more closely tailored to our interests and needs as travel bloggers.

Even more amazing? The fact that the TBEX team fielded enough sponsor support to offer this event to travel bloggers for the dirt-cheap price of F-R-E-E!

Hats off to ExploreChicago.org, BootsnAll Travel, Vail Resorts, Home Away, TravelPod, Savvy Navigator and Gogo Inflight Internet for sponsoring the conference.

The folks at Gogo gave us a special discount code for inflight Internet service to pass along to our readers. If you’re planning a trip via air before the end of August 2009, be sure to check to see if Gogo is available on your flight. Use this code 158FLF7365 for a sweet 50 percent off one-time use of Gogo’s service. Check out Donna Hull’s post at My Itchy Travel Feet for more about redeeming this offer.

I enjoyed talking with Savvy Navigator’s Jeff and hearing about a bright spot for the travel industry as more states allow gay marriage and many of those newly married couples seek gay-friendly honeymoon destinations.

The team at explorechicago.org made our travels a lot easier by offering extended concierge service during the conference and a ready supply of suggestions as we planned our trip to the Windy City. I used their Twitter-based advisors @explorechicago to help me select a hotel for the post-conference part of my stay, to find some great things for me and Tim to do in Chicago, for the tip about free night at the Art Institute the first night I was in town and for some live advice about the best walking route from the Sheraton to the Art Institute.

I haven’t even had a chance to really go through the incredible backpack of swag we got at TBEX, but I already know I’m all about that offer of a free beginner level language program from Rosetta Stone! I can’t wait to see what else is in that bag.

The conference itself was most valuable as an opportunity for live networking and a way to learn what concerns I shared with other travel bloggers. I’ve been at it for a year now, and it can often be tough working alone—especially when you’re trying to learn so many new things as quickly as you can, while still offering readers quality content and maintaining your own enthusiasm for blogging.

 I’ve always wanted to become a regional travel writer, and I’ve found blogging offered me a unique opportunity to redirect my writing career away from stories about local businesses for local print markets with ever-shrinking freelance opportunities—if they even managed to stay afloat. It appeared to me that even writers with seemingly solid print gigs needed to learn new media skills as more and more content moved online.

Post-TBEX session break by a Chicago Cultural Center stairwell

I found the TBEX sessions about working with PR people and video especially interesting as Midwest Guest’s audience grows and I consider what I need to “take it to the next level”.

I’ve read quite a few post-TBEX comments and posts, and it looks like there may be some sort of consensus growing around a couple of my own TBEX wish list items: a longer stand-alone conference (vs. a one-day lagniappe to BlogHer), as well as sessions about SEO and monetizing your work. I also filled out Kim’s survey and suggested that building in a “travel experience” (a river tour in Chicago would have been a great trip for all of us, for instance) or some free time during future TBEX conferences so we can explore and do what travel bloggers do best when they travel—collect fodder for future blog posts!

The best decision I made about my time in Chicago? Booking a few more days in the city so Tim could join me and we could explore Chicago on our own. Expect to see plenty of posts here about our Chicago adventures in coming months!

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Midwest Guest is one today!

Navy Pier fireworks, Chicago

Midwest Guest reaches a big milestone today as I celebrate its first anniversary.

I originally started my Midwest travel blog with little idea of what to expect. It’s been a bit of a learning curve, but it’s also been a lot of fun along the way.

We just returned from our week in Chicago—several days devoted to the BlogHer conference and our travelblogging TBEX session, and several more days just seeing the city—so the real celebration will have to wait until I finish unpacking and catching up with things like mail, laundry, organizing my Chicago photos and writing new stories for Midwest Guest.

Besides, I’m thinking a 13-month celebration has a real lucky sound to it.

© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved

Photo Friday: Chicago in winter

When we’ve visited Chicago in the past, it’s always been during our long Thanksgiving weekend. That means it’s always been cold, windy and sometimes snowy.

We’ve enjoyed some warm memories of the city—visiting museums, holiday shopping, watching the Santa Claus parade one year, seeing ice skaters at Millennium Park, strolling through Christkindlmarket and hitting somewhere like Buddy Guy’s for some great blues music. But I’ve always wanted to visit Chicago during the summer.

This week, I get my wish as I attend the BlogHer and TBEX conventions!

Meanwhile, here are a couple of shots taken from our room at the Hilton a couple of Novembers ago. The city looks beautiful, even in November, but I’m expecting a little more sun and warmth this trip!

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 2009 All rights reserved