I took this photo one morning a few weeks ago. There's a path along the east side of the Mississippi that I like to run along, and I just couldn't pass up this perfect fall morning. I decided to bring my digital camera with me because I knew there'd be some beautiful scenes what with the rising sun and peaking fall colors.

I chose this photo because I have a thing for reflections, and the lines make it very interesting. I like how you can see both the serenity of nature, with the trees and calm water, as well as the movement of people and industry with the boat.

After looking at this picture and admiring how beautiful the city and the surrounding nature and river all are, I thought more in-depth about the picture. I like that the river is in the front of the picture and the city is smaller in the background. It made me think about how without this amazing river...and water in general, that huge, major, well-known, money-making, corporate, industrial, important, (etc.) city would not be able to function. We are nothing without water and neither are the big cities that America loves and often relies on. I really love that the connection between the river and the city is seen in such a simple picture.

I took this shot in a pool with my brothers. It seems that ever since I can recall, the deciding factor of which hotel to stay at when my family and I went on vacation (other than price) was whether or not it had a pool. The deeper the better.

I chose this photo because it shows a view of water that we normally don't get to see. It also conveys a sense of this huge availability of water; we're swimming in it, using it for recreational purposes. Never mind the huge amount of chlorine and other chemicals that go into it, or how many thousands of gallons of freshwater are cycled through that thing every day. It just seems like a waste, especially if it's right by another source of swimmable water like a lake.

I have a waterproof digital camera that I used to take this. It's fantastic - you can even use it with a flash. I liked how the quick shutter speed captured the rising bubbles in this blue underworld.

For the previous blog, I took a picture of the Mississippi River featuring the Minneapolis skyline in the background. When I learned that we had to take another photo of water for this blog, i realized that I wanted to take a picture of the river again, but with a shot that didn't feature the skyline. With that in mind, I decided to take a photo looking at the east bank of the University of Minnesota from the pedestrian bridge over the Mississippi. The photo that I chose for this blog made an impact on me in two different ways. The first way, is that it shows the natural beauty of the city before it became urbanized. In other words, the trees hanging off the side of the bluff that the campus sits and over the Mississippi, show what the Twin Cities looked like before humans had an impact on the area. The other effect that the shot had on me was that it reminded me of a state park in Illinois called Starved Rock. The park lies along the Illinois River, and it looks very similar to that of what is shown in the photo. This just amazes me that there is a place in a major metropolitan area that retained its natural beauty and looks like a state park located in rural Illinois.

This is a picture I took down by the Mississippi River when our class went for a walk. Im not really sure where I was, I just followed the path and found myself here. I picked out this photo to publish on the blog because it struck me how profoundly ugly it would be if there was not water present. Think about it. Without the river water in this photo, if it were just a landscape of dirt between the retaining walls, the area in this photograph would appear to be little more than a dump. Water has a natural beauty to it that makes any picture better. Think for a moment about how beautiful a satellite photo of the earth is. Now imagine that same photograph, if the earth were "the brown planet".
Just some food for thought.

--- Peter Edge, 10/10/10

While exploring down by the river on Monday, I came across a huge concrete cylinder that was sitting in the woods. I decided to take a picture of the discolorations on the concrete that appeared to have been created by dripping water. It was challenging to get the different colors to show up clearly in the picture, so I had to take multiple shots using different camera settings before I finally found a setting that worked well for capturing this image. I thought this image was interesting because although the water is no longer on the concrete, the picture clearly shows where water has been in the past.

I was walking down the "Scholar's Walk" at the University of Minnesota and came to this building that had pools of water. It just so happened that I was carrying my girlfriend's camera, again. I snapped shots here and there but upon my examination I noticed a whirlpool! I quickly took off the lens cap and snapped the shot. As you can see, it was a victorious day for me against my previous water shots! One shot only...Nice...

When I went down to the river I was looking for an area that would have a good mix of vegetation and water and I also wanted to include a cool angle of a bridge. Down in the sand I found a great area where the was a mix of red and green leaves which captured the season perfectly. I had to take quite a few shots in order to get the coloring just right.