I’ve been playing around this past weekend trying to teach myself both new photography techniques (high dynamic range photography) and learning more Photoshop CS3 skills. I designed a couple of images for my computer desktop that I wanted to share with you. Both are available at Flickr and can be downloaded in the following sizes: 1900×1200; 1344×840; 1280×800; and 1024×768. I hope you enjoy them, they are some of my first attempts and I know I have a learning curve to conquer.

You can download them at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/10563628@N04/sets/72157613539506625/detail/

One of my favorite sites to browse is AbsoluteDSM.com, so I am excited to tell you about their sleek new look. Josh, Ryan and others spent the last several months building the new site. Their hard work and effort really shows off. Below are some screen shots from each of their main pages and a brief description of what you can find.

To begin with check out their new home page! The home page features a new search engine; and six tab groupings that make navigating the site a breeze. On the home page you can easily see the last three forum posts, the five most recent project page updates and even the latest blog posting from LivingDowntownDesMoines.com. 

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One would not usually associate a civil war battle having been waged hardly 5 miles from downtown Des Moines. This was not a battle between union and confederate soldiers. This was a battle to save lives and give freedom to those who were imprisoned and enslaved by the confederate states.

James Cunningham Jordan is considered the first white settler in West Des Moines and the chief conductor of the underground railroad. Jordan grew up on a farm in what is now West Virgina. It was an area where slavery was the norm for the economy and everyday life.

When he was in his teens, he joined a party hunting for escaped slaves from a nearby plantation. After the slaves were caught, no matter how much the slaves begged for mercy and deliverance, they were dragged, if need be, back to the masters homes and a life of slavery. The sickening experience changed Jordan forever.

Jordan’s 1850 Italian Gothic house in West Des Moines had six rooms. Jordan made the decisions about when it was safe for the slaves to leave his house and move along a safe route to freedom. Escaping slaves on their way to Canada usually stayed in the kitchen or hid in the basement of the six room house. At one time as many as 24 slaves were in the house at the same time.

The famous abolitionist, John Brown also stayed at Jordan’s house on December 17, 1858. Several slaves were traveling through Tabor, Iowa with their masters when Brown helped them to escape. In February 1859, Brown again stayed at the house while he planned a raid on the arsenal at Harpers’s Ferry. Ten months later he would be hanged for leading the raid.

The Jordan House serves both as a museum for West Des Moines and as the office of West Des Moines Historical Society.

Continuing with our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week, this week’s picture comes from Flickr user, Jeff Tweedy a.k.a Photo Logic and is of the Scott Avenue Bridge with the ice and snow backed up under it.

Jeff says: “The reason that I enjoy photographing Des Moines is that everything is so accessible. From the riverwalk to the skywalk system and all of our public parks rich in wildlife and activity. You can just get out there and take a walk and be inspired at every turn.”

Check out previous pictures in of our series, Des Moines Picture of the Week.

A couple of weeks ago, I snapped this image in an ally behind 4th Street. In playing around with HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography, I kept looking at this photo and wondering what it did all mean. Question one, why is there a second floor door that opens onto the edge of the building? Question two, why did Java Joe’s paint over the word “SHOP” in the photograph. Question three, why is the floor above Java Joe’s empty, this would make a cool loft space?

The American Republic Insurance building located at the corner of 6th Avenue and Watson Powell Jr. Way is a one of the more interesting architectural buildings in downtown Des Moines.

The building reminds me of a filing cabinet. If you look at it from the front, it looks like file drawers that can be pulled out and then look at the side of the building and notice the legs that the filing cabinet stands on.

The building was built in 1965 and designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and is eight stories tall. The building features an incredible collection of contemporary sculpture in their court yard and eastern entrance areas.

As Des Moines continues to look into future urban transportation solutions such as trams or light rail, here are some examples from other cities on a either a new from of transportation or improving existing transportation methods.

First up, from Madscar City in Abu Dhabi:

This is the PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) podcar from Zagato, a fully electric and fully automated taxi system set to shuttle people around Masdar City, an eco-utopia under development in Abu Dhabi that pledges to have no carbon footprint and no real roads, leaving these to buzz along underground at a leisurely 15 mph. Unlike other prototype autonomous taxis these will initially only be able to go between set locations, but the hope is that in the not too distant future they’ll take you to within 100 meters of any location in the city.

Next up, from  the city of Oslo:

The City of Oslo is adding “minor modifications” to 80 of the city’s public busses will allow them to run on biomethane fuel produced from raw sewage. The buses are apparently much quieter, and are more eco-friendly with zero net carbon emissions. The leader of the project, Ole Jakob Johansen, also says that the city should save about €.40 per liter on fueling the busses. The trial is part of Oslo’s plan to be carbon-neutral by 2050, and they hope to soon have the entire fleet of 400 rolling clean.

Both of these cities have goals to be carbon-netural by a certain date. Does Des Moines have this type of goal with our city’s transporation system? If not, why not?

Having lived downtown for almost a year now, I can tell you one item that’s hard to do without is a grocery cart. I purchased a grocery cart right before closing on my downtown condo as I new I would need an efficient way to bring lots of bags of groceries or heavier items up to my unit.

Even though, I’m only short distance in the skywalk from my parking garage, this cart comes in so handy. I keep it in the trunk of my car since it folds up flat and then it’s available anytime I need it.

I researched a number of carts, and found the Polder Grocery Cart to be one of the more recommended carts. I could order online or I was lucky enough to find a local store, The Easy Living Store in Urbandale, carries the Polder Cart in stock. 

So if you either recently moved downtown or are looking to move downtown, I think purchasing some sort of grocery cart would be a wise choice.

He didn’t learn his lesson. Stephen Blumberg was convicted of burglary again in Des Moines in 1997, after being charged with stealing antique furnishings from a house in Des Moines. He had been out of prison barely two years after serving a 4 ½ year sentence for a previous conviction in Des Moines. What was he looking for at the house? Blumberg had an obsession for collecting antique objects. He started collecting antiques from condemned houses in his youth. One of the collections found at his house were nearly 50,000 door knobs.

Over more than twenty years, Stephen Blumberg stole more than 23,000 rare books from 268 libraries including 10,000 manuscripts from 140 or more universities in 45 states and Canada. Their value has been placed at about $20 million, making it the largest theft of rare books in the country. Blumberg is considered to be the number one thief of books in American history. He would steal the books in any way that he could. He was a James Bond and Mission Impossible rolled into one. He would crawl through anything including elevator shafts, ventilation ducts, and do whatever necessary to elude alarms and security guards. He had one thing on his mind and nothing was going to stop him. He didn’t want just any book. A certain library would have a specific rare book or manuscript for which he obsessed.

More about Stephen Blumberg can be found in the book “A Gentle Madness” by Nicholas A. Basbanes.