I showed up at the March salon hoping that some of my good fortune from February would continue. No such luck. Prints: Open monochrome In the Race to Win Last fall I printed black and white versions of several images from last summer’s bike race. This seemed like one of the better ones, so I Read More …
There are groups of people, including a friend of mine, who occasionally hide out and spin steel wool all night. (You know who you are, Jim!) This has made me extremely jealous for a long time because it looks so incredibly cool. What is steel wool spinning? At its most basic, steel wool spinning involves Read More …
I’ve never been a sports photographer. I’m not particularly interested in sports, so there has never been an incentive to learn how to photograph sports. Sure, I shot a few basketball and football games when I was in high school and college, but mostly because I was there anyway to chat with friends. But sometimes Read More …
The Minnesota Street Rod Association’s Back to the 50s festival (it seems like so much more than a car show), is one of the largest vintage car shows in the world. That means the options for photography are almost overwhelming. So, sometimes, focusing on the details is in order. Fortunately there is a seemingly never-ending Read More …
I was out shooting bridge pictures one evening and found myself across the river from a heron rookery. A straight shoot of it was fine, but kind of boring, so I played with it bit to get a scene reminiscent of an old-fashioned horror movie. Too strange? Or did I need to go farther? I Read More …
Minnesota’s North Shore is gorgeous in the spring, with plenty of spring flowers and rushing water. Unfortunately, I never seem to get up there in spring to enjoy those things! This year I decided to make it happen, so I signed up for a North Shore photography workshop with Don Tredinnick and Peter Berman of Read More …
Earlier this spring I shot a series of photos of a fish shack along Stoney Point north of Duluth, Minnesota. It was a cloudy, damp day with occasional rain, but I think I got a few acceptable shots. They’re fine, but most aren’t particularly interesting, so I decided to play with them a bit and Read More …
For whatever reason I forgot that I had my neutral density filter in my bag when I was shooting along the Baptism River in northern Minnesota last weekend. It would have been nice to use, as it was a bright morning. Still, I was able to use a pretty broad range of shutter speeds. 1/320th Read More …
As is probably obvious, I tend to be very literal and way too serious, traits that carry over into my photography. Generally my goal as a photographer is to recreate exactly what I saw. That’s a necessity for a photojournalist, but not exactly the recipe for inspired art. This doesn’t mean I don’t edit my Read More …
I’m still participating in the Saint Paul Camera Club. As in April, I was traveling when prints were due for May, so I didn’t have any printed submissions. However, I did submit three images for the month’s Night Photography digital competition. Initially I was really excited about Night Photography as a theme, but as I Read More …
I was out of town when the deadline came around for submitting images for the April Salon, so I only competed in the digital competition. (Unlike prints, you can submit digital images without actually being present.) I was pretty excited about this competition because the theme for the month was Minnesota and Wisconsin Architecture. I Read More …
Intense backlighting from the late afternoon sun made shooting a challenge at the Seven Mile Bridges (there are two bridges, a modern highway bridge and the remains of a historic bridge) in the Florida Keys, but I also loved the way the light both illuminated and obscured the bridges. I think black and white enhances Read More …
The other week I stayed at a really lovely B&B in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The Green Heron was one of those places where pretty much everything is perfect. . . but I was mostly obsessed with the bathroom tiles. See, the simple, elegant bathroom had blue tiles in the shower which, when viewed through the Read More …
Earlier this winter I took a photo class at the Minnesota Zoo. Zoos are both easy and difficult places to practice “wildlife” photography. On one hand, the animals are always nearby and have limited options for completely escaping your view indefinitely (if you are willing to wait long enough, you WILL see them, unlike on Read More …
It was a very still sub-zero morning today — but with sunshine, making it a perfect day for more frozen bubble photos. I was a lot happier with today’s shots. The sun helped, but yesterday’s practice session also helped a lot. I learned a couple more things today: You really can just drop the bubbles Read More …
A local photographer gave a class on photographing frozen bubbles today, so (of course) I went. I learned what I did wrong last year (making really big bubbles instead of little ones), tips I can incorporate into this year’s attempts (place the bubbles on the snow to photograph them and shoot them from below if Read More …
Last winter people starting posting all sorts of fascinating images of frozen bubbles, so (of course) I had to try it myself. I looked online and found a bunch of recipes for bubble solution which we used as a basis for our own solution of dish soap, Karo syrup, and water. Then we went out Read More …
In my last couple posts on my zoom burst experiments , I was focused on what I could do in the field to create interesting effects. But once I started editing my shots in Lightroom, I realized how much of a difference post-processing could make. Even simple, relatively minor changes, have an impact. For example, Read More …
When processing my zoom burst shots from Banning State Park, I found one set of images that made me feel a bit nauseous from motion sickness. And, no, I wasn’t editing in the car! Most of the images I shot were taken at a good distance not only from the subject, but from everything in Read More …
Last winter my friend Jim Ericson, of Superior Imagery, posted an awesome Christmas shot using a technique most often referred to as a “zoom burst.” Shortly thereafter I found some amazing fireworks photos done using this technique (which I can’t find again now) and just a few weeks ago the local photography Facebook page included Read More …
Light clouds. . .