Tiny Dancer
I am going on my third full day in New Orleans and I still haven’t found what I would called a “brilliant” photo. Nor has one found me. In analyzing this, I realized that when I’m not attending the photo conference I am at, I am more tourist than photographer. And there’s a difference. The [...]
Bourbon Street Musicians
There was very strong sunlight backlighting this bluegrass group and I wasn’t sure how my camera would handle it, but I think it turned out OK. I wouldn’t normally shoot into the sun as much as I did in this photo but I guess this is a good example of the “what have you got [...]
Who Dat?
How about a group portrait of 4 of my second year Photo/Media students? And how about posing them in the famous Lafayette Cemetery #1 in the Garden District of New Orleans? Perfect!
Congratulations!
Last night the city of Watertown, the Watertown Chamber of Commerce and Focus Watertown hosted a celebration for Lake Area Technical Institute (LATI). As you may know, LATI was recently named one of the top five two-year colleges in the United States by the Aspen Insitute. Pictured here is Gary Williams, mayor of Watertown and [...]
Humane Society?
Compositionally, this isn’t a very good photo. But journalistically it gets by because it does tell a story, even if you didn’t know that is was taken along the Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain. It is a photo of a mendicant (more rudely, a beggar) and his best friends. I suspect that some may ask [...]
Melissa
Melissa looks a little sad here but she was one of the more ebullient subjects I had the pleasure to photograph. She was a dancer and actively involved in theater and made posing very simple. And she had many great looks. Here, we are in an abandoned building in Gary, SD, in 2002. I had [...]
John
This is a first in my photographic career: I tried taking photos of a child in the studio. But this is not just any child; it is John, son of Kelly, one of my second year photo students. At first I thought John was going to be a tough customer but thanks to Holly, another [...]
Darcie
I took this portrait the first year I was serious about senior portrait photography. That was almost 10 years ago. The camera was the Canon 1D, which was a groundbreaking digital camera. It cost $5500 and had a whopping 4.4 megapixel sensor! I had a lot to learn about photographing people back in 2002 but [...]
The Photographer’s Ghost
Yes, the man in the chairs is me. (I struggled hard with the grammar of this sentence.) What you are looking at is my rudimentary first attempt at light painting, which uses a long shutter speed and a flashlight of some sort. I didn’t paint my head because it was very early in morning and [...]
On Location
Here are a few of my favorite people in one of my favorite places. The place: the old Redlin farmstead 15 miles north of Watertown. The people: Kendra, Sara, Ashley, McKenzie, Kelly, Holly and Alli (sitting). These are 6 of my second year Photo/Media students at LATI and one of my first year students (Alli). [...]
Breaking Ground
OK, so in a minor way I am breaking ground in this blog because I am A)publishing a painting and B)I am posting someone else’s work. Why, you ask? The answer is that I am assigning a “Copy Da Vinci” portrait assignment to my studio photography students and I thought this might also teach you [...]
Emily
This is a photo that I took a few years ago and used as a retouching demonstration for my Studio Photography class. It takes about 20 minutes per portrait to do the things I think need to be done, though I have Photoshop actions and filters that would do some of the same things in [...]
Window Seat (iPhoneography)
When I travel, I am as captivated by looking at the scenery as any other tourist. But if the situation allows it, I also like to take photos of people looking at the scenery. I guess I’m a bit of a voyeur in that sense. In this case, I was on a plane flying over [...]
Twentieth Century Classroom
In the early part of the last decade of the twentieth century the overhead projector was pretty high tech for me. Having students present in my AP European History class was something I allowed from time to time. But I generally was the center of the classroom. I call that teachercentrism. I was looking for [...]
Fairy Tale
This is not your every day walk in the park; it’s Brian and Katie walking in the park. Overdressed? I don’t think so.
Minneapolis Moline
Being a city kid, I hadn’t paid much attention to tractors but I’m not surprised that, just as there is with makes of cars, there is tremendous brand loyalty to certain kinds of tractors. If you asked Carl Tesch, diesel instructor at Lake Area Technical Institute, which tractor was best, I’m sure he would say, [...]
Captain & Crew
The captain is Scott, who is standing in the back of this photo. The driver and driver’s supervisor are the famous BZ and CZ. We are cruising on Okoboji in Iowa and though BZ looks confident at the helm, I think it had been a while since he had driven a boat.
The Princess Bride, Part II
This is another example of serendipity in a photo shoot. In the days before my photo session with Brian and Katie, I had imagined some of the photos I would like to take. Unfortunately, few of those worked the way I had planned. But I did manage to take a photo or two that were [...]
Portrait of the Artist With A Grey Beard
Once a year (when I’m traveling in Europe) I quit shaving for a week or two. And then I take a self portrait. Narcissism? I don’t think so. Rembrandt did 90 self-portraits. And I’m certainly no Rembrandt.
The Girls of Rothenburg
This was a nearly candid photo but one girl spotted my camera and acted uncharacteristically — she smiled at me! This is not normal dress for children in this town; it just happened that on the evening we were there, There was a dress rehearsal for a pending religious pageant. Rothenburg, by the way, is [...]
Princess Bride
This is Katie, of course. This was one of my warm-up photos in the bridal shoot we did. There’s nothing about this that says “bride” but I like the portrait anyway. The lighting here is very simple – she is sitting in the opening of the doorway leading to our deck, which, in the late [...]
Runaway Bride
My son, Brian, and my daughter-in-law, Katie, came to town yesterday for a photo session. They were married almost a year and a half ago but they weren’t altogether satisfied with the photos they got on the day of their wedding. And so we spent 4 or 5 hours doing a variety of fun things. [...]
This Is It
On the last day of the first semester of my first year of teaching at Watertown Senior High, a girl raised her hand and said, “Can I ask a personal question?” Curious, I said, “Sure.” “Why were your hands shaking so much on the first day of class?” she asked. I laughed and said, “That’s [...]
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