A week or so ago, I was in Winnipeg, and got the chance to attend the Festival de Voyageur. This is a fun few days on a normally very cold Manitoba winter weekend. The festival celebrates the fun of winter, the spirit of French Manitoba culture, and the brave men and women who lived in Manitoba in the early 1800′s. Some of these men were Voyageurs, who  were Francophone  fur traders that made very long trips across Canada, transporting fur’s to the east, and goods back west. The site of the Festival is now a permanent site. Whittier Park now has a reconstructed fort and out building called Fort Gibraltar. The woman leaning against the railing are on the porch of the main building inside the fort. This building now houses a museum. The two others in the above photo were actors in one of the out building called the storage building. This is where the furs were packed into tight very heavy bundles that would be stored here until ready to be transported east.

The people in the pictures that follow were soldiers in Lord Selkirk’s army, and voyageurs. Lord Selkirk was commissioned as a Justice of the Peace, which meant that he could enforce the laws of the land. To do so, he needed an army. Since the fort was on a major trade route for the Voyageur’s, there was much suspicion and fear between them. They held a reenactment battle that I just missed seeing, but did manage to get some of them to pose for pictures. Thank you very much Barry Webb, Frederick Carsted, and Louis Gagne. I hope you guys had a great time.

Since a couple of days have passed, I am sure that Erik Hyrkas is no longer the latest author to have his book (Tritium Gambit) up on Amazon. But I did have the opportunity to take some head shots of Erik for his Amazon authors profile, and his twitter feed. I snagged him and a friend for a VAL (voice activated light) and just headed out around the parking lot near his work.

We picked one of the few cold days in Minneapolis this year, so we didn’t spend a lot of time. We took just a few shots at two locations. Moving over slightly at each on, we came up with four separate looks in less than a half hour. Not too bad.

This was a fun image that I took on July 4th. Funnier still when you know that this July 4th picture has no Americans in it. One big happy Canadian family living in the USA. I thought it would be fun to show how chaotic and fun their household could be, so I came up with this concept. Great timing you say? Well, sort of. It’s staged. All 6 pictures that I took. One for each member of the family. This allowed me to set each one in the correct place, light them separately, and make sure that the parents didn’t actually get wet.

This is a new service/concept that I am offering. The idea being that we will come up with a concept that captures the character of your family, and we will build it together one layer at a time. Sometimes multiple people can be in the same shot, sometimes not. Either way, you end up with a completely unique family portrait you wouldn’t get anywhere else.

This past spring I was the official photographer for the Pink Azaleas girls softball team. Well, ok, so I was a Dad with a camera and my daughter was playing. I still decided to make the most of the opportunity. Instead of focusing on just my daughter, I took pictures of all the kids. I will reference some of them later.

What I wanted to show you here, was my “baseball cards” that I made for the girls softball team. I took pictures of all the girls that showed up on both a Tuesday and Friday night of one week. I set up lights, and captured the whole group as well as individual kids. I wanted to create something to give to each of the parents that would rival what they could get through whichever group that had contracted to work with the community center. I saw the photos that the other kids got, and I really like what I have in comparison. The matching colors and team name is missing from the other images I saw. They were shot inside on astro turf with a fake background applied in post.

So far I have showed most of the parents their kids photos on my iPad, and they loved them. I will be giving every kid a baseball card and a team photograph tomorrow.

Did you notice that two of the kids in the picture a just a little off. I took pictures of two of the kids on friday, and added them to the picture I took tuesday. It might not pass the mustard for a print magazine, but the parents are all quite happy.

Here is Kate. The other kids all have a card just like this one with their name and number on it minus the logo at the bottom.

Eddie is a friend of mine, and we have plans to take pictures of his family, but before we got to that, I wanted to take pictures of his classic muscle car, and he wanted a new Facebook picture. So we headed up to Mounds View Park in St. Paul just before sunset.

I also took the opportunity to take a few closer portraits of Eddie. I don’t think he was expecting for me to have the camera up close to get pictures of just him, after all, he was here to get pictures of him with his car!

The sky was fairly cooperative. We had rain earlier, and we were hoping for more clouds, but we ended up with enough color to make things interesting.

This was a fun shoot, and Eddie was a great sport. I don’t think that when we headed up here that he was expecting me to take as many pictures as I did, or spend as much time as we did waiting for the sun to go down. But we did, and I think we got some good pictures for our efforts.

Before the snow melted Heidi, Steve, and I headed downtown to the Stone Arch bridge area. We got there while the sun was still up fairly high, so we used it to produce some sun flair or a rim light in a few images. We walked around the area a bit taking pictures every once in awhile. It did get a bit cold, so we ran into a restaurant on the other side of the bridge in the St. Anthony Main area.

We headed back after dark, having a bit of fun along the way. We snuck into the Gutherie for a bit and took some pictures up on the endless bridge. They both do yoga, and we got some fun pictures of them posed against the the red wall of light. You can find those and some other color pictures up on facebook taken in and around the Gutherie, Stone Arch, and St.Anthony Main areas.

I had the opportunity to do a corporate head shot photo shoot yesterday. I got an email from a network solutions provider, Riverbed, from San Francisco. They were looking for a photographer to take photographs of up to 10 of their customers at an event they were holding in downtown Minneapolis. I was happy to head downtown for their event. They were a great group of people. It was a lot of fun. I brought lights and a background set up with me. I had several backgrounds the client could choose from. I ended up with a lot of stuff despite thinking I was going light, using small lights and needing no extra power. Anyway, it all went well and I hope to see them next year.

This post is a little late in getting up. It’s March, and these were taken before Valentines day this past February. I wanted to experiment with another on location lighting trick. These white background pictures were not taken in a studio, but in front of a window with all natural light. Not even a reflector was used. I did have to put a little digital light painting in post so that their faces weren’t too dark.

I was happy with the result. They were shot heavily back-lit against a window, which is generally a no no, but I greatly overexposed the images which made the windows go almost white. Some of the edges of the girls are blown out, but I think it went well with the type of look I was going for. I inserted them into a digital frame, then matched the color from their clothes, and we have a purple fairy princess for Valentines Day.

I am very happy to announce this update and complete overhaul to my site. There are lots of new images, new pricing, new products, and a new format that lets me get updates out easier. As well as images, I am bringing video into the site. With the addition of comments and a contact form, I am hoping that this will allow a better conversation between myself, other photographers, and potential and current clients.

Both the Wedding and Portrait menu sections show recent posts from recent clients, and photographs that represent my work. At the top right, bottom left, and on each post there are buttons to connect to social media. Feel free to share. There is currently video on the home page, and more to come. Until then, see other video on my youtube channel.

Thanks for coming by, I hope that you will return.

I wanted to show a client a 3 image print in a 10×20 size frame. I have been really liking this size. I have been creating quite a few of these. I especially like a black background with a black and white photo. It looks even better in a white frame.

I put the image above on my iPad to show the image, but how to show a frame. I decided to take a picture of a frame I have hanging in my house, and then insert the image into it digitally. The result is below. I think it is a good way to show what the print would look like.

The news is that I am now offering a nicer version of the frame above as an option to clients. It is a solid wood frame lacquered white (black and other wood types available). Check with me for frame types and pricing.