Craft Show 2012

I know it's been a very long time since I posted anything here. It's been quite the year. Tomorrow we are packing up some of what we've done and selling photo at the Mayo Employees Arts & Crafts show. The event will be held again at the Mayo Civic Center.

Attached is a sample of one of the photos we will have. I should have more to come.

Week 4 - Snowman

This weeks photo is pretty simple. I grabbed some of my wife's winter home decor and I posed me a photo. These are some of my favorites. I just love it every year when she gets out the bucket of snowball fight. Makes me smile.

As you should probably notice, this isn't how they are sitting around the house. I got out my light box. The one I made a while ago out of a cardboard box and some tracing paper.

Just so you can see this engineering magic, here's the scene I just shot. I think I paid $5 for the box at Home Depot, and about the same for each of the spot lights. The tracing paper was ridiculously expensive. You wonder why I lit it from just one side. First, I liked the look, second, I can't find the tracing paper and the right side has a whole in it. Grr.

Week 2 - Game On

Week 2 - Game On, a photo by OhCaptain1 on Flickr.

Made week 2. Well, I shot the photo Saturday, which was within my week, got it processed Saturday, but only minutes before we hosted a poker tournament at our house. I'm calling it good :-)

As I was setting up the tournament, I usually like setting up these scenes. I had just stacked all the chips we needed, put out my least favorite hand in the entire universe and snapped a couple dozen shots looking for a good angle.

I this I could get the lighting better on this one. I shot it using a flash. The ISO was too high as well. I had forgotten to dial it back from shooting sans-flash shots of the basement. Oh well, doing a photo a week for a year is gonna be messy.

Enjoy!

Week 1 - Kirby

Week 1 - Kirby, a photo by OhCaptain1 on Flickr.

The 52 week challenge is back. I guess I'm a glutten for something.

Week 1 is a portrait of our dog Kirby. I find shooting a black dog a real challenge to get the exposure right.

This was shot with my 50 mm prime f1.8. I got Lightroom for Christmas but didn't really think this picture needed much.

Happy new year!

A little update about a big weekend to come

This blog has been pretty quiet for a while. Family, work and life have kept me pretty busy. My camera hasn't exactly been idle, but lately, there's just not been the time to really shoot the photos I like to post here.

 But I have some news...

 After years of nudging, prodding and more nudging, my wife finally convinced me it was time to do and arts & crafts show and share my pictures with the public, for a small fee :)

 If you happen to be in the Rochester Minnesota area, I'll have a booth with my pictures in various states to purchased. Stop on down and check in with to make sure I haven't died of a stroke. The thought of this has me nervous like nothing else.

 Here's a link to the Civic Center's information.

If you have any requests, suggestions or advice, please share! I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Week 9 - Playing the Blues

Someday, I'll figure out how to photograph the snow blowing experience. You know, let people that have never done it before experience of piece of it through the eye of my camera. I spent a fair bit of time this week doing that deed. Man, I'm sick of winter.

This weeks photo comes from a gathering we went to in Red Wing Minnesota. Here's four members of a band I didn't catch the name. I actually knew two members of the band as being apart of a different group known as the Back Channel Blues Band. I had thought this was them. Oops.

Back in the day, when I was still using film provided for me by the my college's newspaper budget, I used to fancy myself as a future staff photographer for Rolling Stone. A boy can dream right? Maybe someday I'll take shooting musicians more seriously again. I kinda miss it.

Anyone in this area, wanna go shoot a live band one of these weekends again like we did that one time at Whiskey Bones? Could be fun? Let me know. I need to get out and exercise my photo muscles again.

Week 7 - Family

Week 7 - Didn't want to miss another week. I realize this one is a bit more, abstract(?), simple(?). It's something.

9 PM on Sunday night. The day before Valentine's Day. We spent this day as a family. It's the day of love, and we love nothing more then our family.

We got this little decoration for my wife on Mother's Day, last year I think. The kids picked it out. It shows two parents loving their kids. Sounded quite familiar. This hangs in our kitchen and reminds us every time we leave that we are not alone.

If you've been her before, you know how much I love lines. Ah, lines. Lines make some cool and interesting composition if you ask me...which you didn't, but I'm telling you anyways. This is my blog so you are gonna like it.


Happy Valentine's Day everyone! Share it with the people you love!

Be sure to check out the Flickr collection from this challenge I have going. Take a look around. I'd love to hear what you think!

Week 6 - Hot and cold

I took a photo last week, exhaustion lead to snoring, snoring lead to REM stage, one thing led to another and presto magico! 1 week has passed.

I don't think this will hit anyone's list for the most important, best or truly great photos of all time. Probably doesn't even crack my top 10 pictures I've ever taken. It does, however, constitute week 6 in my 52 week challenge.

This photo was taken for my 7 year old's science fair project. We were demonstrating that microwave ovens don't heat food by heating the air like conventional ovens do. You can clearly see that the water is 100 ° while the temperature inside the microwave is 72 °.

Gentlemen. Don't forget. Next Monday is Valentine's Day. And what ever you do...don't let me forget either!

Week 4 - Cold and dark

The thermometer on my computer says is 7°F outside. I don't know why but it seemed much colder then that. I'm gonna post every week, even if it kills me and I need to do it posthumously, it seems. Again, I find myself staring at the clock with nothing for my deadline. Not sure why, other then all of my other last minute shots have been inside, where it's a comfortable 68°F and I have yet to acquire frostbite living up to this challenge.

My shot for the week, while I don't think I'm really all that fond of it, is a long, very cold 13 second shot off my deck in the backyard. I was really hoping to capture the icy playground equipment but this wasn't long enough to get it, plus the light on that house was really starting to drowned out everything. This was the last of about 10 frames I snapped. Getting it focused was pretty hard. I think I'll return to this idea when the moon comes back out and shines with a little more light. The ambient city light was all I had and it just didn't seem like enough. Could have been my numb fingers and ears too, but who knows.

Stay warm!

Week 3 - An experiment with a mirror

It's after 10 PM on Sunday night. I'm looking at the clock, wondering how it is I find myself on week 3 of the 2011 52 week challenge and still, I have yet to shoot anything. Like the first two weeks were better, but don't I learn?

The thought had entered my mind to just let it slip. This year we had agreed to a softer, gentler deadline. I could just shoot something tomorrow. Right? Procrastination.

But I reminded myself of an incredible speech I heard from a famous photographer. He had set out on a quest, to take one and only one photograph every day for 90 days. For most of us, that would be nothing, grab your phone, point and click once a day. Easy peasy. But Jim is no regular photographer, no sir. He was one of the few staff photographers for National Geographic. This guy was already a legend.

This is a story, as I remember hearing it, that he told at a speech he gave in the Twin Cities. If you ever get a chance to hear him speak, take it. He was outstanding and very inspiring. This story was from his adventure making the outstanding collection known as "Chased By The Light: A 90-Day Journey"
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As the story goes, he spent the 90 days at his home near the Boundary Waters of far northern Minnesota. This is some of the most beautiful land you will ever see, but what he found was, some days, you just don't feel it or your busy with life's other challenges, like being married and needing to fix a sink. And after a long time of looking at what is usually described as God's Country, you just don't see anything that catches your eye. And remember, he's only taking a single shot. One click.

One night, it was getting very close to midnight. Scary close. He hadn't taken his shot all day. Since it was already dark, light was scarce. He got an idea, he would make a shot by enlisting his wife to hold a flashlight behind a waterfall. He had never said that none of these pictures would be staged, right? He took the shot and was able to continue on his quest, never missing a day and only taking one shot.

Well, if Jim Brandenburg can make it just one more day, damn, I can do it too!

I recently discovered a guy doing neat things with every day objects, his name is Terry Border. Check out his blog at http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/. Neat stuff.

I needed a shot, to get me through just one more week. Below is the shot I took tonight. I think the term shot has many meanings on this blog. Most of the time, I just mean photograph. Tonight, I think I mean, I took a chance.

My wife does a fantastic job of decorating our home. She finds the coolest things. Since Christmas is over and Martin Luther King Jr. day doesn't really bring about a great deal of home decorating, she goes with theme of snowmen. It's Minnesota and we do what we can. On the mirror in our entryway, she likes to put little nick knacky things. Bringing the two inspirations together, the first being, I just need to shoot SOMETHING and loving the little bent things, I turned the sign of the melting snow man towards a mirror and shot it's reflection. I suspect I could have just taken the picture without bouncing the sign off the mirror, but what fun is there in that? Besides, I may need it next week.

I took a shot.

As always, be sure to check out Flickr set I've started to collect this years challenge. And feel free to look around while you are there.