Mark Dunlap Photography

Stepping Where I Shouldn't

2010-06-18T13:35:00.000-07:00

Driving home from work one afternoon I was marveling at the stormy sky and brooding clouds hanging across the western sky. If I hurried I might have a chance to get outside of town to more open countryside and get some good shots. Instead, by the time I was in the truck and heading out of town, the clouds were breaking up and leaving a sky that leaned way too much to normal. I could have turned around and headed home with the idea of finding some cool images at a later time, but since I was already out, it seemed foolish to not look for something worthwhile.

About 10 miles outside of town, on one of the gravel back roads, I found this spot with flowers, dragonflies, bumblebees and a really cool seed pod about the size of a tennis ball known as goatsbeard, or Western Salsify.

I must have spent an hour and a half stomping around through the grass in the roadside ditch, panning with the bees, zeroing in on the dragonflies and exploring just how close I could get to the goatsbeard and make all of its parts look even more interesting.

Hopefully some of these images are worth what I'm going through now. After years of living in Northern Minnesota and not having to deal with poison ivy, I have now become painfully, frustratingly reaquainted with what happens when I come into contact with the stuff.

This shot of the Shasta Daisy with the firefly posing so nicely was done by my house later in the week as the first stages of rash were spreading up my legs. The price we sometimes pay for our passions and pursuits.

A Little Bit of Color

2010-04-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

Over in Missouri my sister and brother-in-law have a beautiful little house on a lake. Some weekends in the winter and many weekends throughout each summer they're over there getting away from the daily grind and routine of home. I went over with them last weekend where we had family time with nephews, nieces, teasing, cooking and for me, a chance to unwind a bit and just wander around with my camera.

I don't know the names of these flowers and plants. What I do know is that I found some color and light at the right time to press the shutter button and make some images. It was nice to have the time to relax and not feel any pressure to hurry an end result. I'm sure I'll be at the lake again sometime soon and maybe I'll come up with a few more examples to share.

Window Glass

2010-03-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

Shooting glass can be a tricky proposition, unless you just let the light come through and then whatever's in the background can add or detract from the final image. I've been eyeing doing something like this for a while and with the sun coming from behind the blinds I sorted through the glassware I have available in the kitchen cabinets. The toughest part of making this image was getting the glass, some of which is fairly old and well used, as clean as possible and then figuring out the placement of each piece. I did some basic retouching in photoshop and then applied a high pass filter to get the final edge that seemed to give the best look to the image.

Tabs On The Time

2010-02-26T17:30:00.000-08:00

This is an image that happened while I was sitting at the computer, looked through a doorway into my bedroom and saw the cat, Tigger perched in the window. Her shape against the blinds, hovering over the clock and balancing with the edge of the lamp seemed intriguing. I knew right off I wanted to fill as much of the frame as I could and slipped the 70-200mm lens onto my D300 while hoping Tigger didn't start moving around. She did change her position a little, but I still had enough time to get the camera and lens on my tripod and got off several bracketed shots, looking for the right exposure.

I think if the finished image works at all, it's because of the adjustments I was able to make in photoshop. A little retouching here and there to clean things up and applying a high pass filter brought out the edge I think brings everything together. I considered taking the clock out and then decided to leave it. Does it work? I find myself asking that question a lot. I like the way the cat adds an organic quality, contrasting with the inanimate elements of her surroundings. All in all, not too bad for a grab shot.

Just For Fun

2010-02-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

For quite some time my nephew Kevin has been leaning on me to do some family shots of him and his kids, Karter and Kady. We finally managed to get a day shortly after Christmas when all of us would be available at the same time, which proved to be one of the biggest challenges of the whole process when dealing with the crazy schedules that Karter and Kady keep.

After some discussion we decided it would be best to see what kinds of shots we could accomplish right at home. It was cold and snowy outside and having the family in familiar surroundings would help keep the mood relaxed. Kevin had made it clear that the last thing he wants are regular old family portraits. Of course, he wants some traditional looking images here and there, but for the most part he wants something fun, somewhat kooky and a little bit out there. So we played.

I set up a studio light with a 60" umbrella in the kitchen, positioned a portable flash on top of the refrigerator to bounce off the ceiling and added another portable flash shooting through a small umbrella from camera left to fill in some of the shadows from that side. This particular image gives a good idea of what the family dynamic is like: Kevin and Kady jousting constantly and big brother Karter rolling his eyes.

After trying a number of ideas in the kitchen, we moved into the living room. Kevin was getting ready to shampoo the carpet and had all of the furniture cleared out, except the sofa. Once again I set up the big umbrella overhead and slightly to camera right and added a portable umbrella from the left bounced into a small umbrella. And then we got creative. We tried the sofa, we tried the floor, we tried the wall. And we had fun.

That's something I'd like to inject more of into some of my images. I have plenty of ideas and concepts in mind that are glamorous, sexy, serious, edgy and brooding. Lately though I've been mulling over ideas that are more fun, lighthearted and in some cases, downright goofy. One thing about it: working with a young, energetic family makes it easy to add some goofy fun.

The Old Man

2010-01-29T22:12:00.000-08:00

Although there are some in the world who place a high sentimental value on a particular vehicle, the common consensus is that a car or truck is nothing more than a machine, a well designed collection of bolts and sheet metal, wiring and plastic, tires and glass. There’s a steering wheel, a gas pedal and nowadays hookups for portable music devices and cell phones. In some cases a car is a status symbol, a reflection and display of success. Some people, especially men, will refer to a favorite vehicle as their “baby” or “girl” or “best friend.” But when you get right down to it, a car or truck doesn’t have a heart, a soul, or feelings. Unless it has the distinction of being kept in some rich man’s collection, or sets in a museum reminding us of historical significance or current advances, or perhaps lies covered by a protective tarp in some isolated garage, most vehicles will end up as rusted heaps out in a field, or cannibalized for parts in a junk yard. Ultimately, does anyone really think these machines are more than just a bunch of parts?

I have a 1994 Chevy pick-up. It’s a three quarter ton with 4-wheel drive and an extended cab. In 1996 my world revolved around sled dogs. I had survived a year of working for an established and famous musher who had turned out to be one of the most confounding, difficult and infuriating individuals I have ever met. But I had learned a few things from him and in just two years of racing my own teams had won the first of what would be several championships. The little Mazda pick-up that had taken me from Kansas City to Minnesota and served well as both a dog truck and my only source of transportation was showing its age and limitations. Back in Kansas, a sister and brother-in-law found the big Chevy at a local dealership. It had been a lease truck for an oil company and whatever kind of toolbox or equipment it had carried had been removed leaving a bare chassis behind the cab. It was just about exactly what I needed for a more substantial truck that could help me reach my goals as a competitive sled dog racer. My mother pitched in to make the purchase possible and in the summer of 1996 the sister, brother-in-law and one of my brothers made sure there were working brake lights and a spare tire strapped to the frame and brought the big rig up to Minnesota, delivering it to my doorstep.

Not long after getting the Chevy, I drove it down to Duluth and had it outfitted with a gleaming black, steel flat bed. The body was still clean with hardly any dings in the paint. With the exception of some screw holes left from something that had been mounted on the dash, the interior looked almost new. There was an even, deep rumble from the engine and when I sat in that cab, gripped the steering wheel and looked out over the broad hood I couldn’t help but feel some pride. A local cabinet-maker put together a dog box for me as part of a sponsorship deal. I could carry up to twenty-four dogs, three sleds and a substantial amount of gear in that box. Altogether, it made for an impressive outfit.

That winter I won a second championship in a two-day race held in the middle of Wisconsin. There was no handler helping out at that race. It was just the dogs, the truck and me and together we claimed that race as our own. The drive back to Northern Minnesota and home took much of a night. With the team curled up on beds of straw in the compartments of the box, I pointed the nose of the Chevy northward and settled in for a long haul. Hour after hour I grooved to radio stations playing a mix of throbbing rock and roll, leaned on the arm rest of the door looking through a chilled window at the glow of distant, unnamed towns that warmed the darkness and marveled at a sliver of moon smiling at me from high above. Cocooned in the protective cab of the big truck and traveling with the dogs that were such a major part of my life, it doesn’t seem at all strange to me that a drive like that through a long winter night could be such a profound moment.

Unlike so many vehicles that get labeled as female, my Chevy is most definitely male. There’s nothing feminine about his wide stance and stature, the torque of his engine, stiffness of suspension and a particular personality that can only be described as masculine. Unfortunately, he turned out to be one of many General Motors vehicles that were cursed with poor paint jobs and just a few years after getting him I noticed puckers in the finish on the hood and top of the cab that would eventually start to flake off, revealing gray, primed metal underneath. Although it didn’t affect his performance, it was discouraging to see his appearance marred.

Somewhere along the line upheavals in my personal life turned me inside out and my sled dog career coasted to a halt. Along with the changes in me the years crept up on the big Chevy and one day I realized he had become an old man. It wasn’t just the peeling paint over major sections of the cab. It was the corroding and flaking apart of the flat bed, the loss of the 4-wheel drive, the decay of brake lines and cables underneath and eventually some issues in the engine that had to be addressed. A few years ago I spent close to a thousand dollars getting him back to running fairly smoothly. Considering the work that had to be done on the engine and brakes and the fact that the 4-wheel drive would lie dormant without additional, major expense, the mechanic summed things up with a simple sentence. “It’s an old truck.”

Eventually I realized that my stay in Minnesota had run its course. With the fire that had driven me to championships as a sled dog racer extinguished, an old passion for photography had flared back up and as much as I love the northern forests and being so close to Lake Superior, I knew that it was time for some changes. Realistically, I waited longer than I should have to make such a change, but I try to look at it from the standpoint that life can’t always be carefully planned out. Sometimes it has to include some ducking, dodging and stumbling.

Stumbling was not something I think my mother did very often in her life. She was always a constant, so steady and dependable, loving, supportive, a consummate parent. Her life was her family. Her devotion to those she loved was what defined her and in so many ways the character and personality of our family is a reflection of her. I know she worried about me as I bounced from adventure to adventure over the years, never being able to quite sit still, but she also bragged about me and was always there cheering me on.

As strong as my mother was, age caught up to her the same way it did with the Chevy. In July of last year, at age 93, she finally fell. Although she was mainly just banged up, at her age that fall started a difficult journey of several months through hospitals and temporary nursing homes for physical rehab with the hope that she would be able to at least settle into an assisted living facility and maintain a decent quality of life. When I was back in Kansas in September for a niece’s wedding, I visited my mother in the nursing home where she had spent almost a full month building her strength. Over the summer I had formulated the plan that I would move back after the wedding, on one hand to start a new stage of my life and on the other hand to be there for Mom. The idea felt like one of those necessary things that made more sense than anything else. When I told her that I was planning on moving back and asked if it would be ok if I lived in her house for a while, you would have thought I had just announced that she had won the lottery. The next day, at the wedding, she must have told every single person she met that her little boy was moving back to Kansas. The day after the wedding she rode with me from Kansas City back to the little town of Iola and we got her moved into an assisted living facility.

The next few weeks proved to be a frenzy of activity, events and emotion. Back in Minnesota, I gave my notice at work that I was leaving and started trying to make some sort of organized sense of all my stuff. It would be a challenging combination of selling, recycling, giving away, throwing away and packing to have a chance of getting everything moved in one trip. I started organizing books, magazines, DVDs, clothes, cookware and a stunning amount of odds and ends. Having hinted to certain friends and acquaintances over previous weeks that I might be making a move, it was time to go around and announce that it was actually happening.

Barely a week and a half after settling into the assisted living facility, my elderly, e-mail loving mother was checking to see if there was a message from me after getting her computer set up in her room. The office chair she was using rolled out from under her as she was trying to sit down and this time when she went to the floor it resulted in a broken hip. She was transported to a hospital in Parsons, Kansas and underwent surgery to repair the break. As the days passed with regular reports from my sisters about the hardships and suffering our mother was going through I wrestled with whether or not to make a dash back to Kansas to be there for all of them, or to stick to the timeline I had set to make the move. Originally my sister, brother-in-law and a nephew had planned on driving up to Minnesota, helping me finish up the packing, then taking a couple days to play and relax before finding our way back to Kansas. As those last days before my moving date elapsed, there was a growing concern that my mother might not last much longer and while both sisters stayed with her, my brother-in-law and nephew mounted what was essentially a rescue mission to get me back as quickly as possible.

On a Friday afternoon after a stressful day of packing my brother-in-law’s car, my little pick-up and the big Chevy to almost overflowing, we pulled out of the driveway of the old cabin I had inhabited for a few too many years and headed south. We made it to a point mid-way between Duluth and the Twin Cites and checked into a motel room for the night. The report from my sister at that point was that Mom was doing better and it seemed as if we had some breathing room.

The next morning we were on the road again first thing with me leading the way in the Old Man. My brother-in-law’s reasoning was that if the big truck broke down it would be better if there was someone behind me. As the miles slipped by and the hours piled up into the day and I was taken farther away from the home I had known for the last sixteen years and some of the most profound experiences of my life, the memories of where I’ve been and what I’ve done curled up like smoke around me bringing sounds, scents and feelings . . . the dogs, the trails, the rhythm of the race, the burning contrast of exertion and cold, the breathing of my team hanging in the night, the joy of family visiting my northern world, that great lake I saw every day with it’s beautiful, fickle nature, how impressive it was when not just I, but we won races, those whisper quiet moments in a winter wonderland, the day a pair of wolves played hide and seek with me around the big truck on a snowy road . . .

All of this and more swirled inside me as the Old Man powered his way southward along I-35. Although he could easily maintain those highway speeds, he was never a fast truck. He was always more strong and tough, the kind of truck that would just get the job done without any complaint, without any need of attention. He made several trips back and forth to Kansas, getting me to presentations to schools, took me and my dogs to numerous races, clawed his way through deep, fresh snow with the soles of his tires, hauled massive amounts of firewood and was always there, willing to get me to where I needed to go. And again on this day, mile after mile, the Old Man kept his head down, his brawny fenders hunched forward, the pistons in his heart pumping hard, determined and so steady. Like some of the sled dogs who helped take me to championships, there’s no quit in this old truck, at least not yet. I can’t explain how I knew, but he wasn’t going to be breaking down on this day.

We got into the little town of Iola early Saturday night and I saw my mother briefly the next two days at the hospital. Her condition had improved enough that the doctor was ready to release her, as long as she was going to a nursing home with physical therapy services. During those two days when Mom was doing so much better, my sisters and I managed to pick what we thought would be the best choice in a nursing home and I made arrangements to ride with the van that would pick her up from the hospital and transport her so that she would have a familiar face close by.

That third day back in Kansas didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. My mother didn’t make it out of the hospital. During the night she had developed an internal infection. She was in pain, she was disoriented and I was helpless to do anything other than be there. After all my sisters had been through with Mom and without me, it was my time to step up and I elected to spend the night at the hospital. Leaving my mother at this time didn’t seem to be an option. A little before 10:30 that night I stood by her bedside as she quietly slipped away. She had said just days before that she was ready to give up and she wished I would get there. I hadn’t thought that maybe she had simply been waiting, even as I watched the life fade from her eyes. To have been away for so long, to have covered the hours, the miles in such a hard push and then to have had so short a time with her might have seemed completely unfair. My heart said it was unfair. My head and reasoning allowed that it was her time to rest. Without a hint of uncertainty I can say that I had a good mother and whether I win or fail throughout my life, I know how fortunate I am to have been loved by someone like her.

I doubt anyone believes a truck has a soul. It doesn’t feel, it doesn’t think, but at times during that long drive and others I would lay my hand on the dash and whisper, “Atta boy. You’re doing good. You’re a good ole truck.” I don’t know if he can hear me, can feel my admiration and know that I think highly of him. He won’t worry about a lack of attention, won’t complain about not being driven. At some point, probably in the near future, someone will buy him to be used for who-knows-what, or I’ll drop him off at a dealership as part of a trade and he will almost certainly end up in a junkyard. It sounds so sad, but that’s what happens to old, tired vehicles. Someday he’ll need to rest too. I wonder if he knows how happy my mother was to see me during her last days, how important it was that he helped get me back in time. I wonder if he really knows what a good truck he is. Maybe what could be his soul comes from somewhere deeper. All I know for sure, is that he’s a good old man.

Alley Shoot Behind The Scenes

2009-10-05T19:30:00.000-07:00

I managed to get some behind the scenes shots this time around. Maybe one of these days I may have some videos to share.

Oh how glamorous a model's life is. Model Bree and makeup artist Jodi getting the makeup on.

Bree getting just a bit higher up the stairs than the light stand can handle. Julie makes sure things don't go toppling over.

The reason some models go blind. I never will know exactly what happened here, except that Julie was getting ready to make an adjustment to Bree's outfit and I hit the shutter button without considering where the flash was.

Jodi staying warm and helping me fine tune the lighting.

The Downtown Alley Shoot

2009-08-29T18:49:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's been a while since my last post. Guilty as charged. I've been shooting off and on throughout the summer, but haven't been inclined to put anything up on here. This particular shoot was the most ambitious and involved shoot I've done since getting back to serious photography and I'm rather proud of how things worked out.

It was a small crew, but it was an actual crew that came together for this shoot. I was working primarily with two concepts: the first being an attractive young women dressed like she was going out for a night of fun in a big city contrasted against a gritty back alley environment, the second being images of a female assassin. After weeks of going back and forth with an accompished Duluth model by e-mails and phone calls, I finally got a commitment for a Friday shoot. I got the word on a Monday night which essentially left me only three days to pull everything together. Everything being arranging for extra help, getting a makeup artist on board and figuring out some locations.

Quite frankly, it was a nerve wracking experience, but I managed to get everything lined up. My friend Julie, from my sled dog racing past, agreed to help out as an assistant. She made it clear that she knows nothing about being an assistant on a photo shoot and it really isn't her thing, but she'd be willing to help out. Thank god for friends like her. It helps that she lives just outside of Duluth and it wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience for her. I found a makeup artist on ModelMayhem.com located just north of the Twin Cities. After talking with her a couple times on the phone she agreed to drive up to Duluth for the shoot as long as I would pay for her gas. Even though I didn't have a specific location in mind when it came time for the shoot, I figured I would be able to pull a rabbit out of my hat and find something that would work. In those few days leading up to the deadline Bree, the model, kept me on the edge of my seat by not returning e-mails or phone calls. I wasn't sure if she was still on board or not. Thursday night at about 10:00 when I was thinking I didn't have a model and the shoot was off, she called and nonchalantly said, "So, what's up?"

Friday morning I got off work at 11:00, stopped in Grand Marais long enough to change into some clean clothes, pointed my truck in the direction of Duluth and stomped on it. My little crew and I were scheduled to meet at a Starbucks at 3:30 and my plan was to get into town soon enough ahead of time to at least find my first shoot location. During the two and a half hour drive and watching an increasingly cloudy sky that threatened rain at any moment, my mood jumped back and forth between nervous excitement and stark terror. In the end it actually did rain at one point, but by the time I got to Duluth the rain was gone and was replaced by a gray sky that would work in my favor in lighting my shots.

Once in Duluth the first order of business was finding a downtown alley that would allow me to turn the concepts in my head into finished images. It turned out to be remarkably easy. An alley between Superior Street and 1st Street was accessable with decent parking close by, looked like it would provide the required gritty, grungy and hard look I was after and in short order I was on my way to a Starbuck's to meet up with the rest of the bunch. Julie and the makeup artist, Jodi arrived right on time and about ten minutes later Bree arrived. We went over a few details, chit chatted for a bit and then headed back downtown with Julie leading.

While I picked out the spot for the first shot and with Julie's help set up my flashes, Jodi and Bree settled themselves on a stack of old shipping pallets and got into the makeup process. Some 30 to 40 minutes later, my model stepped onto the makeshift set looking dazzling. I realized I was dealing with a somewhat different animal when I snapped several test shots to finalize my lighting and Bree immediately snapped into as many different poses without me saying a word. Unlike most of the models I've worked with up to this point, Bree has been in front of the camera quite a bit, has worked in New York and in fashion photography lingo, knows how to "work the camera." It took a while for us to get in sync with each other, but once we did I appreciated her experience and confidence.

We basically did two main wardrobe changes and several different looks by merely moving from one side of the alley to the other. One thing I noticed and was thankful for was how smoothly everything went. I've been around Julie quite a bit over the years and knew what I was getting with her helping out. Jodi did a great job on the makeup, had a fun sense of humor and made some shot suggestions along the way without being pushy or intrusive. Not only was Bree gorgeous and sexy as hell, she was also very easy to work with throughout the shoot, was a trooper and at times exhibited a bit of a goofy personality. The air was cool that afternoon and at one point as I was framing a shot I noticed her lower lip quivering from the cold. If I hadn't seen that I never would have known she was fighting to stay warm. Most commercial photo shoots are a team effort and even though this was totally a portfolio building event, it could have easily been a real gig.

By the time we wrapped the alley part of the shoot it was getting later than I had intended. Julie was getting a bit antsy to get home to her family, so I cut her lose with a big thank you and then headed to a Mexican restaurant with Bree and Jodi for some much needed dinner. The rain that had threatened earlier in the day finally rolled in, eliminating anymore outside work and leaving the rest of the shoot in question. An earlier suggestion from Julie led us to a multi-level parking ramp that looked promising, until we noticed the security cameras. That particular parking facility is tied in with one of the Duluth hospitals and the thought of Bree waving a very realistic looking BB gun around and attracting the attention of security guards stopped me in my tracks and made me consider canning the rest of the shoot. Luckily Jodi stepped up and gently pressured me to "just go for it." Her attitude was that we'd be set up and done before anyone noticed. It was a good move on her part.

Slipping into guerilla warfare mode, I pulled out a single Vivitar flash with a small shoot through umbrella and put Jodi to work holding it. It was a very stripped down compromise to what I had wanted to do and while shooting I wasn't feeling very positive about what I was getting. In this particular case it's a very good example of keeping at it in less than ideal situations, because when I went to work on those shots in photoshop and made the transfer to black and white I realized I had some gems. That stark, grittiness I was looking for came out beautifully and looking through the shots it was obvious that Bree could really rock the look.

In the end, it was a quite a day, a process, grueling at times, nervewracking, exciting, a great learning experience, totally worthwhile and I can't wait to do it again.

Water

2009-06-07T10:45:00.000-07:00

Water really is fasinating. Never mind that it's one of the most important ingredients to life on our planet. In a way, it's almost like people with our endless variety of moods and personalities.

Depending on the time, the place, the influence of the environment, water can be warm or cold. A pool mirror smooth and silent in a morning slumber can seep into your heart and bring a peace that can at least for a moment hold back the cacophony of the world.

The crash of ocean waves is like a symphony of fluid drums keeping pace with a giant hearbeat from the depths. Think of being in a boat on a lake in the middle of a warm summer day, gently rocking back and forth, cradled in a soft embrace. Or the vibrating roar of whitewater tearing it's way through a canyon, sucking the breath from the air.

It sustains our cities, irrigates our crops, baptises our children and sometimes sweeps away our homes. Gentle or harsh, frequently unpredictable and so very, very necessary. Water really is fasinating.

No I Won't Eat My Brussels Sprouts!

2009-05-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I've got this friend who's very supportive and enthusiastic about my photography, always waiting for my next image, my next blog post and loves to offer critiques . . . a woman friend no less. It had been a while since my last image of any substance and one day I got a message from her wondering when I was going to get busy. That's when the rabbit messing around in the yard caught my attention and I crawled around on my belly to get the image for the previous post.

The next message I got informed me that she wasn't that impressed with the bunny rabbit. Hmmm, I thought, there's an example of her nurturing side. Alright then. Don't like pictures of bunnies, how bout something a bit more dark and gritty?

This is a concept I want to try with a female model, kind of an assassin series, but I want it to be a model with a particular look and since I don't know how long it'll be before I find that model, I decided to do some test shots. And of course, that means me as the subject. It took four Vivitar speedlights to get the lighting I wanted: one high and to camera right, one to camera left, one just behind me out of the frame and aimed down at the top of the gun and one on the ground underneath the gun. The three lights up high were fired with CyberSync receivers and the one on the ground was triggered with a light sensitive slave unit. A number of adjustments to the lights and several dozen shots gave me some images I felt good enough about to take to post production.

The photoshop work included conversion to black and white, some selective retouching to clean up the image, a high pass filter adjustment, a small contrast boost, sharpening and the final crop to get the composition I had in mind. I didn't really intend for there to be anything humorous about the end result, but the darn thing looks so violent I decided to add a totally contradictory title. Now that I think about it, maybe I should have been out hunting bunnies.

Views Of The Back Yard

2009-05-28T19:32:00.000-07:00

This little guy, or girl (I'll probably never get close enough to figure that out) was hanging out in the little section of yard behind my cabin earlier this evening. This was probably about the third time in a week or so that I stepped back inside and slipped the bigger lens on my camera with the hope that Mr. or Ms. Bunny would hang around long enough for me to get a few shots.

I'm looking forward to the long zoom lens that will allow me to shoot from considerably farther away without as much chance of spooking the wildlife. For this shot I ended up flat on my belly, inching my way close enough to just about fill the frame before my subject decided I was too close and bounced off into the edge of the trees. One of the things that's kind of cool in this image is that the shape of the cabin is reflected in the eye . . . sharp angles against all the curves.

There's a precocious chipmunk hanging around too, but those little farts won't hold still for nothing, so I'm still working on that shot.

The Faerie House Shoot

2009-05-13T19:12:00.000-07:00

This wasn't a paid gig, but it does represent the first shoot I've done in a long time with actual clients. John & Carolyn Kopchick own and operate Lake Superior Log Works, located near Grand Marais, Minnesota. They're in the beginning stages of setting up a website to sell these beautiful cottonwood bark houses that John makes and needed photos of a selection of the pieces to be exhibited on the site. The carvings will be referred to as Faerie houses and the site will be designed with a Celtic flavor. I did some basic pictures of some of John's work a couple years ago and have always offered to help out with additional images when needed.

The main goal of the shoot was to get some good shots of a dozen of the houses for the site as well as at least one shot of a selection of houses shown together. Once we got the website shots done, John also wanted shots of additional houses to keep as a record and for future reference.

Although we spent an entire day, it was a fairly simple shoot. I used three of my portable flashes for each single shot of the houses. One flash as the main through a small softbox, located just to camera right and two snooted flashes from behind providing some rim light to separate the houses from the dark background. It was just a matter of getting the lights where I wanted them and then settling on the best exposure settings. Once that was all set, after each shot we would replace one house with another, I would make any adjustments I needed to the camera or lights, make the exposure and then we would move to the next house.

The group shot took the most time. There was quite a bit of tinkering with which houses to use and their position in the shot. I gradually built the picture bit by bit, making test exposures as I went and letting John and Carolyn check the progress in the camera. Once I had the houses in their final position, I added a second flash from the front in a small umbrella to fill in some of the many dark areas of the set up, positioned a third flash from behind to provide some rim lighting and made the final exposures.

Post work in photoshop was pretty basic with some general retouching, color and contrast adjustment and sharpening. Nothing fancy. I felt pretty good about the results, but it was about two hours after I had dropped off a disc with the finished images that I got a call from Carolyn to let me know how happy they were with the images. Hearing things like "they look fantastic, super detail, wonderful color and you did good," was a nice wrap up to the day we spent.

For more information about these beautiful works of art and additional home furnishings and log furniture, contact John and Carolyn at: info@lakesuperiorlogworks.com

SUNLIGHT: Batteries Included

2009-05-12T17:22:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was a perfectly gray day without a hint of sunshine. It was plenty bright enough to do just about anything a person would want to do, but the light (yes the light itself) was flat, featureless, with the personality you'd expect from a soggy paper bag. Itching to shoot something, it occured to me this might be a good time to try making my own sunlight. I've recently become a fan of internationally known photographer Joe McNally and his almost manic use of portable flash. The man can breath life into the dullest of subjects and photo assignments with one, two or more strategically placed flashes, colored gels and the insight born from years of experience out in the world shooting for major magazines and newspapers.

My preference would be to have an attractive model in front of my camera, basking in whatever light I throw her way. But my choice of subjects in the immediate area is rather sparse, so most of my experiments turn into excercises in self portraiture. I guess it's not so bad. I'm easy to find, fairly agreeable, open to new ideas and I work cheap. Not a bad set of traits for a model, especially since I just wanted to see what kind of shot I could pull out of a hat.

Looking for a wall I could throw a shadow against with the light from the flash, I opted for the little storage shed built out of sheets of OSB, hoping the texture of the wood would add some interest to the shot. A Vivitar 285HV flash, set on full power and plugged into a CyberSync receiver went on a stand off to camera right, about fifteen feet from where I leaned up against the shed. A color temperature orange gel (CTO) placed over the business end of the flash provided the late afternoon light. A CyberSync trigger went on the camera, the camera went on the tripod and after framing the shot up in the viewfinder, I started making exposures with the camera's self timer. With each shot I adjusted the position of the flash, shutter speed and aperture in the camera and my position as the subject. This is one of the better images that resulted.

Some tweaking with the high pass filter in photoshop brought out some detail in the shed and my clothes without getting too contrasty on my face. Using flash in this way offers possibilities to jazz up image ideas from the get-go and in some cases could save what would otherwise be a very blah image. Now armed with my battery operated sunlight, I can hardly wait to try it in future shoots.

Tuning The Final Look

2009-04-29T20:17:00.000-07:00

One of the fantastic things about modern digital cameras and the high quality optics in lenses is the incredible detail possible in images. One of the rotten things about modern digital cameras and the high quality optics in lenses is the incredible detail you end up with in images. Something that may not be obvious about interacting with someone in person is that you tend to focus more on the whole person. A scar, a slight blemish, a (gasp!) pimple, any kind of flaw in the skin becomes less significant when people are talking and experiencing each other for real. All of those little imperfections that fade to gray in real life, the things that help make us who we are, jump out in blinding detail in a photographic image. Even the beautiful people aren't immune.

Of the handful of models I've worked with since getting serious again about photography, Ashley probably represents the most successful shoot up to this point. The whole thing happened right in her tiny little apartment and yet the resulting images show a nice range of looks, attitude and emotion. I keep going back to her pictures, playing, tweaking, digging deeper into what I can pull out of a particular image as a photographer and artist. After initially skipping this particular shot, I took another look and ended up spending most of an afternoon crafting it into the best finished result I could get.

I think something I have to learn is to be more patient both in shooting and in post production. This time around I got really patient, pulling out all the stops on the basic retouching, brightening up her eyes and then carefully going through a process I've been practicing that gives the skin a smooth, healthy glow. I've got a ways to go before I can match the pros in post production techniques, but I think I'm making headway.

In my head I keep seeing some of my images in black and white, but haven't had much luck getting the result I'd like through the functions in photoshop. While working on this image I came to the conclusion that it's the channel mixer Stupid! Or at least in this case that's what it was. Although there's more than one way to do things in photoshop, it was converting the image to monochrome in the channel mixer and then tweaking the red, green and blue channels back and forth that gave me the tones and contrast I was looking for. Wanting viewers to really be pulled into how amazing Ashley's eyes look, I cropped in tighter and went horizontal with the framing to add tension against the verticle shape of her face. Was that the way to go? I'm still thinking about it. Would it be better back in the verticle framing? Maybe. Regardless, since putting this black and white version on my Flickr page, it's received more comments than any of my other images. There must be something about it that works.

The knife image is another study in lighting, shape, composition and whether or not it works better in color or black and white. It's a shot I've been thinking about for months and quite frankly, I've been a little bit afraid of it. Why? Probably because I knew it was going to take a fair amount of time to set up and shoot and the end result was questionable. Being hungry for more quality work in my portfolio finally got me off my indecisive butt and starting the step by step process of constructing the image.

The easy part was jamming the knife point into a scrap piece of 4x4 lumber and folding the handle over. The harder part was figuring out how I was going to light the silly thing. The main light source was a portable flash unit off to the right. A snoot funneled down a narrow beam that illuminated just the top part of the blade and handle and made the Gerber logo pop out. The bacground is a sheet of black foam board with another flash aimed at it. I figured with a knife like this the background color had to be dramatic. A red gel over the flash gave me the rich crimson I was looking for. The last touch was to hand hold an LED headlamp from the left to pop just a little light into the top edges of the knife and using a slow shutter speed to give the continuous source a chance to register. The flashes were fired with a CyberSync trigger and two receivers.

The imperfections that show up on a person's face? It happens with product shots too. Those little specks of dust just wouldn't go away no matter how much I brushed and blasted with compressed air. Some slight shifts in the texture of the metal also had to be dealt with. So I settled in for some serious retouching, did my usual contrast adjustment, the final digital sharpening and ended up with a finished image that's pretty darned close to what I originally had in mind.

The conversion to black and white was a bit simpler than what I went through with the image of Ashley. Once again, is it better in color or black and white? I've had numerous compliments on the color version and I really do like the way it turned out. But there's something to be said for the rich tones of black and white too. I guess in the end it's all a matter of opinion.

Models Are Cool

2009-04-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

Northern Minnesota, the land of ice fishing, maple syrup, moose hunting and boreal forests, isn't really a prime location for working with fashion models. Fashion up here generally consists of L.L. Bean shorts, hiking boots and mosquito netting in the summer and fleece sweaters, giant insulated boots and hats with ear flaps in the winter. Finding models for fashion and beauty oriented photo shoots isn't out of the question, but it does take a bit more effort. Thankfully, there's the Internet and sites designed to get photographers and models together.

Ashley lives in Duluth, is going into nursing and wants to do some modeling on the side. We connected on one of the Internet networking sites back in February. Last weekend, about two months after meeting, we finally managed to put together a shoot.

Even though the April weather is improving and it was a nice day in Duluth, we did the shoot in Ashley's apartment, which is just big enough to let us move around some and for me to set up some lights and reflectors. With the end of the school year coming up and a busy schedule, Ashley could only commit a short block of time to our shoot, which ultimately amounted to a couple hours. It was a bit of a scramble to make the most of the time we had.

I mentioned fashion at the beginning of this post, but this shoot was more for filling out our portfolios. And god knows I need the practice in working with a model. After looking through her existing work that leans more to moody, low key shots, I decided I wanted to brighten up Ashley's look. I had wanted to get more elaborate with my lighting set ups, but with the short amount of time we had I opted to go more basic with the lighting and concentrate on the overall attitude of the images.

I wish all models could have more of Ashley's personality. She's friendly, seems to be very comfortable in her skin, laid back and easy to work with. She offered up a range of looks during the shoot and seemed to have fun doing it, which keeps it fun for me and makes the whole process more enjoyable. After working with her once, I have all kinds of ideas bubbling around in my head and hope we get the chance to build on what we started.

Out There

2009-04-10T10:10:00.001-07:00

"It's not about the camera. It's the image that counts." That's a comment I've seen so many times from a collection of successful, outstanding photographers. And as I play with the technological marvel of my own camera, I try to keep in mind that it's just a tool, a means to an image that will move not only myself, but someone else somewhere in the world.

The image above is from a cool, hazy day back in March. With patches of snow and ice still laying across everything, it was nice enough to venture out past the Coast Guard station and Grand Marais harbor to the breakwall that connects Artist's Point and the lighthouse. Looking out over the rock island and Lake Superior to a pale horizon that marked the break between water and sky, I knew there had to be a picture that might be worth the time it would take to find. So I set my camera up on the tripod with the self timer at 20 seconds, pressed the shutter button and ran out to a spot on the rocks. Over and over I did that, running back and forth, checking the image on the screen, pressing the shutter button again and running back out to the rocks, bracketing exposures as I went.

Predictably, even with the range of exposures I collected and the care with how I composed the shot, the image straight from the camera was . . . well, honestly pretty blah. I let it set idle in the computer for several weeks, until last night when I decided to take another look. I tweaked the curves, the contrast, the sharpening, I cropped, I un-cropped and then started digging into the Photoshop filters. More tweaking, more experimentation, more playing until this particular image emerged and I started thinking, maybe this is it. Quite frankly, it looks more like a painting, or a colored pencil drawing, even a cartoon, but finally exhibits some of the mood I felt when I was standing at the edge of Lake Superior, looking out there. One thing I've noticed is that the bigger it is, the better it looks. So click on the image, watch it expand on your screen and see if the color, texture and feeling of space speak to you at all.

As I try to grow as a photographer, I study what others are doing. Off to one side of this blog is a list of other blogs I follow. Chase Jarvis is a photographer based out of Seattle. http://www.chasejarvis.com/ I think he's only in his thirties, but he's reached a pinnacle of success I salivate over. What makes him so interesting beyond his creative talent with a camera and business sense, is his personality and sheer enthusiasm. The guy moves forward by digging into the world and sharing his own world with just about anyone who asks. He's one of those intoxicating types who vibrates positive energy, a pied piper of fun and meaningful pursuits. On his own blog he recently included information about another photographer, Doug Menuez.

I pulled up Menuez's blog where he ruminates about his search for those special images, not just good pictures, but images that have meaning in the world. Then I pulled up his website and looked through his work resulting from some thirty years as a photographer. The greatest percentage of his work is black and white and astonishing in its depth. It's all there, thought provoking, cute, humorous, sometimes sad, exhibiting many aspects of the human condition, a beautiful range of work that is admirable and inspirational. http://www.menuez.com/

So with that in mind, I'll keep looking for my own special images. Keep moving, learning, sharing. Some of those images are right in front of me. Some of the others, the really special ones, are out there.

A Fine Art Day

2009-04-04T14:40:00.000-07:00

Although it's a gray, rather dreary day, I wanted to get outside at least for a while. At first my plan was to head out on one of the trails . . . maybe not even take my camera. The whole idea was just to get out and move. But the wine bottles hanging at the corner of the cabin were whispering color at me in the flat light.

My first few shots were handheld. Didn't take me long to slap that camera on the tripod. I wasn't looking for blurred images and when the end of the lens is creeping up on the subject into micro mode, it pays to have the stability a tripod offers. As I tried several different spots and compositions around the bottles, the aperture settings on the lens went up and down. It's hard to tell sometimes how an image will benefit from great or shallow depth of field, so I played it safe and went for a range.

Today felt like the time for rich color and defined shape and I let myself go wild in Photoshop, playing with curves, contrast, sharpening and cropping. What finally made these images pop the way I envisioned was digging into the Photoshop textures section. I don't want to be the kind of photographer who relies too heavily on all the bells and whistles a computer and post production offer, but this time around it resulted in images that announce themselves as fine art. And a little bit of art helps brighten an otherwise gray day.

Galaxies At Ground Level

2009-03-30T19:43:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's funny, fortuitous, or both where some images come from. This is a shot from the front of my old pick-up . . . the one that used to be my dog truck when my every single day revolved around sled dogs and finding ways to win races. It's one of those Chevy models from the early 90's that had a poor paint job. Just before the year 2000 rolled in, I was noticing little pucker spots around the hood and on top of the cab. Since then, big flakes of paint have peeled off, leaving the gray undercoat exposed, which remarkably has held up to the sun and weather. The steel flat bed that carried the big dog box I transported my dogs in is terribly rusted and the chassis looks almost as bad. It's a sad reminder of my glory days as a champion racer, but the darn thing still runs.

There's a black plastic air guard attached to the front of the hood. This image is of the ice that was stuck to the plastic just a couple days ago. I set my camera up on the tripod, got in close and made several exposures at different settings. A few adjustments and some cleaning up of one of those images in Photoshop and I'm struck by how much it looks like a scene from space. You don't have to go far to find a galaxy. A sad old, beat up truck will suffice.

A Touch of Spring

2009-03-29T08:23:00.000-07:00

Too much time inside, surfing the net, spending hours looking at the work of other photographers and a person could go stir crazy. That's me lately, hunkered down in front of my computer screen exploring everyone else's world and neglecting my own. So, yesterday I grabbed my camera, pack and tripod and headed down a trail into the woods, just to get out and see what I could find. Didn't get very far. There are tree limbs bent down everywhere, a virtual ice covered maze, courtesy of the freezing rain we had earlier in the week. Luckily I didn't have to go far to find something worthwhile.

There were bunny and other little critter tracks all over the place in the snow and I framed several shots of the tracks, shadows and pools of light stabbing down through the trees. On the surface, it seems that such a scene would produce a striking image, but I find myself still searching for the shot that really stands out. What stood out to me on this short little trip were the frozen clusters of needles hanging from the balsam trees. Yes, more ice. I think I mentioned in a previous post that I'm about iced out, but when I set the camera up on the tripod and moved in close with the 105mm micro lens it felt like I was seeing something new. Getting outside and moving around, even for just a little bit, gave me something I'm quite pleased with. It's a reminder to not sit in one place all the time exploring someone else's world.

Just Outside The Door

2009-03-25T15:41:00.000-07:00

Ok, so here I am again . . . stranded at home. Well, not completely, undeniably stranded, but unable to just jump in my truck and take off wherever and whenever I want. The stranded part of my rambling stems from the fact that it started raining a few days ago. Freezing rain. The kind of rain that turns everything uncovered to solid ice, roads included. The long, winding, hilly driveway I live on is now a bobsled run and that means next to nothing for traction with a wheeled vehicle. Listening to tree limbs break off high up in the canopy and come crashing all the way to the ground provides a certain, twisted entertainment for part of a day, but quite frankly I'm tired of this crap. Enough of the snow and ice. I'm ready for some heat.

As a photographer, I have to at least try to take advantage of potential image possibilities as they present themselves. So, the camera and tripod came out yesterday and I simply stepped outside my doorway, aimed down at the first patch of ice that had some character and pressed the shutter release button. Is it a really cool shot? I'm not sure. But when I look at it I find myself wishing it was blown up huge, framed and hanging on my wall so I could lose myself in all those curves, shadows and highlights. Maybe someone else will find something else about it to lose themselves in. No one would know if I hadn't pulled out my camera.

Is Winter About Over?

2009-03-21T22:16:00.000-07:00

Although I have a fascination with ice and snow, I'm really looking forward to warmer weather and the different possibilities for images that come with it. I'm about all wintered out. Strange, considering I used to be a champion sled dog racer.

These two images both come from along the shore of Lake Superior and the many varieties of ice that form there. The little patch of snow over the ice came out better than most of my other snow efforts. The patterns with the warmth of the light make it work. The second image is solid ice about fifty feet out from the shore. Yes that's really ice. I had to play with the contrast and color in Photoshop to bring out the personality of the image, but the geometric shapes are just what I saw in the camera viewfinder.

Bubble Bottles

2009-03-18T17:37:00.000-07:00

Although I sometimes think I don't have that good of an eye for picking subjects to photograph, I'm constantly scrutinizing just about everything in sight. I'm frequently impressed by images of different types of bottles and glassware, filled with richly colored liquids and lit in such a way to make those vessels and what they hold glow with a dreamy intensity. These two little travel bottles have held my attention for a while and I finally filled one with shampoo, the other with soft soap and started experimenting with how I could create a cool image of my own.

Starting out, I set the bottles on a one foot square, glossy black piece of floor tile, placed a small softbox behind with a Vivitar 285HV flash shooting through it and made a series of shots to track down the best exposure. The results weren't too bad, but seemed a little blah to me. Contemplating how I could create something a little more interesting, I remembered that regardless of how full the bottles were, there were still bubbles floating around in there. Of course, the bubbles always work their way up, so I ended up spending close to an hour holding the bottles up one way, flipping them, setting them down on the tile and then reaching for the shutter button on the camera fast enough to get a shot off before the bubbles had floated out of the frame. Don't ask me how many exposures I made trying to catch those bubbles where I wanted them, as well as getting bubbles that were the most interesting. Yes, it's silly, but anything for the shot, right?

Picking out several of what looked like the best shots, I downloaded them onto my computer, fired up Photoshop and set to work on getting a final image. I sent an example to a friend of mine who likes to keep tabs on what I'm working on and it wasn't long before I heard back. She liked the image overall, but didn't like the "3 fluid ounces" on the bottles. "It's really distracting," she said. Some keystrokes, mouse maneuvering, a little Photoshop magic and I made the writing disappear. Adjustments in Curves, contrast and sharpening brought out the detail and color I was looking for. I decided to include the basic image as it came out of the camera to show how much different it is from the finished image. Shot with my Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm micro lens. The flash was fired with a CyberSync transmitter and receiver.

Look Up There!

2009-03-14T22:10:00.000-07:00

Spring isn't officially here, but it sure is on the way. After another cold snap at the end of last week, hopefully the last, today the temps were clear up above 40 with a bright sun and light wind. Grand Marais and the harbor were treated to a collection of colorful sprites hanging in the blue sky.

I didn't talk to the gentleman who had hooked these huge kites up to ice anchors well out on the frozen harbor, but someone from the small crowd that tiptoed out onto the hard, blue surface mentioned that he was from Iowa. Apparently he has a whole collection and decided to send some additional color into the sky.

I'll say one thing . . . with the warm temps and sun, that was some of the slickest darn ice I've ever encountered. It's no small miracle that I managed to keep my feet while trying to frame some shots. Random, cool little events like this don't happen this often. Coming away with an image or two, or three was worth the risk of a hard landing and wet butt.

A Chilly Golden Glow

2009-03-01T10:12:00.000-08:00

Here it is the 1st of March and Northern Minnesota is still deep in the clutches of winter. I guess that's supposed to be normal this far north, but past years have brought temperature variations that leave you wondering if you'll need your parka or raincoat during any of the winter months.

Late afternoon yesterday I was outside and noticed the two to three foot long icicles hanging off the eaves of my cabin roof. The sun, poking just over the tree tops, had turned sections of the ice into those little yellow strip lights so many people string around their houses throughout the year, casting a gentle, warm glow in the middle of each night.

I tried several angles to get what I hoped would be the best shot and finally settled on standing on top of the snowbank surrounding the cabin, jamming my shoulder into the wall and shooting through the icicles towards the sun. Some minor cleaning up in Photoshop and this is what I ended up with. Shot with my Nikon D300 and 105mm micro lens.

Compared To The Moment

2009-02-15T19:17:00.000-08:00

Winter just isn't what it used to be in Northern Minnesota. Here it is, pretty much the middle of February and last week it rained most of two days. Rain! Caused all kinds of hassles on snow covered roads and driveways. Luckily, later in the week the temps dropped back down closer to normal and we had just enough snow to put a cushion back on the landscape. The neat part of this particular snow was how it covered everything in what looks like fluffy powdered sugar. The classic winter wonderland.

I was on my way home from work on Friday and ended up stopping several times to try and capture some of the beauty. One thing I've discovered in my life is that being in a place, at a certain time, viewing a particular scene and experiencing that particular moment carries a special ambience and magic that cannot be duplicated with any number of descriptions or manmade representations. But we still try to capture that moment in some way that can match and be savored beyond a simple memory.

Photography is an amazing medium, producing images that can inspire, depress, amuse, arouse and move an indivual in any number of ways. I've discovered though, that an image captured of that particular special scene, at that particular special moment, frequently will not produce a representation that comes close to being there. The magic and emotion will ultimately be missing. Back in the days of film, it sometimes required hours in the darkroom, dodging and burning as the image formed on the print paper from the enlarger light lancing its way through a negative or transparency. Today, it's a matter of time spent on the computer with photoshop and manipulating a raw image in ways that almost defy imagination to arrive at that final image that will make someone, somewhere stop and stare in awe.

With these images I played with different compositions and paid close attention to exposure, knowing that what came out of the camera would end up being flat and even boring compared to the real live scene. I have a long way to go in understanding photoshop, but I'm slowly getting a better grasp of the many functions available and hopefully my tweaking and futzing produced an image that will make someone, somewhere stop and stare for at least a moment.

The Watch Experiment

2009-01-31T13:04:00.000-08:00

Being stuck at home most of last week while fighting a cold left me with too much time on my hands. I've been wanting to try some shots with a watch, so I pulled out my well worn Timex and started experimenting. I ended up with a nice image, started to upload it on here, looked at it closer and decided nah, I can do better and went back to the drawing board. Two days later I think I'm satisfied enough to put up some of the results.

I'm not even going to try and explain the lighting and set up details except to say that depending on the image, there was a combination of two Vivitar 285HV flashes, an LED headlight, a Bogen/Manfrotto magic arm, a Bogen/Manfrotto articulated arm, a sheet of chromolux craft paper, several plain white reflector cards and a couple of makeshift snoots for the flashes fashioned from sheets of craft foam. Each of the three shots required a lot of positioning, tweaking, re-tweaking, more re-tweaking and so on.

In Photoshop each of the images went through my normal procedure of some minor cropping, sharpening, some brightening in curves, contrast adjustment and retouching. And of course, after a lot of consideration, I decided this one shot looked better in black and white.

The Many Moods of Trees

2009-01-29T13:34:00.000-08:00

I've been sitting at home the entire week fighting cold symptoms and thoroughly annoyed about the whole deal. It's not just about missing work . . . feeling all sickly like this pretty much keeps me incarcerated inside. And even though I can do any number of things inside, it doesn't work so well when one of my main ambitions is sleeping and getting to a healthier state. I would much rather be out, somewhere, anywhere with camera in hand, watching for that chance at a really cool image.

Something as simple as a tree, a leaf, a branch, can offer so many possibilities. A single tree can take on multiple personalities depending on the time of day, the weather, the angle of the sun, the direction from which an image is made.

This little stand of trees is out in a farm field, a tiny, ancient bulldozer resting and rusting down underneath the branches. On a normal, sunny day I drive right by. But that day was covered in fog and the trees and dozer took on a whole new personality in the haze. Shot with the Canon A85 on a tripod.

This particular leaf actually isn't from a tree, but I couldn't resist including it. It was part of the forest floor from last summer. These plants, with their big, rich green leaves are everywhere. I positioned a diffusion screen overhead to soften the sunlight punching down through the trees and tried out a number of different compositions with my D300 and the 105mm micro lens.

I was driving home from work one foggy afternoon and this spot caught my eye. It's just a simple little stand of dark trees, bordered on one side by a small meadow. Somewhere, I had seen a photo that had been made using camera shake and it was something I wanted to try. This shot was with the Canon A85. I set the shutter speed to about a second, held the camera to my eye, pressed the shutter button and as the exposure was made, pushed the camera straight out from my face. This particular image has turned out to be a favorite among many people who see it.

After a rain one summer day. I just stepped out of my cabin door and looked for a likely prospect along the edge of trees that surround me. Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm micro lens, set up on a tripod.

One very cold day earlier this month. I snowshoed out into the woods with something else in mind and stopped here. There's something rather mysterious about scenes like this, as well as primitive, ancient, elemental, a person could come up with all kinds of descriptions. Made with my tripod mounted D300 and 18-50mm lens.

Daytime Flash & Action

2009-01-28T13:22:00.000-08:00

Since getting back into photography in a more serious way, I've been hunting the internet like crazy for any educational information I can find. I have a long list of photography sites saved on my computer that I refer to on a regular basis. In recent years there's been an amazing upsurge in using portable flash units in just about any photographic situation imaginable. Some of the sites I have listed on this blog provide plenty of information on portable flash use and using what I'm learning from those sites, I've started expanding my lighting skills.

I've been friends with the couple who own and manage the Grand Marais bike shop pretty much since I first moved to Minnesota. They've put on some excellent mountain bike competitions over the years and last summer, knowing that I had a camera back in my hands, they asked if I would be available to shoot the new race they were putting on. It didn't take me long to recognize a perfect off camera flash opportunity.

In my everyday job (the one that keeps the bills payed) I work with a nice young guy, Dan. He readily agreed when I asked if he would help out in shooting the bike race. The race started in town, but finished up on the well known Pincushion Mountain trail system and that's where I concentrated my efforts. I had scouted out a couple of likely locations on the course the day before the race. After the bikers took off from the start, Dan and I drove up to Pincushion, where I got a bit of a surprise. We had barely parked when the first racers came chugging up the hill from town and shot across the parking lot on their way onto the trail system. Man some of those guys are fast! So Dan and I didn't waste any time hoofing it up to one of the shoot locations I had scouted.

With Dan's help, I positioned a Vivitar 285HV flash on a light stand at the edge of the trail just off to one side of where I would be with the camera. I had some new (and cheap) wireless flash trigger units I was trying out, with a receiver hooked into the flash and the trigger on my camera. After some flash meter readings and fiddling with the balance between the ambient light and the flash, I started shooting as bikers came zipping by.

This was the first time in my life I had ever tried such a thing and I was hoping the results would be worthwhile. In the two different locations we shot from, I had an aperture range from f11 all the way up to f22 because of the different angle of the sun. My sutter speeds stayed around 1/15 to 1/20 of a second to blur the background as I panned with the bikers. With some constant checking on my camera's LCD screen and an occasional adjustment of my settings, I started to get the feeling that there might be some good shots when it was all over.

There were, of course, plenty of shots that were marginal, but what was left were some of the best actions shots I've ever made and I'm looking forward to trying these techniques on a lot of future subjects.

Being Prepared

2009-01-27T10:19:00.000-08:00

Last summer, I was up in Thunder Bay, Ontario on an overcast, rainy day just driving around and exploring. I was in some park (couldn't tell you the name of it) when I noticed something off the side of the road. As I got closer I realized it was a fox.

Slowing down and coming to a stop, I didn't really think I'd get a chance for a photo, but the fox, looking soaked to the bone, just stood there staring at me. I quickly realized that this particular animal was familiar with people and I might get a shot off after all. Hoping the fox would stay put for a moment, I rolled down my window brought my camera up, pressed the shutter release button, and quietly cursed my stupidity as the camera started beeping at me. I had it on the self timer mode from some previous photo work and had neglected to change it back to regular shooting mode. A full five seconds ticked off before the camera fired. Luckily for me, the fox held its ground while I quickly changed my settings and fired off several more shots.

It's something I should have noticed a lot sooner. Being prepared often times makes the difference between getting the shot, or not getting the shot. This time around, I was afforded some luck and a very accomodating little fox.

That Icy Feeling

2009-01-26T13:41:00.000-08:00

Grand Marais Harbor, January 2008 with the Canon A85. It was about zero degrees and I nearly froze my fingers off in the minute or so it took me to get several images. This image had some contrast adjustments and sharpening done in Microsoft Picture It. My acquisition of Photoshop came later.

Living in Northern Minnesota, one of the things you can generally expect each winter, is a healthy abundance of snow and ice. Although the weather has been all over the place in past years, bringing everything from 30 below temps to mid-winter rainstorms, at some point during the season there will be some form of winter wonderland.

Early spring, 2008 along the shore of Lake Superior. An earlier shot from my new Nikon D300 with the 18-50mm lens. Contrast and sharpening again through Microsoft Picture It.

I love ice. I never get tired of watching the way it shifts and changes from day to day, the way the light catches its angles and bounces color through its layers. I'm always looking for those shots that could be in a coffee table book, or a high gloss magazine, or a calendar.

Grand Marais harbor and the Coast Guard station, January 2009. Nikon D300, 18-50mm lens with a circular polarizing filter. Photoshop adjustments include sharpening, contrast adustment and selective darkening of the sky. Once again, it was so freaking cold that the I had trouble rotating the ring on the polarizing filter and cursed when I had to pull my hands out of my gloves to make camera adjustments.

Kady

2009-01-25T10:13:00.000-08:00

This is my great niece, Kady. A group of family members were visiting from Kansas last summer and she ended up being a major photo subject. Her dad (my newphew of course) has pestered me for years to "teach" him how to shoot better. He had his digital SLR with him on this trip and we ended up conferring the entire time about shutter speeds, apertures, ISO settings, focusing, etc. I think Kady was actually starting to get a little annoyed with Dad and Uncle Mark directing, "Kady, stop right there. Kady hold still. Kady, turn this way. No, no, no, don't move yet." It was pretty obvious what she was thinking, 'Gosh, guys. Just let me play.'

This is one of several shots I got that I'm particulary happy with. Kady is the perfect, pretty little girl, but I used this shot as a photoshop experiment to retouch a few blemishes and to just smooth her skin out a little more.

Shot with my Nikon D300 and the 105mm micro lens.

Liquid Textures

2009-01-25T08:10:00.000-08:00

This is a shot of Kanduce Creek from two summers ago. It's not far from where I live and spots like this are easy to reach from the parking lot on the highway that runs along the shore of Lake Superior. Most of the streams and rivers that flow into Superior carry a lot of minerals and other flavors with them, turning the water to various shades of brown. People think it looks like root beer. It was about mid-afternoon when I stopped at this particular location. The sun was high and coming down through the treetops in shafts of bright light, turning the water to caramel, with tints of green from the mossy bottom showing through. I shifted around on the bank, right at the edge of the water until I was satisfied that I had the best angle. This is a handheld shot, again with the Canon A85 point and shoot.

Thimbleberry

2009-01-23T21:51:00.000-08:00

This is one of the earlier shots I made of a thimbleberry leaf with the Canon PowerShot A85 back around July of 1997. I was beginning to experiment with what the little 4 mega pixel camera could do and was getting excited at the color and detail I was seeing. From underneath the leaves had a glow about them as the sun's rays came from above. So I wormed my way down low and filled the camera frame with one of the biggest leaves from below.

Maybe it's a lesson to always be willing to look at things from a different viewpoint. It might open up a whole other world.

I'd Like To Introduce Myself

2009-01-23T18:07:00.000-08:00

With Yonkers. The last of my championship sled dogs.

Photography has been with me since my high school days. Thumbing through copies of Modern Photography magazine in an English/literature teacher’s room sparked something in me and I soon had my first camera, a Pentax ME Super. I loved that little camera with its blinking color lights inside the viewfinder that told me what the meter thought the exposure settings should be. Through my college years and beyond I’ve always had a camera close at hand and for a time, seriously considered taking a shot at being a true professional, making my living as a photographer and reaching for the highest level of the craft and art. Instead, I basically chickened out and played it safe (or so I thought) with a career in the printing industry.

After just a few short years I was realizing that the Kansas City printing industry wasn’t offering much fulfillment and I found myself wondering if it was really the direction my life should be taking. Even though I was living in the city, my farm boy upbringing kept me outside much of the time with camping, hiking and some fairly serious rock climbing. Several climbing partners and I explored as many sheer rock faces as we could find in trips throughout Missouri, Arkansas and extended weekends in Colorado. One of my buddies had a neat dog he had adopted from an animal shelter and before long, I was on my own search for the right kind of dog that could accompany me on hiking and climbing trips. One day I encountered a young adult Siberian husky at the Kansas City Animal Shelter. He ended up going home with me. I named him Panda and had no idea how he would change my life.

What happened from there ends up being a long story, so I’ll do my best to relate the short version. Through a series of chance encounters and coincidences, I came into contact with a Siberian husky club. Through the club I met a fellow dog lover who lived with his family on a small farm outside of Kansas City. He had a small kennel of huskies that were direct descendents of some of the original Siberians brought to Alaska from Russia in the early 1900’s. Our friendship developed quickly and over the next couple years I ended up with half a dozen dogs and a deepening desire to find out what this sled dog thing was all about.

I figured I was young enough and single enough to try just about anything and in early 1993 I moved to the very northern tip of Minnesota to spend an extremely challenging year working for a well known and successful musher. (That’s what sled dog people are called: mushers. And running a team of sled dogs is called mushing.) After that year, I built my own racing team, was immediately competitive and in my second year of racing won the first of several championships across Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. I have a natural talent with dogs and I spent every waking moment and many sleeping moments thinking about any aspect of what it takes to build a fire breathing racing team. I was good and thought the rest of my life would revolve around sled dogs in some way, shape or form. Funny how things can change.

Somewhere in that mix I met a woman I thought was going to be that special ‘one’ we all look for. Instead, in a few short years she had reduced me to a wreck, both financially and emotionally. It’s not often a man has to admit to being the victim of an abusive relationship. If so many people hadn’t told me that very thing, I’m not sure I ever would have fully realized what had been done to me. It’s been some years since I managed to get clear of her and it finally seems as if I’m coming out of what was a very dark time.

In trying to get my life back to some semblance of order and worth, I took a stab at returning to competitive sled dog racing. But it didn’t take me long to realize that the incredible amount of work and sacrifice it would take to reach the place I wanted to be was more than I had the heart to deal with. I still had a desire, but something was definitely wrong. A friend who has also raced sled dogs in his past gave me his opinion one day. “I think you’re done running dogs. Your fire’s gone out.” Someone else suggested that “She” had killed part of my spirit. I literally didn’t know what to do with myself and for the most part was just drifting from day to day, directionless and lost. Something a character said in an episode of a very popular tv series seems to apply here. "It's not enough just to live. You have to have something to live for."

A little point and shoot digital camera may have ignited a new fire. It’s amazing what 4 megapixels can do. I never could have guessed they could have such healing properties. Randomly snapping shots here and there, I began to notice the incredible detail and color in the images. I started squeezing every bit of creative control I could out of that little camera, experimenting with composition, exposure, focus and whatever its limited functions would give me. It didn’t take me long to want more and in early 2008 I took the plunge and purchased my first digital SLR. When I was researching different kinds of cameras and talking about it to the point of possibly being annoying, a co-worker pointed out that in the time she has known me, it was the first time she had seen me act truly alive. Now I’m trying to develop (no pun intended) the technique and expertise to be worthy of such a camera as well as carry on what that co-worker had noticed.

The digital revolution and internet have brought incredible changes to photography. The opportunities may be endless . . . but then again, so is the competition. It’s certainly a different world than the one I knew back in the film days. I’m getting older, but I think I may have enough fire left in me to reach for one more dream. I love images. Photographs for some reason top the list. The color, composition, detail, mood, energy or lack thereof all combine to stop me in my tracks so often. My hope is to create an image here and there that will stop other people in their tracks. I’m sure it won’t be easy. It kind of reminds me of standing on a sled behind a team of huskies as we streak along a snow covered trail. Should I be putting so much of my life out in front of the world in this way? It’s hard to say, but it feels right.

I’ve been wanting to get a web site up and running for a while now. You pretty much need to be visible on the internet to get anywhere. A computer guru friend suggested just days ago that maybe I should consider a blog. My response was huh? I’m still not that computer and internet savvy. A blog is free he pointed out, fairly simple to do and gets me and my work in front of the world. Seems like a good way to start.

I’ve been a printer and graphic artist, a published writer, rock climber, champion sled dog racer, wildland fire fighter, helitack crewmember with fire fighting helicopters, volunteer structural fire fighter and First Responder with the local EMS system. My name is Mark Dunlap. Among other things, I’m a photographer. And this is my blog.