In March I attended a workshop on photographing people at the Santa Fe Workshop. Here are four of my favorite images from that class. We had to approach strangers at various venues and ask them if we could take their picture. It was rather intimidating at first, but eventually I got pretty good at it. The lick shot was completely spontaneous. I'm just happy I captured it.

The Lick

Byron Describing Rock Climbing

In the Background

Up on the Roof Top

In a Minnesota winter, I find that I shoot a lot more images of people. It has been especially cold this winter, at least it seems that way to me. Tonight it's supposed to get down to -14 with a windchill of -35 or so. Brrr. Here are some recent people shots. The first set were taken this weekend at our church's camp. We had a winter fun day. Anna and I spent most of our time in the Mess Hall. The last image is from a portrait shoot that I did for the parents of a 14-month old girl. I offered the shoot as part of a silent auction fundraiser. They haven't decided which image they want an 8 x 10 print of yet, but here is one from the set that I worked up a bit in Capture NX.

Anna looking through a snowflake
Cute look
Beautiful light through a window on a cold day
Winter gear

Portrait of a cute 14-month old

This weekend the four of us relaxed at the Kee Nee Moo Sha Resort in northern Minnesota. We "won" this getaway weekend at a silent auction. We had a nice, relaxing time. It seems we spent most of our time warming up by the fire or playing card games. Anna whooped me at Crazy Eights. If that wasn't humbling. These are a few of the images from the weekend.

On Saturday, Kirstin and I went out on the lake (Woman Lake) Can you find the old wizard in this image? In the town of Longville we saw this unfortunate juxtaposition of signs by the roadside. Kirstin and I went back to get a picture. The light at sunset on Saturday night was beautiful. Priscilla and I went out for a walk. That is when I captured this image of Priscilla in the beautiful winter light. This last image is my entry in the Friendship/Romance challenge.

Here is my entry for the Best of 2007 contest. I got up before sunrise to check out the sunrise on the marsh at Lake Minnetonka. This image of the cattails with fog in the background was my favorite of the shoot.

Cattails at Sunrise

I felt that I needed to go on a different kind of photo shoot, so I went to the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis taking nothing but my Nikon D200 with the Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 prime lens. There was a public salsa dancing lesson going on when Kirstin, Anna and I arrived. I keyed in on these two young women who were really getting into it. Later I snuck some images of Kirstin while she wasn't looking. I really love that 85mm lens. It is so nice and light and allows you to get right in on folks without getting in their face.

Midtown Global Market Salsa Dancing 4
Midtown Global Market Salsa Dancing 2
Midtown Global Market Salsa Dancing 3
Midtown Global Market Salsa Dancing 1
Kirstin shopping at Midtown Global Market
Portrait Kirstin at Midtown Global Market

One area of photography I'm interested in learning more about is portrait photography. Not the Olan Mills variety, but rather the kind where you really get a sense for who the person is. I received a Nikkor 85mm f/1.8 lens from Priscilla for Christmas and I had a grand nephew visiting, so I got some good practice. The new lens is awesome, that's all I've got to say about that.

One thing I've learned about shooting portraits, and people in general, is that you want the focus on the eyes, especially the closest eye. On the thumbnail I was going for a sharp focus on the closest eye with a gradual softening of focus elsewhere. I shot with an f/stop of 2.2. I really like how that one turned out. Here are a few of my favorites.

Van Up Close
Van
Van Playing

Well I couldn't very well do this story with black and white images. However, I did post one of these images as a black and white version in my previous post. I captured these images in the Wood-Rill park not far from our home. I think the colors will be at peak out there in a couple weeks. I will definitely go back.

Oh, and one other thing. I would like to thank Escape Artist for agreeing to host the next challenge. I have enjoyed seeing all the great black and white images posted for the "It's Black and White To Me" challenge. There have been more than I could keep up with. I'm looking forward to what Escape Artist comes up with for us.

Fall Color 3
Fall Color 2
Fall Color 4
Fall Color 1

I went for a bike ride today and then walked back into my favorite woods to check out the fall colors. They're not quite at peak yet. I've been checking every several days. I did manage to get a black and white image out of it.

Walk in the Woods 5

P.S. I've mentioned this before. This image is darker on Photographica than it normally would be because the color profile info gets stripped.

After supper tonight I took off for the west heading right into the teeth of an oncoming thunderstorm. Once the storm passed the light was beautiful and a gorgeous rainbow appeared. I could see it from end to end. I didn't bother converting the rainbow shots into black and white but I did with the others. I'm having trouble deciding which versions I like better. Generally speaking, I prefer the light in the color shots and the clouds in the black and white shots. Let me know what you think.

Storm Chasing

P.S. I'm noticing some strange jpeg artifacts on some of these shots. Anybody else notice that too?

I normally shoot color, but given that this is Wilk's challenge and he loves black and white, I took a spin with black and white conversion on this post. Tonight, Anna and I went down out to get some late day shots. Unfortunately, the sun went down behind clouds, so the light was not great. However I did get a few images when the sun was peaking out.

My eye was drawn to this grass that looked luminescent, almost like bunches of little fairies. I am interested in knowing whether you prefer the color or black and white version, if any. I know that most of the blades of grass are not in focus. I wasn't worried about that because what I wanted to capture was the glowing rim around the tops. The fly on the one blade of grass was a bonus. I didn't see that until I got home.
Shining grass in color
Shining grass in black and white

This is my entry in the seeing wide challenge. I didn't bother posting the color version of this one because I think the black and white is far better.
Sunset seeing wide in black and white

I just turned over my second year at Photographica, so I thought I'd go back and see if I could pick my four favorite images from the second year of my time here. Trying to pick four favorites from a whole year's worth of shooting is a good exercise. Anyway, here are my picks.

Being in the right place at the right time. This image was taken late in the day last Fall. I was out for one of the last bike rides of the season. The tree colors were at the peak and the sun was going down behind these trees, backlighting the leaves, creating a transparency effect.

Am I glad I brought my camera with me on the way to work on this day. Some days if I know I'm going to be driving to work when the sun is coming up and I think the light might be good, I'll bring my camera with me. As I drove over these railroad tracks I did a double-take and then stopped the car and pulled a U-turn to go back and capture this image.

It pays to watch the weather and get up early. One weekend this summer I saw that the weather conditions at sunrise were going to be perfect for fog over the marsh surrounding Lake Minnetonka, so I got up early to get some images. I was rewarded with this view.

Her eyes still haunt me. I captured this image of a little girl at the Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute, in Yangzhou, China. This is the orphanage where our Anna spent the first 17 months of her life. I still see her eyes, as if they were burning right into my soul. I cannot forget her. I hope and pray she finds a wonderful family.

Last weekend we went down to the Stone Arch Bridge in downtown Minneapolis to see the remains of the 35W bridge after the collapse. At first I was surprised that I didn't seem to be able to see anything. Then I realized that I wasn't seeing anything because the bridge was gone. Once I attached my 70 - 200 mm lens with the 2x converter I was able to see the ruins of the bridge. It was a frightening thing. It was hard to get a sense of scale. I kept thinking that the 35W bridge must have been shorter than the 10th Ave. bridge that you can now see in the background because I couldn't believe anyone could survive a collapse from such a height. When I got home I looked up some of my old images from the Stone Arch Bridge. I was shocked to see that the 35W bridge was just as tall as the 10th Ave. Bridge. In fact, in the old picture I posted below it completely obscures the 10th Ave. bridge. The 10th Ave. bridge is the white one in the background behind the green metal 35W bridge.

We were eating breakfast in Beijing when the news of the collapse came across the TV on CNN. We were terrified. We called relatives immediately. Of course in this day and age, the first thing that crossed our minds was terrorism. But then I remembered that they had been doing construction work on the bridge, so I figured it might be related to that somehow.

Even though nobody I know was directly involved in the collapse, it is amazing how few degrees of separation there are to people that were directly affected. My boss was one exit away from being on the bridge when it collapsed. My folks, who are traveling for a few months, have offered up their apartment to a woman whose son was injured in the collapse. The woman works with my sister-in-law. Her son has extensive injuries and her insurance has stopped paying for a hotel room in Minneapolis while he convalesces.

35W bridge before collapse--Look for the green metal structure on the right
After the collapse--the 35W bridge is gone
35W bridge bent metal structure
Pavement in the river  
South end where the collapse started
Flowers in memory
Rays of Hope
Beautiful Light

I finally got around to uploading the last of the China shots that I feel are worthy of sharing.

I call this one seven years of bad luck. It's a bit noisy, but I think it's kind of fun nonetheless.

This shows the old China and new China in Shanghai.

The Chinese people use the parks for exercising.

They also play card and board games in the parks.

While in China we got to visit Anna's orphanage in Yangzhou. They allowed me to take pictures in all the rooms. I have posted several of those pictures below. The emotions of being in that place were powerful. The conditions in the orphanage are better than you might expect. It's sad that such a place is needed but it's good that the orphanage is there for these children.

Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute 1
Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute 2
Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute 3
Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute 4
Yangzhou Social Welfare Institute 5