Each page is custom printed on high quality glossy stock ready for framing once the year ends. The calendar itself is wire bound with a hole for hanging making it easy to flip through the months.

Click on the Thumbnails below to see a preview then head over to our store and pick up a copy.

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This past weekend we focused our night shooting on the Walker Art Center’s famous Sculpture Garden, in particular the “Spoon & Cherry”.  Our goal was to capture the Spoon with the Minneapolis skyline in the background for use in our annual calendar.

We had a couple of surprises in the process; we had not been to the Sculpture Garden literally in decades so the first surprise was the actual size of the spoon compared our memories when the garden first opened. Naturally in the time span since our last visit the plantings, which were an integral part of the garden’s overall design had grown to maturity drastically changing the scale of the entire visual experience.

The second surprise was the abundance of  goose poop, which should not have surprised us since it is a pretty regular occurrence here for migrating Canadian geese to stop over on their way south.

About the light

One of the interesting things about night photography is the ability to capture the underlying colors of the night sky, which in many cases is not as it appears to our eyes. In this case digital sensors are far more capable of capturing light than the human eye and definitively a wider spectrum than film could ever have hoped for. The pinkish sky in some of the spoon photos below were the result of multiple long exposures at different f stops, which in some cases were blended using the HDR technique, others where the result of changing  the color temperature setting in the camera at the time of capture.

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How we got the shots

Because the photos were taken at night very slow shutter speeds were necessary to capture the night time ambiance so each of out cameras were mounted on tripods. Getting the right exposure is basically a trial and error process unless you have an ambient light  meter, which I normally carry but decided to leave behind for these shots. One of the first and  important things to do is to turn off auto focus either in your camera or on the lens. autofocus systems work by detecting contrasting light and since there is that much of it at night, a lens left on auto focus would be continually searching for something to focus on…something that really doesn’t work to well for long exposures.

Our average exposure from the bridge was around 1-2 seconds depending on the lens used. I used my Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8 zoom while Marsha used her 17-55 f2.8. when I switched to my fish eye 10.5mm f2.8 the exposures shortened because more light was let into the camera.

One of the important things about long exposures is stability of the camera, something that can be taken care of to a certain degree with a good tripod, the other source of stability is use of a remote. While tripods and remotes can take care of a lot of stability issues the one issue that is hard to eliminate is camera shake from the mirror flipping up and down caused by tripping the shutter. Some DSLRs are being produced to allow for mirror lock up but unfortunately ours do not allow it.

Since we shoot in RAW mode ( capturing only light information) all of our images require processing for color correction etc. Then the fun begins! I use a wide range of software tools to bring out the image I had visualized, sometimes I just pop the color, I like saturated colors, these images were processed first in Adobe Lightroom (my favorite editing program) then I used Nik software to bring out the details etc.

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Abby and Geno’s wedding was truly a community effort, one that was both heart warming and amazing to witness. As photographers we get to bear witness to a lot of stories from weddings to documentary projects, but seldom do we get the chance to capture the story of a community coming together to collectively launch the fruits of their efforts.

Farm communities, unlike their more urban cousins, have a history of pulling together whether it be recovery from a natural disaster or raising their kids in ways that ensure the survival of generations worth of legacies. Abby and Geno represent such a collective effort.

Their wedding had an additional level of meaning since Abby’s mother Kaye, widely known and respected in the community, succumbed to cancer several years ago. Abby is also an Iraq war veteran.

The Galleries below represent our interpretation of their story, beginning with their engagement photos, Abby’s star light bridal portrait and culminating in their wedding.

Click the thumbnail photos to see the collection then click each photo to enlarge it or click “show as slideshow” to see the collection as a slide show.

Abby and Geno Engagement

Abby and Geno live in Southwestern Minnesota where Geno farms the family farm and Abby runs a local insurance agency. We photographed them in three locations in order to capture their wide range of interests and the context of their lives together. The first location was in SW Minnesota , we used the shoot not only to capture Abby and Geno but also to scout the location of their wedding reception...unfortunately our shooting was limited due to heavy spring rains. The second location was here in the Twin cities at one of our favorite urban locations; St. Anthony Main and the historic Mill District in Minneapolis. Both of these sites offer range of locations that include vistas of the Minneapolis riverfront and the historic Stone Arch Bridge. The final location was on and around their farm in Winnebago.

80 Photos

Abby_geno_wedding

29 Photos

The second location was here in the Twin cities at one of our favorite urban locations; St. Anthony Main and the historic Mill District in Minneapolis. Both of these sites offer range of locations that include vistas of the Minneapolis riverfront and the historic Stone Arch Bridge. The final location was on and around their farm in Winnebago.

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Abby and Geno Engagement

Abby and Geno live in Southwestern Minnesota where Geno farms the family farm and Abby runs a local insurance agency. We photographed them in three locations in order to capture their wide range of interests and the context of their lives together. The first location was in SW Minnesota , we used the shoot not only to capture Abby and Geno but also to scout the location of their wedding reception...unfortunately our shooting was limited due to heavy spring rains. The second location was here in the Twin cities at one of our favorite urban locations; St. Anthony Main and the historic Mill District in Minneapolis. Both of these sites offer range of locations that include vistas of the Minneapolis riverfront and the historic Stone Arch Bridge. The final location was on and around their farm in Winnebago.

80 Photos

Abby_geno_wedding

29 Photos

There are two spectacular seasons along Lake Superior’s shores: Fall and Winter. Fall is the time of year when the North Shore becomes a major tourist destination as folks from all over make their annual “leaf peeping” pilgrimage to witness Fall in all of its’ glory.

The other major season is Winter; while mostly attracting winter recreation, winter on Lake Superior can be a magical time of continual inspiration for visual artists especially photographers. The texture and mood of Superior’s shore line continually changes depending on the mood of the lake itself.

Almost alien in its’ nature lake ice can form everything from a Kryponite like landscape to one that appears glazed in glass.

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The other major season is Winter; while mostly attracting winter recreation, winter on Lake Superior can be a magical time of continual inspiration for visual artists especially photographers. The texture and mood of Superior’s shore line continually changes depending on the mood of the lake itself.

Almost alien in its’ nature lake ice can form everything from a Kryponite like landscape to one that appears glazed in glass.

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Originally built as an aerial transfer, ferry, or transporter bridge,   was completed in 1905, the Aerial Bridge’s design centered around a gondola that could carry 350 people plus wagons, streetcars, or automobiles. A trip across the canal took about one minute, and the ferry car moved across once every five minutes during busy times of the day. However, it wasn’t long before the city was forced to remodel the bridge to accommodate increasing demand from tourists and expanding population.

The bridge re-design included  a lifting platform; construction began in 1929. Since tall ships still plied the waters of Lake Superior the bridge needed to be able rise above the tallest masts.  To accommodate this requirement and keep to the existing land right of way the re-worked bridge incorporated large counter  weights that permitted the road deck to lifted vertically as a complete section instead of two sides opening in the middle.  The new bridge first lifted for a vessel on March 29, 1930.

The bridge can be raised to its full height in about 3 minutes, and goes up 25 to 30 times daily during busy parts of the shipping season. The span is about 390 feet, or 120 meters. As ships pass, there is a customary horn-blowing sequence which is copied back. Long-short-long-short means to raise the bridge, and Long-short-short is a friendly salute.

As with much of the construction during the late 19th and early 20th centuries the Duluth Aerial Bridge is full of intricate details some of which appear to be spontaneous acts of creativity. One such detail can be seen in the flower pattern created from rivets and echoed in other locations with punched holes. These details are what being a human connection to other wise industrial object. One of the key reasons bridges were designed and built the way they were was because most if not all were designed by architects. Architects understood human scale and important it was for the objects present in our landscape to relate to us as humans.

The photo gallery on this page represents the beginning of a series documenting the elegant details that made and now make our everyday lives more human.

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The emergence of wind turbines onto the rural landscape has produced a distinct change in the way we see the rolling hills of corn and wheat. The size of one turbine changes the horizon line and in turn the scale of our perception. The human scale of farm buildings and trees is now over shadowed by the behemoths of our changing technology and increased energy needs.

Ever since I encountered my first turbine across the road from my in-law’s farm I’ve been fascinated with the visual changes brought by their presence. Singularly, they loom over a field like a skinny urban tower, assembled as farms they transform the horizon distorting our memories and remembered sense of scale.

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Sherburn is located in Southwestern Minnesota, very close to the Iowa border, it is also the hometown of my wife. Ever since my first visit I have been struck by its’ near ghost town evolution from vibrant farm community to a nearly vacant main street, populated with a mix of barely surviving store front businesses and crumbling monuments to it’s origin.

The town’s feed mill, convenience store, Veteran’s clubs and Martin County High keep it from completely disappearing.  Sherburn’s decline can be strongly linked to the migration of young people over the past thirty to forty years, leaving behind an aging population with little replace it.

Sherburn

For years I have been fascinated with both the agricultural landscape and the people who are the stewards of it. Over the past decade I've had the opportunity by way of a family farm to get close to the lives of those who work and shape the agricultural landscape. I've spent time in their communities and watched as their life blood is drained, I've captured the crumbling of their main streets, and the transformation of their land as wind turbines flattened the visual and human scale of the land. A couple of decades ago I had the opportunity to work with farmers in Iowa and witness first hand the the shift in scale of the family farm. The increasing need for ever larger machinery pushed an expansion of a once intimate and human scale space, the farm yard, to one built to honor large scale production. The photographs in this continually running series are here to bear witness to the changes of our rural agricultural landscape.

36 Photos

Sherburn Veteran's Flag dedication

Every year the veteran's organizations of Martin County dedicate a flag and pole to veterans who have passed during the previous year. These photographs document one such ceremony, the one for my father in law, the speaker of the event was a family friend and former Marine med-evac pilot in Vietnam. As a veteran myself I felt compelled to bear witness to this ceremony.

16 Photos