I’ve been shooting for a magazine called Twin Cities Statement. Just got my hands on the September 09′ issue and it features some of my work – including an article on a local chef and another on a jewelry designer. My images can also be seen in the July/August issue article on biking in the twin cities. I used my Canon 40D, Sigma 17-35 F2.8-4, Sigma 24-70 F2.8, 70-200 F2.8 and my Canon 15mm Fisheye F2.8 to make these images. I also used my Canon 550EX Flash, 2 Pocket Wizard Plus 2’s and a 24in shoot-thru umbrella for all the off camera flash images.

I headed up to the Ojibwe Forrests Rally a few weekends ago in Bemidji, Minnesota for some rally car action. The race was part of the 2009 Rally America Series comprised of 9 different races throughout the year. I was able to get to my first rally race last year in Houghton, Michigan and I wanted to get to the Ojibwe race this year as it’s about 4 hours north of the Twin Cities. The racing started on Friday afternoon and was completed on Saturday evening. These guys race all day and into the night hours as you will see from a couple of photos. Unfortunately the spectator areas were not the best for viewing and I wasn’t in time to get a media pass for the event, so I shot from where I could.

On this trip I brought:
Canon 40D,
Sigma 70-200 F2.8
Sigma 16-35 F2.8-4
Sigma 24-70 F2.8
Canon 50 F1.8
Canon 15mm 2.8 Fisheye

For most of the action I went with the 70-200 or the 24-70 as I wasn’t able to get as close to the action as I was in Houghton, last year. I also brought a rocket blower as the amount of dust, dirt and rocks flying around is pretty crazy. All in all my equipment held up fine in all the dust and I was able to get some great shots. Below are some images from the 2 days of racing.

Day 4 was my final day of shooting for the MN Fringe Festival. I’ve had a great time so far and I didn’t expect the last day to be any different, and it wasn’t. I was back at the Rarig Thrust Theater for my final show of this years festival looking forward to shooting “The Red Tureen.” Another shoot at the Thrust meant more time with my Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 lens, and once again it didn’t disappoint me. I don’t use that lens a ton in everyday shooting but it has come in more than handy at many a concert or event that I’ve had to photograph. Below are my last set of 2009 Fringe Festival Images.

Day 3 of my MN Fringe Festival shooting took me outside to the parking lot of the Bedlam Theater, and to the show “Comedy of Errors.” It was a fun show to shoot and I was able to walk pretty much anywhere except right up in front of the audience. After that, it was off to the Rarig Thrust Theater again to shoot “Secrets Revealed: Opera Bob Opens His Drawers,” which was something completely new to me never having seen an opera. Below are some of the images from that nights performances.

Not much different from shooting day 1 of the MN Fringe Festival. All the shows were in the same theater as the previous night so I knew pretty much what settings I was going to need for day 2. On day 2, I shot a total of 3 different shows, “The Sleuth Sisters,” “The Harty Boys in: The Case of the Limping Platypus,” and “Sideways Stories from Wayside School.”

Again all of the images were taken with a Canon 40D with a Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 at ISO 1000.

So I found out about the MN Fringe Festival from one of my Twitter friends posting that the Fringe Fest needed volunteer photographers. I though that it would be a fun project to be involved in so I though I’d volunteer. So far everything has been pretty well organized for a festival, especially one that is happening at so many different locations around the Twin Cities. I wasn’t sure what type of access or where we would be shooting from for the various shows so I though I’d bring an assortment of different lenses to my first day of shooting. For my first day I was going to be shooting 4 different shows, all on the U of MN’s Rarig Thrust Theater. All 10 shows I’m shooting for the festival are at this theater except one that is in the parking lot of the Bedlam Theater. That one will be a challenge in a whole new way I’m sure.

After I picked up my photographers festival shirt and my photo pass, I headed over to the theater to figure some of the logistics out and scout the stage for different places to shoot from. When I got there it looked like I could possibly shoot from the music pit which was off to stage left, an alleyway leading away from the stage out in front of the stage, although it looked as if it might be being used by some of the cast as an entrance or exit from stage, right in front sitting below the first seats, or in the aisles and along the back of the seating area. Thankfully I brought my 70-200mm lens and the final shooting option seemed the best as I could move all along the back of the theater and shoot from various angles and with that lens still be close enough to the action.

While the light on stage was relatively bright I still shot at between 1000 and 1600 iso and was still able to get very usable files. The toughest part was all of the different hot spots on people, trying not to blow one thing out and have the others be in dark shadows. I also shot all the performances at F2.8 just to give me the most light and allow for the quickest shutter speeds as with a longer lens you need faster speeds so your images don’t become a blurry mess.

Below are a few shots from each show from Thursday Nights Opening Night performances at the U of MN Rarig Thrust Theater.

I gotta say, I love shooting with Polaroid cameras. While I’m not using Polaroid film for my peel-apart cameras, I still am using it for my integral film cameras. Integral film is what most people know, it zips out of the camera and starts to develop right before your eyes. Peel-apart is just that, you let it develop and then peel the finished image from the backing that contained the developing chemicals. For those I use Fuji FP-100c film and I must say it works great, such great colors. I was originally turned onto that type of film in college while making emulsion transfers from some slides that I had taken. It was so much fun I looked for a way I could do it without an expensive slide copying machine. Well that’s when I found peel apart film for things like the Holga and the older Polaroid cameras, as I couldn’t afford a Polaroid back for my EOS 3. So I was hooked, I saw things that just begged to be taken with this type of film. I’ve now acquired 2 cameras that shoot that type of film, a Polaroid 330 and a Color Pack II, of which I’ve had 2 because of some handling mishaps. Yup I dropped it on it’s corner and it shattered into little pieces. Thankfully they are cheap to replace, at the moment. So with that I just thought I’d post some of my more recent photos taken with either the Colorpack II or the 330.

A little while ago here in Minnesota, Nature Valley puts on a 5 day bike race around Minnesota. B and I volunteered to house a couple of racers because, A.) we had the room, as they really only wanted floor space, or a bed/couch if you had it, and B.) we like bikes, bike racing, and C.) we thought it would be fun. Well it turned out great, both of the racers we had were super nice so things at our house went great. While we couldn’t get to all the races B and I managed to get to a couple of really good ones. The Uptown Criterium as well as the Stillwater Criterium. Both proved to be great races.

For the images that I took I used mainly my Sigma 70-200mm or my Sigma 17-35mm with my Canon 40D. With the 17mm you feel up close and personal with the riders as they go by and at some points I even moved back a little bit as they kept inching their bodies over the curb as they leaned in to make their turns and I didn’t want to be the person that took anybody down during the race because that would have been bad. All in all it was a great time and I’m pretty sure we’ll volunteer again next year to be hosts if we can and if one of our friends doesn’t decide to head out for the race and need a place to sleep.

So as of late I have been working on screen printing some of my images and decided to take one of my peel apart Polaroids and make it into an 11×14.5 inch print using 8 colors. I also worked on a print of my friend Jimmy jumping the hip at the old bmx/skate warehouse in Rochester, NY. I’ve been trying to expand my photography and what I can do with my photography and I thought this would be an interesting way to work with my images. It will allow me to manipulate the images in any way and color that I wanted to and the process would be a challenge as well as offering me a finished product that I was able to create and not just print out of a printer.

These are the two finished pieces.

I’ve added a video of me screen printing the final color of a 4 color piece that I was working on. It just shows the setup in my garage and some of the printing process.  The video is really time lapse photography that I did with my Canon 40D. I set up the camera in the corner of the garage with a Canon 15mm fisheye and had the remote trigger take and image every 30 seconds for as long as it took me to get things ready, printed and finished. The video is comprised of 67 different images with the frame rate for the video at 3 frames per second. I like how time lapse can show you the process of something and I started playing around with it this past winter here in Minneapolis. Two other time lapse photography videos I made this winter are below.

I’m also thinking of adding traditional video to the site so that you can get a different look at how I set things up for my shoots. We’ll see if I can get around to shooting and editing.

So a little while ago I was contacted by Dan, one of the editors of Strongbox Magazine, an online magazine, to shoot a photo essay of my choosing. He said that I could pick really anything under the sun to shoot and that the only guideline that I had was that he needed the images and text, if I even wanted to use text, by a certain date.

Well let me tell you this project was more that a bit daunting. I needed to come up with a concept, shoot edit and submit in about a month and a half. I came up with idea after idea but none of them seemed to work or be something that I could pull off in the allloted amount of time. One of my ideas, was to document one of my road trips to the Badlands, but after getting home and looking at all my images I didn’t think that those images were right for the magazine and for my essay.

What i eventually came up with was the idea of long night exposures of my new city of Minneapolis. I took my camera, one lens, and my tripod and went out at around midnight on a couple of occasions to see what I could come up with. When I came home that first night I knew that this was it, I had a bunch of great images, and so I came up with other places around Minneapolis that I wanted to go at night to get some shots.

All the images that I took were long exposures, as in each exposure was at least 2 minutes long. So when you go out at midnight and don’t want to end up back at home at 4 am cuz you need some sleep you have to, A: work quick but smart and B: Know where you want to go and shoot. If you want to see the entire article please check it out at StrongboxMagazine.com

All images in the Article were Taken with:

Canon 40D
Sigma 17-35mm
Canon Remote Trigger (not wireless)
Silk Tripod