The Kirkbride

I had a chance to get a tour of the inside of the abandoned treatment facility in Fergus Falls, Minnesota this past weekend.

This is one of many shots I took. It is the 3rd floor staircase, leading to the 4th floor. The insulation on the floor was to keep the heat in the lower levels, since the city does not have the electricity on during the winter.

This building was built in 1895, and was last used in 2009. It is on the National Register of Historic Places – and it isn’t just the main tower; it is the whole horseshoe complex that Dr. Kirkbride designed. The Kirkbride in Fergus Falls is one of about 30 remaining Kirkbride complexes within the United States, and the only complete one left standing.

The city council wants to tear the building down and create a “green space”. To sign the online petition to help save a historic structure, please visit: http://www.savekirkbride.com/

Please show your support now. Once the building is gone, all we have is memories and photographs.

Openings and Exhibitions

As I said before, it has been a busy spring. We’ve had unseasonably warm weather her in Minnesota, and the trees, flowers and all plant life has been turning green and growing.

I haven’t been out as much as I’d like to be out shooting, but I’ve been making the trips out that I have been taking count. I was able to take a day trip to Fergus Falls, Minnesota, to see the historic Regional Treatment Center (RTC). The building is an amazing building; the main structure was built in 1895.

Unfortunately, the city council wants to demolish the building and replace it. There are simply way too many documentaries (Lost Twin Cities 1-3) and books written about the old, historic buildings that used to exist around Minnesota, only to have met the fate of a wrecking ball.

I was also able to get out and shoot the MInneapolis Institute of Arts building. I’ve seen images of it from the front, at night, and wanted to get a shot myself of the building. They light up the main columns with different colored lights, and it looks fantastic.

I’ve also been taking a class about marketing my photography. I’m in the process of making some updates to my website, which will also include the integration of online ordering. I’m lucky enough to have partnered with SmugMug for my site, and they use my print vendor as one of the options. So the great image quality I’m used to seeing my photos in will not be sacrificed.

As for showings and openings, I currently have my work for sale at Something New in the Park, which is located at: 2301 Como Ave., Suite 101, St. Paul, MN 55108. It is a co-op of sorts for artists of all different types, so not only would you find my photography there, but you will find hand-made jewelery, paintings, and clothing there as well.

I entered, and was accepted into the 39th Annual White Bear Center for the Arts Northern Lights exhibition. They had over 300 entries, and narrowed the field down to 50. I have one photo that was selected. The opening night reception is Friday, April 20th, from 6-9pm at Century College in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

As a result of one of the classes I attended this spring, I will also be part of a 6-person show at the Oakdale Discovery Center for the month of June. We install our art on June 2nd, and there will be an opening night reception Friday, June 8th, from 3-8pm, and we will also be there again on Saturday, June 9th, from 12-4pm. All artwork will be up for the entire month, so if you cannot make it out for the opening, you can stop in and see some great artwork.

Also in June, I will be returning to Mary Greeley Medical Center in Ames, Iowa for an install of my photography. They will be up in one of the main hallways for the month of June.

Starting Out Fast

It is already proving to be a bit of a crazy spring. Being that I haven’t had time to even update my blog here proves that to me.

I’ve been taking a marketing/business class for my photography with the goal of learning more about the business side and how to get my work into galleries for more exposure to the public. I’ve been pretty successful with showing my work at coffee shops, hospitals and other locations, but I would like to step it up a notch. The end result of the class will be an art opening that the group of us (6 of us total) will put together ourselves and promote.

There are plenty of other fun things going on as well. I’ll be part of the Inns of the St. Croix Valley Chocolate March this weekend. I’m lucky to have been paired up with the Water Street Inn in downtown Stillwater. I’ll have a table and grid wall set up with some of my work on display and for sale on Sunday, March 4 from 1-4pm.

I also have a handful of work at a new art consignment shop called Something New in the Park. They are located at 2301 Como Avenue in St. Paul. You can find their website here.

I will also be teaching again. You might recall that I did a few different classes last year through the TCPG. One was the night photography classes in downtown Stillwater – which isn’t currently scheduled for a repeat session – but the class that I will be presenting again is actually a series of three classes about framing, selling and displaying your work. The first class is on Wednesday, March 21st, and the second is two weeks later. Both are at the TCPG studio near University and 280 in St. Paul. You can see the event here.

The White Bear Center for the Arts’ 39th Northern Lights exhibit is also going on this spring. Once again, I’ve submitted the maximum of four images for consideration; entrants are notified if they were accepted the week of March 4th. I’ve been in the exhibition both years I’ve entered, so I’m hoping to make it three in a row.

In June, I’ll be returning to Ames, Iowa to display my work at Mary Greeley Medical Center. The building is a beautiful space and the staff at MGMC has set me up to be in a great location again. The fun part of the install is the trip down and back; I usually do it in one day. I leave early enough so I have time to go explore and photograph before I have to be in Ames in the afternoon to install. It ends up being a long day, but it is always a good time.

I have had a chance to get out and shoot a bit though. Here in Minnesota, it has been a weird winter, with little to no snow. Unfortunately, everything is still brown and blah looking, which doesn’t always make for interesting photographs. However, I was fortunate enough to have been able to photograph the northern lights. I’ve been trying to capture them for about  6-12 months, monitoring solar activity via various apps and websites. This month it worked out so that I was able to venture out to see them.

I am looking forward to capturing them again, with a bit more research for a location. For the shot above, I was just driving north when I spotted the northern lights in the sky, and found this farm facing north. Now that I’ve photographed them once, I want to keep going out to get better and more amazing photos of them.

Welcome to 2012

Another new year is upon us. 2011 was a very productive year for me. Of course, I am looking forward to growing my photography business in the upcoming year. Here are a couple of thoughts from the past year, and some thoughts about what will be coming in 2012.

I had a few clients added to the list in 2011, and I’m looking to grow that in 2012. One of the clients was Mississippi Dunes Golf Links. I photographed their amazing course, and the photos are now being used to market their course on Facebook and other social media pages.

I landed one of my first big clients in 2011; I was asked to shoot a town in southern Minnesota for a marketing company, who have a client looking for photos of the town they are located in. The end result was a day and a half photo job, and 11 photos purchased and used by the marketing company. The John Deere shot below was one of the “rejected” shots. They only had so much space to fill, and this one just didn’t fit into the mural they are creating. I still liked it; it has the big green combine, the fluffy clouds, and of course, the corn in the field. You can almost feel how big this combine actually is.

I also had a bit of a rush this fall in sales; after having not sold any photos while on display in Bloomington at a large office complex, I had several emails and phone calls with people looking for photos for Christmas presents. My photos were also on display at ArtReach St. Croix in Stillwater, along with having four photos up for the holiday show at St. Johns Hospital in Maplewood, Minnesota.

Now it is time to re-group and look back at what worked, and what didn’t work over the past year, and make adjustments to my plan and go forward with it. I’m currently working on a marketing campaign to attract more of the “business” photography that I enjoy doing. I’m planning on having it ready to mail out in the spring; I need to order a few things still, and get a few things printed, but it shouldn’t be too tough to pull everything together.

So, stay tuned here to see what happens for the new year! Looking forward to seeing what develops for me (pun intended).

Mankato Visit

Between 1986 and 1988, my brother and I had a skateboard halfpipe in my parents’ backyard. We would hold “skate jams,” inviting a ton of our skater friends over to hang out and skate. It was a great time. At one of our more memorable skate jams, a friend’s band called the Porcelain Boys played in our garage. It was Scott, Tom, Erik and Brian’s first gig.

Over the next 10 years, the Porcelain Boys put out three demo tapes, two 7″ EPs, and one full-length CD. They broke up a few times, and in their last incarnation, they were called Jettison, and released a full-length CD. It was fun – friends we grew up with releasing their music to the masses.

Fast forward to 2011. The Porcelain Boys haven’t played together in over 10 years. One day I saw a Facebook post saying that they are rehearsing for a show in Mankato at The What’s Up Lounge, two weeks from the rehearsal. I found the event, and made plans to road trip down on a Saturday night to see them.

The What’s Up Lounge is a small club, located on the second floor above a bar. The night of the show, the order of the bands changed so that instead of going on first as originally planned, the Porcelain Boys were going on third. Perfect! That gave me time to get into position next to the stage and get my camera settings right. I ended up around ISO 4000 for most of the night, which gave me a shutter speed of 1/50th of a second at f2.8.

It was a fantastic show! Although they played a dozen songs from all over their catalog, the set was done much too soon. I had a blast capturing old friends with my camera, doing what I remember them doing best: having fun and playing music.

Busy Fall

It has been a busy fall! I’ve been trying to get to several different locations to shoot the fall colors, only to realize that the actual window of “peak” fall colors is about a week long. I’ll remember this next year, right? And take the whole week off from work, if I’m not a wildly successful professional photographer by then!

The early part of the fall took me to southern Minnesota for a contract photo shoot. I spent a day and a half around Jackson county, photographing the places on the client-provided shot list. I had a great time running in farm fields, finding great fall colors, and walking alongside the huge wind turbines across Jackson County.

At the end of that week, I took a bus trip to the north shore. We departed from Roseville about 8 a.m., then headed right to the historic train depot in Duluth, where we hopped on the North Shore Scenic Railroad for a trip to Two Harbors. It was a fun ride up the tracks; the train slowed down several times for us to jump from one side of the train to the other in an attempt to photograph the fall colors, Lake Superior, or various streams with waterfalls.

During our lunch in Two Harbors, I ate quickly, then took off towards Lake Superior to get some shots of the lake and trees along the shoreline. I was a little frustrated with the amount of time they gave us to shoot, but we were soon due back on the bus to head to Gooseberry Falls State Park. The bus dropped us off at one end of the 1-mile hiking trail, which led along the banks of the Gooseberry River. There was great fall color mixed with startling white birch trees.

At the end of the trail is the waterfall. On that weekend, it had very little water flowing and a ton of people visiting – which made it nearly impossible to shoot the waterfalls without people in my shots. Instead of trying to find an angle without people, I just enjoyed the waterfalls and put the camera down.

The next leg of the trip led us back to Duluth, where we had 45 minutes to ourselves in scenic Canal Park. I ended up walking down one of the piers, across the lift bridge. By the time I was done, it was time to meet the group at the Vista Fleet for our boat cruise on Lake Superior.

I ended up at the front of the boat, which generally isn’t a great place for me (as I get a bit seasick sometimes). It ended up working out quite nicely, and I took some great shots of the lift bridge at sunset as our boat was returning to the harbor.

Dinner was at Grandma’s, then we were back on the bus and homeward bound to Roseville. It was a long but fun day.

Updates

Once again, I have had the best of intentions to keep up with the blog, but time has gotten away from me again. Here I am with another photo update.

In August, I wrote about the KARE 11 Weatherguide calendars. I’m happy to report that my photos have been included an another calendar – this one for Creative Memories. All 12 months of their promotional desk calendar had my photos from around Minnesota. They printed about 3,000 calendars, and distributed them at their trade show in August. It should be a nice way to get my name out to a new audience!

Last month, I also went to Door County, Wisconsin for an end-of-summer vacation with my family. Door County is an amazingly beautiful place; the sunsets and sunrises on the peninsula are just breathtaking. We were also lucky enough to have great weather the whole time we were there. We visited several of the light houses, and Peninsula State Park, plus Cave Point County Park. We stayed at a great hotel right in Fish Creek, and had an easy time getting around from our central location.

Have you heard about the Capture Minnesota Project, sponsored by TPT television?  It is pretty cool – you upload photos taken around the state of Minnesota, and the best photos are selected to be in their “Capture Minnesota” book, which will have 144 pages and over 200 photos. Every month they also have different challenges, where they pick a theme and you submit photos that fit that theme. You can then vote on which ones you think are best, and at the end of the challenge, the winners get gift cards. There is one people’s choice winner and one editors’ choice winner for each challenge, and grand prizes at the end of the contest.

I started submitting photos to the CaptureMN project in mid-August. A couple of weeks later, the Capture team contacted me to appear on “Almanac,” a live television show on public television, to talk about the project. They showed some of my photos, along with some photos from other photographers, and I talked to Almanac host David Gillette about my photos and the contest. Afterwards, we also recorded a short segment they call “The Wrap,” where we talked a bit more about the contest website, and showed some of the photos I had taken around the studio that night.

I also have been teaching “Intro to Night Photography” classes through the Twin Cities Photography Group (TCPG). On September 9^th, I taught the fourth – and probably the last – class for the year. We had a great time discussing shutter speeds, ISO and aperture settings while capturing images of the historic Stillwater Courthouse and downtown Stillwater.

This month, 45 photos of my photos are on display at an office complex in Bloomington, Minnesota. They come down at the end of the month, so if you’d like to check them out, get down to Bloomington soon! The folks there enjoy my work enough that they have already asked me to come back next September. They are located in a hallway connecting two office towers at 8400 Normandale Lake Boulevard, in the same building that houses Kincaid’s restaurant.