Blog new location

I've been working on some issues with my website and Google and just realized that my blog on blogspot is still hanging out here.  You may find an image in a search and it might bring you here.  If that is the case, this message is for you!

My blog has moved internally to my website.  You can catch up at www.pjandersonphotography.com/blog

Hope you'll join me over there.

PJ

Alice in Wonderland Test

Photography is my art as well as my business.  There is nothing that makes me happier than being out there working my craft.

Some time ago, I was fortunate enough to shoot a Red Riding Hood theme shot with a really talented model from Fargo – Heather Anderson (no relation).  With fantastic support from her family and a wonderful location, Sica Hollow State Park, South Dakota; I was fortunate to walk away with photographs that the artist in me could be proud of.

Trying to recapture some of that magic, I’ve started working on an Alice in Wonderland theme shoot.  Been excited to meet a couple of models and we’ve done some test shoots in the fabulous Goss Opera House in Watertown, South Dakota.

Again, with a wonderful model, supportive family and a wonderful location; I can see the Alice shoot will probably result in more photos that I can be proud of.

Here is model Lauren at one of our test shoots.

It is probably unfair of me to post the second photo as it is very moody, whereas Lauren has the giant, beautiful smile that pops onto her face so automatically.  Trust me, she is a gem and even if we select another Alice, we’ll want to work with her on other projects!

Unlike “Red” this is going to be a two part set.  One of interior photos, to be shot at the Goss Opera House and then after the snow goes, we’ll identify a location for the exterior shots.  Perhaps again to Sica Hollow, but perhaps Buffalo Ridge, perhaps Garretson, South Dakota (Devils Gulch/Palisades). 

Stay tuned and see how this all turns out!

So, look for updates on this

Dagbjart - a friend on a creative journey

Decided that I needed mechanism to keep myself focused on creativity and shooting every day this year.  Especially during the cold winter months when it is easier to stay under a warm blanket and not be productive.

Enter Dagbjart the Miniscule.  This tiny Viking figurine was given to me many years ago by a dear colleague after she and her husband visited Norway.

Dagbjart and his friend Olga the Horrendous (thanks to my good friend Lori) are now tossed into a new situation every day.  Whether it is Dagbjart chasing the bad guys of the evil Norwegian Lutefisk Cartel or Dagbjart getting carried away with his love of beer or just a normal day to day trial between Dagbjart and Olga.

I post every day to a Facebook page created specifically for this project.  www.facebook.com/tinydagbjart   Hope you’ll check it out.  I also hope you’ll be amused.  It has been a fun journey so far and I hope we can keep it fresh for the remainder of the year!

Baby birds

Spring is my favorite season.  Lots of new flowers, lots of green, butterflies return… and also, baby birds.  I have several bird houses in our back yard.  Today, during lunch I watched a mother wren flying back and forth to one of the houses.  Unfortunately, one other bird that invades my backyard every spring is the Grackle.  They really like our pond and there are several evergreens that they prefer for nesting on the adjacent property that surrounds our house.

I wouldn’t really mind them so much, but they make a mess out of the pond and they really bother me with their chatter every time I am in the back yard.  As if I shouldn’t be out there!

However, all creatures have a place in our world.  I’ll give chase to them every now and then, but that is about as much of a reaction they get out of me.

Just a short time back, I was out stalking butterflies with my camera and when I came around the back of the shed, there was a fledgling Grackle.  Not my typical photography subject – but this baby bird just kind of held its ground and stared at me.  I can’t hardly walk away from a perfect photo setup, so I grabbed the shot.  Turned out decent…soooo, I present my “least” favorite bird to you!  The Common Grackel:

Memorial Day Butterflies

Happy Memorial Day to everyone!  Thank you to all who have served our country.

My daughter's high school graduation and open house was yesterday. Beautiful day in Watertown. Of course as I was trying to be a good dad/host with all the friends, relatives and guests - I couldn't help noticing tons and tons of butterflies in my backyard. ARRGGH! Wanted to go grab the camera and forget everything else!

However, I behaved. This morning I went hunting butterflies. Never photographed this one before - called a "Question Mark" (Polygonia Interrogationis).  It looks ridiculously like a leaf when it’s wings are folded up, so it was nice that this one was sunning on our shed for the top photo!  The bottom photo shows the beautiful orange of its wings opened up.

 

Top Photo: ISO 200, 1/125 sec at f/8.0, 200mm, Nikon D700

Bottom Photo: ISO 200, 1/60 sec at f/20, 200mm, Nikon D700

 

Been a fantastic spring for butterflies.  Hoping that leads to a fantastic summer as well!

Pasqueflowers

For many years, I’ve wanted to get out and photograph the South Dakota state flower – the Pasque.  It is rather elusive and it blooms first thing in spring. In the past, I was either traveling or too busy to get out in that very short period of time to find one.

Shortly after I photographed a Crocus in our back yard, I realized this was my chance to get out and search.  I found a photo of the Pasqueflower on the website for the nearby Altamont Prairie – a site managed by the Nature Conservancy.  I’d been there before, so I thought I’d take a drive out and see if I could find some.   I walked for close to an hour in a very zig zag pattern up hills and through swampy parts and every different terrain I could find.  The sun was starting to go down, so I was a little depressed and started back. On the last leg on my way back to the car, I walked across a hill and FINALLY found one clump of four flowers!   They were a little droopy from the rain that had fallen most of the day, but nonetheless made for great photos!

I noticed one other clump just peeking out of the ground, so I thought about planning another trip when I returned home from a wedding scheduled for weekend.  I invited my wife Rebekah to go back on the follow up visit.

We were rewarded with a handful of new Pasqueflower clumps.  On this day, they were standing tall and not droopy like the previous trip.  Here is one of my favorites from the second journey.

The only downside was the many little passengers we picked up.  On arriving back to the car, we both pulled at least 20 wood ticks each off our clothing.  A few more were found on the ride home and the last eight or so persistent buggers were finally found upon “close” inspection at home 

These trips made me a very happy South Dakota photographer!  Next on the list is the White Ladyslipper.  This one may be even harder to find than the Pasque!

The First Day of Spring & Holga Lenses

I know spring is coming every year when the tulips and crocuses start pushing up – often with snow still around the yard.  I usually get the camera out and photograph these first signs.

This year the snow has been gone for quite a while and I almost neglected to look in back where the crocuses usually bloom.  Fortunately, I didn’t miss them!

Nikon D700, Holga HL-N lens, ISO 800, 1/10th of a second.

This year, I decided to do something a little different.  If you’ve seen some of my other photos, you know I sometimes like to play with different camera effects in Photoshop and Lightroom.  This time, I thought I’d shoot with a Holga lens.

If you aren’t familiar with Holga, it is a medium format 120 film “toy” camera manufactured in China.  Because these cameras are built very inexpensively, they generally has some optical aberrations due to the limitations of these cheap lenses.  Makes for some really interesting and artistic results through vignettes, light leaks and blurring.

I wanted to play with cameras like these for a while.  I was fortunate enough to find that I could purchase Holga lenses that would mount to my Nikon D700 DSLR camera.  Sort of really “dumbing” down this expensive camera!   I bought these from http://www.holgadirect.com/

Below is a photo of the main lens and the close-up lenses that I used to achieve this.  Shot this with the 120mm close-up from about four inches away from the flowers.  The close-up lens snaps right on the top of the Holga lens – low tech, but simple to use.

The back of the Holga lens is pretty much just like a pinhole camera, so it is a little hard to compose the image through the viewfinder as very little light is coming in through the lens.  Lots of trial and error, but I love the end result.

Hope to shoot more over the course of the summer!

Photo of the Week– Leap Day Edition

 

I have no clue how many times I’ve driven down US Highway 212 between Watertown and the Twin Cities or Duluth since 1995.  Many, many  times for sure.

Near the South Dakota/Minnesota border are several fireworks stands as you can’t purchase fireworks in Minnesota.  There are a number of visually interesting elements there and like I always say  “There is a photo in there somewhere.”  

On my last trip to Minneapolis with my son Tyler, I finally stopped.  The lighting was quite nice with the sun having just set.  With the old textures of the building and the rusty garbage barrel out front, combined with the light, I thought this might make a good HDR study.

I bracketed five images with the Nikon D700 and then merged the files from Lightroom into HDR Pro in Photoshop CS5.  From there I sent the resulting file into onOne Software for some additional tweaking.  Finally, back to Photoshop to deal with a few items of edge glow.

This may be an image I return to in the future to further refine, but I’m liking the feel of it so far.

Photo of the Week

Thought I’d change things up from the people photography I’ve been working with lately.

Here’s a photo from the “small” world around us.

I shot this little guy in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in Medora, ND.

ISO 160, 1/1500 second, f/3.5, 60mm – Fuji S3 Pro

Photo of the Week

 

Photo of the week! We decided to start up a photo of the week to share with our friends on the blog. We shoot a lot of photos that only a limited group of people get to see. We'll try to give you a glimpse at many different styles and projects. We'll start this week with a wedding photograph. Amy and I LOVE to have fun when we shoot weddings. We couldn't have asked for a more fun couple than Alyssa and Josh! Goofing around behind the church :)

 

Some of my favorites from 2011 Weddings

 

Just a big thank you to all the great couples we worked with this year!  You were great. 

Here’s a slideshow of some of our favorite shots.

Favorites from 2011 Weddings

Looking forward to 2012 couples!   We already weddings booked at Grand Superior Lodge in Two Harbors, MN and Watertown, SD.  One at the Joy Ranch – be fun to work a new venue!

Red Riding Hood

I’ve been wanting to do my version of various fairytales for several years.  Thanks to Jeri Anderson a mom of a model that I worked with in the past at the Academie Agencie in Fargo, I’ve finally been able to realize one of these shoots.

The model is Heather and she fit the part perfectly!  After searching the internet for costumes, we settled on one that was not too cartoony or “Disney-fied”.

I wanted to work in a dark and sort of creepy forest.  One of my favorite locations – Sica Hollow State Park was ideal.  We had a great day and walked away with a number of excellent images.  I’m going to have a lot of fun continuing to edit these photos, but I thought I’d share a handful immediately.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Holga Photography from a Nikon D700

 

If you’ve read my posts in the past, you know I have an appreciation for “toy camera” photography.  I’ve seriously considered buying a Holga or a Lomo camera in the past, but I couldn’t really justify buying that and purchasing and developing the film. 

However, I found a way to perhaps get the best of both worlds!

I bought a set of Holga lenses for my Nikon digital cameras. Sort of bizarre to be dumbing down these really expensive cameras, but I do love Holga photography. I haven't had more than a minute to play yet, but I shot a quick photo outside the door. Hard to see through the viewfinder as it is so dark, but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

I bought the Holga lenses here (the kitchen sink option): http://shop.holgadirect.com/collections/digital-holga-for-nikon-slr

I wasn't sure I much liked this first image, but then I remembered that a lot of Holga photography is cross processed. A couple of quick steps in Lightroom and I like the end result a lot better.

Here they are side by side. The cross processed photo is on the right.

Hope to share more in the coming weeks!

A photograph, seen through different eyes.

I’ve always been interested in how different people see things differently.  This holds true for my photographs.

The photo above introduced me to another artist.  A writer attending Utah State University, Alex Baldwin.   Alex wrote in an email:

Tonight I just found your beautiful photo from 2009 of a feather in a bottle and was wondering if I could use it on the Cover page of my project. My project is actually about the author Sherman Alexie but he addresses often the problem of alcoholism on reservations, so your photo would be perfect!

Alex was awarded USU’s Creative Writing Student of the Year and USU’s Overall Outstanding English Student of the Year. This email started a great dialogue with Alex about his work and my photography.  I was more than happy to help out. 

By the way, the photo above that Alex found was really just something I was using to demonstrate how I achieved the photo I was after.  I was on a weekend outing with two wonderful friends.  I was trying to figure out how to capture the texture and color of the feather.  The beer bottle and the twist tie just happened to be convenient!  How very interesting that my “example” made a completely different impression on Alex.  Here is my finished product for comparison:

I was excited when Alex sent me a short piece so I could share it with you.  I look forward to reading his creative portfolio that he turned in for graduation (where he is using the photograph.)

So, here is an example of Alex’s work.  I hope you enjoy!

What is that Sound High in the Air

 

A mist, too thick for a waking sun,

slouches against mountains

east of Cache Valley,

 

and somehow turns January snow

blue: leftover scraps of sky

            draping the view

            beside campus.

 

Students, dozens, rush

by: cell phones flipped open,

            ears clogged with iPods,

            palms warm to the foam

            touch of cups brim

            with hot chocolate.

 

Cat Stevens hopes I have a lot

of nice things to wear,

            a sideways smiley-face

            buzzes in my right hand:

            Sapphire’s in for lunch

            at Quadside Café,

OJ from Einstein’s Bagels

 

sloshes almost empty to my stride.

 

Ten minutes away from a class

starting in five, I give ten seconds

            of semester to the mist,

            imagine my Faded Glory

            treads climbing air.

 

Could I summit before losing myself

in absence of up and down?

            Like a bluebird spreading

            a shiver of feathers

            between cloudlessness

            and a lake of glacier run-off.

Alex can be contacted at:  alexbaldwin2@yahoo.com

Fata Morgana

I was fortunate enough to photograph a wedding last Friday at the Grand Superior Lodge in Caste Danger, Minnesota.  It is a truly fantastic location for a wedding.  Hard to go wrong with Lake Superior as your backdrop.

My wife and I decided to stay until Sunday and make it a mini-vacation.  On Saturday, we drove up MN Highway 61 to Tettegouche State Park.  If you know me, you know I was out shooting various wildflowers and chasing butterflies as much as photographing the standard attraction there (waterfalls).

After hiking up to the aptly named High Falls, we went in the opposite direction and made our way to the lake shore.  We sat and took in the sun and poked around in the rocks for Lake Superior Agates – Minnesota’s state rock.

My wife pointed out to me some unusual formations on the horizon.  At first I thought perhaps storm clouds, but then a light bulb went off in my head about an atmospheric phenomenon that I had read about, but had never seen.  Of course, it had to wait until I had an internet connection to help me recall the name and the details.  What we were seeing was a mirage from the Apostle Islands approximately 25 miles across Lake Superior.  Below is a map from Google Maps giving you some perspective.  Click here to see in Google Maps if you wish to see larger:

According to the Wikipedia article: A Fata Morgana is an unusual and very complex form of mirage, a form of superior mirage, which, like many other kinds of superior mirages, is seen in a narrow band right above the horizon. It is an Italian phrase derived from the vulgar Latin for "fairy" and the Arthurian sorcerer Morgan le Fay, from a belief that the mirage, often seen in the Strait of Messina, were fairy castles in the air or false land designed to lure sailors to their death created by her witchcraft. Although the term Fata Morgana is sometimes incorrectly applied to other, more common kinds of mirages, the true Fata Morgana is not the same as an ordinary superior mirage, and is certainly not the same as an inferior mirage.

I’d be the first to admit, perhaps these may be an “ordinary” superior mirage, but it was cool to see and I’m glad I finally had some kind of an idea of what it might be like.

I hope to post a few more photos from the trip soon and also a special post from a writer that used one of my photos in a recent project. 

Tych Panel

I learned about a neat tool for Photoshop and blogging from @Photoshop_ GU on Twitter.  This tool is a Photoshop Extension that automates diptychs and triptychs creation, perfect for photoblogs.  To me, this a nice alternative way to present photos – rather than just one single photo in the column.   To read more about and download, go to http://lumens.se/tychpanel/

Here are a couple of example layouts.  There are several to choose from:

A diptych featuring our cat, Pixel.

A triptych from photos underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

I thought this was a nice, quick little tool that others might want to be aware of.  Have fun with it!

OTA Sessions, the Orpheum Theater in Sioux Falls and a new Nikon

Where to start!?

I had the extreme pleasure of doing event photography for the OTA Sessions in Sioux Falls on Friday.  The OTA sessions are described as:

Creativity and originality of thought are critical to our success as a region, but without action and implementation it's all just idle chitchat. OTA challenges us to bring originality and action together. o + a

The OTA Sessions are a chance for all of us Midwesterners to shatter the perception that creativity and thought leadership in business, marketing, communications and education live solely on the east and west coasts.

I was blown away by the speakers:  Sally Hogshead, Ellen McGirt, CC Chapman, Ann Handley, John Winsor, Ricardo Crespo, Rod Arnold, Jeff Slobotsky and Dusty Davidson.

All were very motivating and a pleasure to listen to.   Sally Hogshead had me cracking up (while trying to be steady and focus), John motivated the heck out of me and Ellen and Rod moved me immensely.  I was torn in some ways as I couldn’t be both focused on the presentations and focused with my camera.  I was there to take photographs!

Working with Hugh Weber, the founder of OTA was fantastic.  He’s put together a fantastic event and I really identified with his motivations for creating this event.

The venue for the OTA Sessions was the Orpheum Theater in Sioux Falls.  What a fantastic place!  I was so excited as soon as I got a look at it. 

My plans for PJ Anderson Photography this year called for a new camera so that I had a solid backup for the spring/summer weddings.  I also wanted to get up to the next level of pro cameras.  As great as my workhorse Nikon D300 has been for years, I was more than ready to get up onto the Nikon D700.   With the OTA event being held at the Orpheum, I knew I wanted to get the D700 in my hands immediately - to make sure that I could take advantage of the great high ISO results.  I wanted to be able to walk away with photos that weren’t overly grainy in the dark light of a theater.

The D700 did NOT let me down.  I am very pleased with the quality of the images!  This is going to open up even more opportunities at weddings in darker churches.  Should allow for some wonderful moody lighting situations!

I’m in the middle of editing/finishing four assignments, but while taking a break – I tossed together 7 or 8 photos in Photoshop that I shot “hand held” in the Orpheum to create an interesting panorama. This photograph is in no way to be considered a “finished” product.  If I was going to shoot this in a serious fashion, I would have definitely set this up on a tripod and would have spent some serious time getting the shot down perfectly.  I might have even took some time to try an HDR study. BUT, I do think this shows the power of the camera (and the beauty of the theater.)  So, just for fun, here you go!

Nikon D700, ISO 2000, f/2.8, 1/60 second – multiple exposures stitched in Photoshop

Converted and added my old blog

Last summer we were informed by Microsoft that LiveSpaces was going to be closing. I’d had my blog there for some time – so it was a bit of a concern for me.

I started looking around to see what would be a good alternative. A few friends used Blogger and so this is where I ended up. However, then I found out Microsoft was automatically moving our blogs to WordPress!

Well, I’ve maintained a link here to my old blog – but I figured most wouldn’t see the link or even if they did – they wouldn’t go look. It is sort of sad that I’ve lost connections with many that used to stop by the old blog.

However, today I found out about a service that can convert WordPress blogs to Blogger for import. I figured it would probably bring the text, but not the photos. BUT, I was surprised and the photos and comments and all came with! How terrific. Of course, there is some quality issues with the old photos, but I am not going to complain too much.

If you find yourself in a similar spot, here is the tool I used: http://wordpress2blogger.appspot.com/

Posts prior to July 2010 are from the old blog if anyone wants to dig that deep! I hope you do as there are some photos I really would like people to see!

Until next time!

Shooting tethered in Lightroom

I’ve seen videos online of people shooting with their camera tethered to their computer.  It has often been one of those things I thought I’d try someday, but I really had no pressing desire to do so.  I rarely shoot in a studio environment and when I do, I hate to be tied down with cables attached to my camera.

However, the other day I was stuck in my office waiting on an important call that I couldn’t miss and my camera and computer were just sitting here.  The thought popped into my head to give it a shot.

I connected my camera to the laptop with the USB cable and fired up Lightroom.  Once there, it was really a no-brainer to set this up.  I work on a PC, so I opened the File menu and selected “Tethered Capture”.  This opens the following window where I can name the session, set the location where the files to be saved and set my Metadata presets.

After clicking the OK button, a new toolbar opens in lightroom:

I could quickly see the camera attached and the settings currently set on it – ISO, shutter speed, aperture and white balance.

What really interested me was the ability to set the develop settings in Lightroom.  These settings are applied as the file gets transferred to the computer and is then displayed in Lightroom.  Being I was taking self portraits of myself (yikes!), I opted immediately for a black and white preset that I like.

Then, all I did was click the big grey button on the far right of the toolbar to trigger the shutter release.  I had my camera set to autofocus and it did that first and then triggered the shutter.

In just a moment, the photo appeared on my screen.  I’ll spare you the agony of looking at most of these captures – not easy taking a self portrait that I liked!  However, here is one of the end results that my family and friends say best looks like me.

I really may think more on this – in particular when I am doing some product photography or working with models in a studio environment.  It was worth playing with.

Hope to talk again soon!

Winter Landscapes

Earlier this week, I was in Madison, South Dakota doing some commercial photography for J-Gable.  The client was driving, so I was a passenger for this trip.  On the way home that afternoon (about 60 miles) I was blown away by the light and the blowing snow creating a very moody look.

As soon as I made it back to Watertown, I turned my truck back south chasing that great light.  The blowing snow had disappeared, but I still found several good shots as the sun was starting to go down.

Taking photos with snow is always a challenge.  Getting the exposure right can be tricky.  I’ve been shooting a lot of auto bracketed photos lately so that I can combine certain images into HDR shots.  Being it was REALLY cold and windy, I thought I’d just continue to shoot that way to make sure I got the shot.  So, I composed my shot, made my best choice on exposure and bracketed by 2 stops.  This gave me one at the exposure I selected and two underexposed and two overexposed.

With the sun setting I had very bright highlights (sun and snow) and some dark shadows (tree line and farm).  Turned out this was one of those great opportunities to use HDR pro in Photoshop CS5 to merge these different exposures.

I tweaked the final product using onOne’s Phototools and I think this image really reflects what it felt like on that day on a lakeshore beside the old Meridian Highway (US 81)!

 

ISO 200, 1/50 sec, f/13 – Nikon D300

Happy New Year (and stay warm!)