Defining Moments

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Last month I entered several shots in the Harvest Farm & Preserve photo contest. Final winners were announced today, and I’m proud to announce that one of my images was the overall winner! I was quite honored considering the quality of the other prints in the running. Incidentally, if you don’t know about Harvest Farm & Preserve, you should click on the link and check out their site. It’s a pristine green space right in Iowa City, that I didn’t even know about until recently. Doug and Linda Paul and family are doing a great thing by keeping this land natural and undeveloped. My winning image is posted below, and you can see a larger version, plus some others I submitted, by clicking HERE. Ten contest finalists had their images printed and framed, and they will be on display in the spring at the Englert’s Doug and Linda Paul Gallery, and I believe most of the prints will be for sale.

Also, I am a little behind in blogging my senior sessions this year, but I decided to brag about myself first. Expect more posts in the coming days.

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Wow, what a crappy, gloomy day yesterday! We didn’t let that stop us though, even though it almost seemed like we were shooting in the dark. Matt made it easy, with a great natural smile. Nice guy, and a fun subject to shoot. I totally cranked some music with obscene language. Accidentally. Sorry, mom! We did let the weather interfere a little, though, and have rescheduled the outdoor portion of his session. I’m looking forward to it!

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I came out of my wedding “retirement” to document McKinze and Sean’s wedding 11 days ago. A very nice ceremony in a beautiful location, for two very cool people. A great time was had by all, though the 8-hour day kinda kicked my butt. Congratulations, you guys, I wish you all the best! A few more pics can be seen HERE.

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Levi came in Saturday for a studio session. I was happy to do his senior pics, especially because he specifically wanted to do some dramatic lighting. Which, if you follow my sites, you know I love to do. Here are a few quick samples from his shoot:

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Kevin will be a senior at Regina, and plays football there. He picked the hottest day of the year so far for a session, so I was a little worried. But no problems, we both survived it, and have a ton of great images to show for it. Here are a couple of favorites, one from the studio and one from outside:

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Wow, it’s been toooo long since I’ve updated my blog, so I’ll post from a couple of sessions today. This is Cassidy. She is one of my very favorites, because she really loves having her picture taken, and has a lot of fun at the studio. Here are a couple of favorites from her session. Heh…I must have said something funny!

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I photographed Kathryn and Myron’s wedding last year. Late last month, they were back, with a new addition:

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A poet and one-time Iowa resident, Deborah Ager, contacted me late last year. She had seen one of my Photernal images and thought it would work perfectly as a book cover for her upcoming poetry volume. A few months later, I am thrilled to have the book in hand, and there is a photo below! Deborah lived for a time in Lamoni, Iowa, and her poems, those which I have read so far, feature strongly the flavor of our state. Her book, Midnight Voices, is available HERE, and the original photo was posted on Photernal HERE.

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Several local groups showed up at the Coralville Reservoir this afternoon to raise money for the Special Olympics by jumping into the freezing water. Well, it wasn’t actually freezing, but rather, a balmy 44 degrees. One of the participants, a Coralville police officer, was nice enough to save me a spot in the Sheriff’s boat, so I had a great vantage point to shoot the action. It was pretty cold out there, and my hands are still stiff and numb, but…..I guess I won’t complain, since I stayed dry. There are a few pics below, and a gallery of larger images HERE.

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This was a really fun project which I did late last year and have been meaning to post about since then. The University of Iowa Biochemistry Department was updating their web site and wanted me to do some photography and design artistic headers for the individual faculty pages. I did all the faculty portraits. Then I spent some time in labs photographing equipment, spaces, and data. I combined my photographs with some data submitted by the investigators to design something unique for each faculty member, which reflected their own areas of study and showed off recent work. I’ve included some favorites below. Go HERE to see larger versions for the whole department and click on the thumbs to get to the research pages.

**I should note that while the individual faculty thumbs are also my portraits, the group photo at the top of the page is not.