Happy Holidays Everyone

Ok....after a good start, I've been really bad at maintaining this blog. I apologize for this and hope to change. I guess it will be part of my new year's resolutions!

Anyway, a lot has happened in my life since my last blog entry with the most major change being that I relocated from southwest Colorado to Sedona, Arizona. The particulars of this move kept me extremely busy over a large part of last summer. Of course, I still made sure that I found time to start photographing my new surroundings as I need to keep adding to my portfolio to make a living.

View From Brins Mesa - Sedona, AZ

As many of you probably know, Sedona is a photographer's dream that is surrounded by red rock monoliths, canyons and even lush riparan areas. Our move to this paradise corresponded with the beginning of the monsoon season which added stormy skies, rainbows and lightning into the mix. It was definitely a summer to remember!

Rainbow Over The Red Rocks

Monsoon Sky Over Cathedral Rock

Click on the link below to see a sampling of the summertime images I've collected.

Summertime In Sedona

Once the summer wound down and we finally got settled in from the move, I began researching my autumn shooting strategy in the area. Autumn shooting in Arizona??? You bet!

Agassiz Peak - San Francisco Peaks

While maybe not as spectacular as what I've grown accustomed to in the Colorado rockies, there are still many fascinating areas to soak in autumn in Arizona. Because of the vastly different elevations and ecosystems found in the state, there's fall color to be found anytime from September through December. Not many states can boast that!

West Fork Canyon Reflections

Most of my first fall color shooting season was spent in the San Francisco Peaks (near Flagstaff), Oak Creek and West Fork Canyons (near Sedona), and some of the scenic drainages of the Mogollon Rim near Payson.

Oak Creek near Sedona

You can see a collection of images from my wanderings by clicking the link below...

Autumn In Arizona

One other thing to note before I sign off is that I now have my 2011 Desert Southwest scenic calendar available for purchase. You can preview and purchase the calendar here. Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope the upcoming holidays are merry!!

Now Offering Photo Tours / Photoshop Training

Here ye! Here ye! I have now expanded the Explore The Light business model to include customized, private photo tours and photoshop training. The photo tours will concentrate in the San Juan Mountains and the desert areas of the Four Corners region. These are private tours with an itinerary designed to meet the needs of an individual or small group. The mode of transportation can involve driving, hiking or snowshoeing (for those brave winter souls). More specifics are laid out in the workshop page on the Explore The Light website. Either click on the Workshop menu item above or follow this link.

Website and Blog Redesign Complete (mostly)

Anybody that occasionally hops on my blog or site may have noticed the face lift that both have received. I've been doing some redesigning of both so they have the same look and feel, which has allowed me to fairly seamlessly integrate my blog in with the website. Given my minimal web programming skills this was quite the frustrating endeavor that took far longer than it should have. Thank god for Smugmug's helpful Dgrin customizing forum, without which, I would have never been able to accomplish this! Now that it's pretty much complete (I still want to tweak a few things here and there), I'm pretty happy with the end result. If anyone sees any snafus...major or minor...I'd appreciate any comments.

In addition to the face lift, I've also added a bit of content to my site (more on that in an upcoming post) and have added menu options in an attempt to make it easier to navigate around. Check it out!

Wishing Everyone a Happy 2010!!

 

I haven't been too active with this blog lately as I've been concentrating more on the boring sales and marketing aspect of my business (along with just enjoying the holidays) and haven't been shooting too much. I do want to wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2010, though. I'm looking forward to new and exciting ventures in the coming year and hope to share them with everyone via this blog. Before looking ahead, however, I feel a bit like reminiscing so I've included a link below to my top 25 favorite images of 2009. I hope you enjoy viewing them as much as I enjoyed taking them!

Top 25 Images Of 2009

Holiday Print Sale

Well, I've decided to have my own little Black Friday and beyond sale on my website. I'll be offering all prints currently available in the fine art section of my site at 25% off starting on November 27th (Black Friday) for one week through December 3rd. Now is a great time to buy that print you've always wanted for yourself or as a gift to someone special for the holidays. This applies to print only sales...ColorBox mounted prints are not being offered with these discounts...sorry. The 25% discount will be reflected in the prices whenever a print is added to your cart. Happy shopping and I hope everyone has a great and safe holiday season!

2010 Calendar Available

This is my actually my third year of creating calendars. I really do it simply as a gift to family, friends, in-laws, etc. for the holidays. This year I switched to Zazzle for my 2010 calendar creation (I used MPix in the past) and they have a storefront from which anyone can order. Last year, I was surprised by all the extra requests I got for the calendar and found it a pain to have to order it myself and then forward it on. This will alleviate that problem. Not that I expect to sell many...calendars that are printed on demand are rather expensive. Only those silly enough to want the novelty of a calendar created specifically by me will even consider ordering. But the option is there, nonetheless! Just click on the image below to link to my ordering page...

First Magazine Cover Image

I was happy to see upon my return from Zion National Park that my winter image of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands graced the cover of this month's issue of Inside Outside Southwest Magazine...

Inside Outside is a regional magazine that specializes in the adventure scene of the Four Corners area. Click on the image to see what it is all about. It is my first magazine cover so  that made it a special treat for me. Hopefully it'll be the first of many!

Now Offering Framed Prints

I'm now pleased to offer a professional frame mounting option often referred to as ColorBox mounting for online print purchases on my site. ColorBox mounting is an alternative picture framing process where a print is dry mounted onto Medium Density Fiberboard and then sealed under heat and pressure with 80% UV protective matte finish vinyl lamination and finished with a thin, black beveled edge. The result is a contemporary looking, vibrant print that is perfect for a wide variety of lighting conditions due to its extraordinary non-glare properties. I've mounted a few prints using this process for gallery sales and must say that I'm very impressed with the quality and look of the finished product. See the image below for an example (click on it to see a larger version)...

Additionally, ColorBox mounted prints are easy to take care of as the laminate surface is water and fingerprint resistant and can be cleaned with glass cleaner and a soft rag. Shipping is less of a headache as well (in comparison to traditional style framed/matted prints) as there's no worrying about glass/plexiglass breakage during transit. For more details see the Purchase Info page on my website.

Creative Capitol Art Exhibit

This morning I sent off a framed 20x30" photographic print for the Creative Capitol Art Exhibit sponsored by the Colorado Council of the Arts and Denver International Airport. This juried exhibit is a four part rotating series highlighting the work of artists from the Northwest, Southwest, Eastern, and Metro Denver areas of Colorado. The works of the accepted artists in the Southwest region will be shown in concourse A of the Denver International Airport from September - November and then will move to the State Capitol for an exhibition in the Lieutenant Governor's Office from December - February. I was proud to have my image Crater Lake at Sunset in the San Juan Mountains accepted into this show. Hopefully, anyone reading this will have an opportunity to view it (along with the other fine works of art) in one of these venues.

Prints Available At Two Galleries

I'm excited to announce that some of my work is now on display/sale at the Artisans of the Southwest Gallery in Pagosa Springs and the Durango Art Center's gallery shop. If you're ever in one of these fine southwestern Colorado towns, please stop by and have a look. Location information for each of these galleries can be found at their respective websites:


Artisans of the Southwest
Durango Art Center

In addition, I'll be having an artist's reception on Saturday, May 23 at Artisans of the Southwest from 4-6:30pm. I will be one of two artists who's work will be featured at the gallery for the month of June. Stop by if you'd like to chat, shop, and/or partake in the wine and hors de oeuvres!

Update - May 17, 2009: Here's the official promotional card for the artist's reception event this coming May 23rd. Click on the image to see a larger version.

New Canon 5D Mark II Arrives!

I took receipt of my new 5D Mark II on March 11 and couldn't wait to play with my new toy! After performing an initial sanity test at home (to make sure nothing was obviously wrong with the camera), I put it through its paces on a day trip to the Bisti Badlands in northern New Mexico. My initial impressions were quite positive. I love the big, new LCD screen and also the functionality of the live view feature for situations that allow me to really take my time to set up a shot. And man...the file sizes generated by this puppy are huge! Fortunately, my PC has enough horsepower to process them without much noticeable difference from my old 5D files. I can see needing to add another hard drive in the near future though!



The image quality of the files produced by this camera is nothing short of outstanding...at least with my newly calibrated Canon 24-70 and 70-300 lenses. The 17-40 suffers a bit, but I knew that would be the case so it's no surprise. Someday, I wish Canon would refresh the design on that lens so it could match the resolving power of the new high megapixel cameras they're producing...even if it means they have to raise the price a bit. I ain't holding my breath that it'll happen too soon though! I hope to post more insights into the camera once I've used it more.

New Canon G10 Arrives

I'm in the process of replacing all my cameras over the next few months. As mentioned below, I've already added the 50D to my collection. I've also recently purchased the Canon G10 point and shoot digicam. I wanted a smallish p&s camera with good image quality (at low iso anyway) for those times a DSLR is too large to bother with. It will immediately become my skiing companion this winter. I plan to shoot some local Christmas festivals with it as well.

I must say, this is the best built p&s I've ever layed my hands on. Kudos to Canon for a great design. The image quality is exemplary as well at low iso (at least from the few test shots I've taken). This is definitely a major step up from my Canon S3 which it's replacing. I'm looking forward to playing with it a lot this winter.



Update - May 15, 2009: I thought I'd update my impressions on the G10's image quality now that I've had some time using it. My final conclusion is that it's far from revolutionary. While I appreciate the resolution that 14+ megapixels offer, the noise accompanying the camera is a bit annoying for me. I had hoped that the noise would be pretty minimal at iso 80 (the camera's base iso), but I've found that isn't the case. I think it would be acceptable for anyone who does minimal post processing work on it's files but my experience is that, even with a moderate amount of massaging (and I'm talking raw files here), the noise increases dramatically and needs to be dealt with. Please realize that I'm extremely picky when it comes to image quality (being spoiled with Canon's higher end DLSRs) so others may not agree with my whining! The bottom line is that, while I do consider the camera a big step up from my Canon S3, I'm still finding that I'll take it with me on midday scouting trips or skiing ventures, but little else. And, of course, any kind of action photography that would require sensitivities higher than iso 80 are out of the question.

New Canon 50D Arrived Today!

I took possession of my brand new Canon 50D this morning. I've sold my old Canon 1D Mark II N and replaced it with this baby. I wanted a wildlife (and backup landscape) camera with more megapixels (for cropping) and better noise characteristics. I can live with a slower shooting camera, but I'm a little apprehensive about the hit I'll take in the autofocus capabilities. The real test is gonna come in December when the 50D will get a good workout shooting the birds of Bosque del Apache in New Mexico. Until then, I'll be experimenting with it to see what it can (and can't) do.



Update - May 14, 2009: I thought I'd update my impressions of this camera. My biggest concern with this camera upon further use was the noise that it produced all the way down to iso 100. It was just plain worse than my old 1D Mark II N at every iso level! Needless to say, I wasn't happy one bit. My workflow has me using both Photoshop Lightroom and CS3 and upon further research, I learned that Adobe's algorithmns for rendering the 50D's raw files was subpar. The workaround for this was to render them with Canon's DPP software instead of Lightroom. While I hated to have to do this as it's always a pain to change one's workflow, specifically for one camera, it did alleviate the problem. Every time Adobe updates their Lightrooom program I check to see if there's an improvement, but no luck so far.

Self Published Books Available

For those of you who just can't get enough of my work (which probably only includes my parents), I have two self published coffee table style books available, titled

"A Taste of Minnesota"



and "Capturing America".



"A Taste of Minnesota" is a pictorial essay of my experiences in Minnesota, the state I called home for some 45 years while "Capturing America" serves as a portfolio of my imagery from across the United States (up until early 2008 anyway).

These books are printed on demand and, unfortunately, the price reflects this. Some day I hope to publish in a more conventional manner, but until then this is what I can offer. Thanks for having a look!