Have you ever just walked outside one day and looked at the sky and been blown away? That happened to me in August 2006.  I was walking out of my apartment building here in Fargo, and the sky was a color that I had never seen before, and since then have never seen again! I have seen beautiful sunsets before, but that night, the entire sky seemed like it was on fire! I ran inside and grabbed my camera, and got a few shots. It’s too bad I didn’t have time to drive out into the country to get some more interesting shots.  Unfortunately, these colors only lasted a few minutes, so I had to make do with these.  These have not been enhanced in any way.  These are the original pictures straight from my camera. 

Welcome to the latest Blast from the Past!  I took this picture of downtown Manhattan from Brooklyn Heights, NY, across the East River. This was in March 2002, and marked the 6-month anniversary of the WTC attacks. There were 2 huge beams of light aimed into the sky to represent where the towers used to be.  It was a magnificent sight, and I am glad I happened to be there at the time.  I was still using my old Pentax ZX-30 at the time, and I was shooting with 200 speed film, with an exposure length of 30 seconds.

I am quite excited! I received my new Pentax AF 360 FGZ Flash on Thursday! I have used add on flash units in the past, but this is the first time I have had one with so many functions and flexibility. This new flash communicates with my camera, zooms in and out as I zoom my lens in and out, and helps my camera with its settings when I choose to bounce the flash off the ceiling, etc. I am having a lot of fun playing with it and seeing what new options it brings me. It is much more powerful than other flashes I have used in the past, so it will hopefully give me broader range.  I have also just received the Lumiquest Promax system, which allows me to attach various reflectors to my flash unit, such as white, gold, and silver reflectors, softening the power of the flash and offering slight colors to the flash light.

Here is a wedding photo that I created for my brother and his wife Chelsey. The original photo was taken by Lisa Helseth, but I touched it up and added a photo theme using Photoshop.  They were very happy when I gave them this already framed!

Another blast from the past, as I share pictures from years ago.  This was the first wedding that I was ever asked to take pictures for.  I wasn’t the professional photographer for this wedding, but I think the family liked them and it was good practice for me.  These were taken at the Peace Gardens on the border of North Dakota and Canada.  There are many more, but these are my favorites.

Welcome to the Blast from the Past!  I have recently gotten my favorite pictures from the era of 35-mm film scanned in.  Remember when pictures were taken on film?  I will be making several posts over the coming weeks with these older pictures. 

This particular shot is one of my favorites.  It was taken sometime in the summer of 2002 just north of Wallkill, NY.  It shows my friend Ed in a precarious position!

Most of you may have already seen these, but I thought I would put them on here anyway! Marissa, Sam, Tyler, and I had a lot of fun shooting these as a funny gift for Whitney when she graduated. Whitney wanted cleaning supplies for her graduation present! I gave her some, along with these pictures just for fun! They are obviously heavily Photoshopped.

The first one was the original one I wanted to do.  I wanted to give it the feel of the Matrix movies, hence the green background and muted colors. I left the cleaning supplies full color so they would stand out. 

Marissa and Sam were excited to do this, but Tyler kept changing his mind about whether to be in the picture or not.  Finally, he decided he wanted to do it, I gave him my sunglasses...then he kept wanting to smile! It took us a little while to convince him that smiling would take away from the idea of the picture! Finally, we convinced him to look mad.  That’s Tyler’s “mad” face.

The next one was also inspired by the Matrix, when Neo is attacked by dozens of Agent Smiths. I didn’t want to get THAT into it, but I had fun with this picture.

It was a little hard to shoot this picture, because none of them really understood what I was trying to do at the time.  I’m happy with how it turned out though!

My family and I went to visit Allison today.  We had a great time! While we were there, we took some impromptu pictures for her grandmother.  I am very happy with how they turned out! I hope you like them!