Winter in Fargo means not a lot of opportunities to take fun shots outdoors, so I haven’t been extremely busy lately shooting. But I did go to a party a couple weekends back and came away with some fun shots!

At one point, the lead singer handed out some maracas and Bill led a train around the dance floor!

The band, HORIZON.

This little boy was entertaining himself by pouring the water in these cups back and forth...back and forth...

Well! It took me a little longer than I’d thought to get all of these finished up, but here they are as promised! I really enjoyed working with Josh and Jen, and I’m really looking forward to 2009 to keep moving forward as a photographer! Here are the shots we got!

Don’t ask about this last one. I don’t get it either. Ha!

Fargo almost never gets shut down. We laugh at snow! Even more, we laugh at those southern cities where a couple inches of snow fall, and the whole city shuts down. We’d be shut down 4 months out of the year if we did that. You can get a foot of snow here, and it will slow things down, but things won’t stop. I remember having school growing up when the temperatures were -80 wind chill. So it takes something huge to shut us down. Well, yesterday we got it.

Yesterday, we had a blizzard...a REAL blizzard. It seems every year we get some sort of chance of a blizzard, but they never really materialize or they are just weak. Not this year! I honestly can’t recall a time when I have seen such a powerful blizzard come through...not in the last 10 years at least! I snagged a couple pictures during the blizzard and a few outside our apartment building this morning to show what how high the snow drifted and had to be piled up. I might snag a few more if I go out later today...stuck working right now! As for why there aren’t more pictures of during the blizzard, are you crazy? hehe! It was snowing like mad, with 40 mph winds and -45 wind chill. We saw people getting their 4-wheel drives stuck in our parking lot.

The television was full of cancellations for school the next day...even Fargo schools decided to close the day before! Restaurants and businesses were all closed...simply because people couldn’t even drive through the city to get to work! Even having a 4-wheel drive was useless, we saw them getting stuck in the street! I would have taken a picture of that, except for the most part, we couldn’t even see the street through the blowing snow, just catching glimpses of the trucks stuck out there!

This was a first for me. I had never seen the wind pound so hard that it forced snow through the screen door and the door, piling up a huge amount of snow inside the door. We actually had to open the door and screen and force the snow outside, because it was getting so heavy we were afraid it would tear the screen. And no, outside is not overexposed, you just can’t see anything through the snow!


You can see the cars outside getting buried, and this was during one of the short periods where we could actually see the building next door. There were many times when the snow was blowing so hard we could barely even make out its outline. Later on, the tree had a 6-foot snow drift around it! I was going to take a picture of it this morning, but the wind had completely rearranged the drifts by the time I woke up!

Here are the shots I got this morning.

And amazingly, the blizzard is over, the streets are getting cleaned, and tomorrow life will go on normally.

After spending a fun weekend with friends in northern Minnesota, I was driving back to Fargo on Monday morning and drove by a spot where I saw several bald eagles! I’ve never had any success getting shots of them before, but I just happened to have my camera and my 300 mm lens with me! I pulled over to the side of the road and to my surprise and amazement, they all set down on trees right along the road and posed for me! I hope you like these! I am super thrilled!

There are actually 3 bald eagles in this shot! Can you find the third one?

Sunday night I had the privilege of spending the evening with a super fun couple! Josh and Jenny June!  Too bad it already gets so dark so early around these parts, and then add in the clouds, and we weren’t able to get any shots in before it got dark! But we headed over to the hotel where Josh and Jen are having their reception, the Holiday Inn of Fargo, and we had a lot of fun! It’ll take me a few more days at least to get them all completely finished up, but here is a quick preview of what’s to come!

Here is my first senior portrait shoot! I am quite happy with how these turned out, and Kaleb had a lot of fun too! Look within the next few weeks for part 2 of his shoot! It was really funny, when I asked Kaleb if he minded if I put these up on the blog, he said, “No, go ahead! Then I get to see more of my mug!” haha! 

And here is just a fun shot we did, with Kaleb raising his Axe to the sunset!

First of all, just wanted to apologize for the lack of updating lately! I’ve been extremely busy lately without a lot of extra time for shooting! Add to that the fact that it gets dark at 7 here now, my prime hours are dark already! Oh, the joys of winter! 

In any case, I have a fun post today! I was at my grandparents’ anniversary party this past weekend, and their great-granddaughter Ondrea was visiting too! (She is my uncle’s granddaughter, I have no idea what that makes her to me...) She was being quite funny and having fun playing on the floor. Here she is playing with her puzzle.

She got bored about halfway through, however, put the puzzle back in the box, and left to go play in another room. Of course, me being the type of guy that loves to play with children’s heads, I suggested we put together the puzzle and leave it in the middle of the floor to discover. It took us about 3 minutes to put the 48-piece jumbo sized puzzle together and left it for her to find! Here she is discovering it!

Her excitement quickly turned to being confused as to how such a thing could have happened.  I couldn’t get a picture of her super cute “suspicious” look she gave me because I was sure that would have given me away.

When we asked her how she thought this might have happened, she finally decided that the puzzle “put itself together.” We had a good laugh!  And don’t worry, she wasn’t scarred for life. In fact, 10 minutes later, she’d forgotten all about it. I love kids.

I spent the week with my family in Minot, ND. Since the last time I visited, my parents got a cat! His name is Tigger! While I wouldn’t say I am a cat person, this is one cool cat! He is extremely soft, extremely people friendly, and crazy! I took a few pictures of him! I hope you enjoy!

Tigger knows how to open cabinet doors, and sleeps in the cabinet when my dad works at his desk.

Tigger peeking out of his home!

OK, a few weeks back someone had let me know that the “captcha” or the security verification for commenting wasn’t working, meaning that nobody could comment on my blog. I definitely want people to be able to comment, so I removed the captcha security. Imagine my shock when I found that over the last week, I had received almost 1000 spam comments on 20 different posts!!! After spending over a half an hour cleaning the comment boxes out, I re-enabled captcha, although I noticed it still isn’t working. I guess I’ll have to get together with my host to see why this is no longer working, but I can’t just leave things wide open any more, apparently. I want people to be able to comment, but this is ridiculous.

And although I know those idiots spamming my site aren’t even visiting, see above picture! Yeah, that’s right. Does anyone really click on your link and buy fake medicine from somewhere in Asia? Is it really worth your time? In any case, rant over! I hope those people that actually enjoy visiting my site keep visiting, and I hope to get the commenting fixed soon!

I’m not sure how this happens, but it seems on every shoot, I completely forget about a picture. Then a few weeks later, I’m going through and cleaning house and find it! Here is a shot of my friend David and his 1960s Chevy Camaro. I guess you can tell I’m not very good with classic cars, because I don’t know exactly which year it is. Ah well, it’s still a great car.