Heartland Views

It is quiz time! If you know what a “Lumper” is, you are ahead of so many of the good folks who have seen and commented on this photograph. I shot this in the early 1980’s with a 4×5 field camera and Tri-X film. I had to wait for hours for the shadows to back off of the key areas of the image. I like to think that it was worth the wait.

Here is another photograph for train fans. This too was shot at The Durham Musuem. This photograph is called, “A Touch of Blue.” The title comes from the fact that when this image is printed as a fine art photograph, one can see just a touch of blue in the right side of the image. What looks like a black and white photograph is indeed a color image. I like to build in a sense of surprise in my photographs.

This is an image that makes use of one of my all time favorite Photoshop filters, the “poster edges” filter. It does not work with all subjects. But when it does, it really works. I really like this filter! I shot this at The Durham Museum in Omaha, NE. This is a first class museum with great displays.

I heard a fascinating comment from a potter friend of mine, Paul Koch, recently. He said that when he works with a new student, he tells them that the best way to begin working with clay on a wheel is to “let the clay fill your hands.” I really believe that this same idea can be applied to photographic composition. When I cover composition in my photography class, I encourage students to improve their composition by letting an image fill the frame. Do not, I tell them, try to force a compositional concept on an image. Photographic composition, I believe, should  fill the frame just as clay on a wheel should fill one’s hands.

The photo you see at the top of this blog was made in the fall of 2008. It was one of those truly special moments where the clouds parted for just a moment, casting that beautiful light on the fields below. I shot this right outside of my home in southwest Iowa. The view is looking northwest. This image is one of my all time favorites.

There is an old Lakota saying that anything in the hand does not have to be given the power to change what is in the mind and the heart. No finer words could be said about how I approach photography. From sunrise through sunset and into the night, I try to capture the many special moods and moments that occur in the heartland; moments that are captured by the camera in my hand that is not given the the power to change what I see in my mind and heart.  I try to capture and present images that tell stories in an honest and accurate fashion.  I do this because my photography personal. What you see in my images are stories that mean something special to me. Hopefully my photographs will also tell special stories to you.