Light in a Box

My camera bag was tucked under a tree, the camera on a tripod wearing my shirt and I hunched over it as somewhere a frantic Noah was trying to finish his ark to beat the imminent flood. The rain had started suddenly and did so with force. The camera wasn't my greatest concern however as I tried to ignore the silent urgency coming from the trail behind me where Sarah was getting drenched. As a kid I loved the rain, as an adult I had grown to prefer a dry location. I was too accustomed to the cold, misting drizzle common in Wisconsin while Colorado storms are typically riddled with hail. Playing in the rain had become as much fun as getting pricked with frozen needles or pelted with pennies. This rain was thick and warm though and once I was drenched, it brought out the kid in me. Sarah was not as thrilled, making way for families draped in plastic ponchos as they moved closer to the destination while she waited for her half naked husband to take a damn picture. Aft...

Sarah and I were perched on a hill just in time for the waning moments of sunset. We pretty much ran half of the Badlands Loop trail to reach this vantage point before the sun slipped away. The night before, as the sun disappeared a bright orange ray cut through the navy blue of the distant mountains. It was between peaks from the trail that I noticed the band of light and it dissipated before I could get a clear vantage point. With another clear sky and a perch atop one of the dirt mounds I was confident I would capture the moment tonight. However as that sun dipped below the mountains again and the moment came for that orange beam to shoot down the hillside, nothing happened. The sun had found a straggling cloud behind the mountains that killed the beam.   Then next morning we grabbed a great breakfast in Furnace Creek, a little oasis surrounded by desert that includes the visitor center, restaurants, a resort, grass, palm trees and a golf course. From there we drove th...

College was where my passion for photography exploded, fueled by the stars. It became a nightly routine to drive the 20 minutes out of town to the dark shores of Lake Superior to photograph a sea of stars I've yet to beat. This would lead to my experimentation with light painting, steel wool burning, glowing orbs by inserting flashlights into balloons, and eventually lighting my hands on fire. The stars became the subject of my make or break personal art review series for which I photographed specific constellations for an hour and extracted just the star trails of that group (an example can still be found in my logo of the constellation Leo). This was some of my last work with astronomy until the eclipse. I'll get the travel complaints out of the way now, it was a nightmare but by no means reduced the experience. On Sunday morning I woke up in Ripon, WI after celebrating my sister's wedding day. I drove an hour and a half to the Milwaukee airport to catch a flight to D...

Think you know what silence is? Maybe you think of a hike in the woods or a cabin by a lake. How about the relief of putting the kids down for a nap or when a tree falls with no one around? Have you ever experienced total silence, the complete absence of sound, so quiet your ears fight to find noise? If not, then you've never been to Death Valley National Park. When you picture Death Valley you might imagine an arid desert, sand as far as the eye can see, or the classic cracked earth and an animal skull. Honestly that isn't far off, you just need to throw in God’s personal collection of unique desert landforms. There are fields of sand but they've piled up into dunes. The cracks in the earth can be dried out mud or a crystallized salt flat. Dry, yes, but water still drains down from the surrounding snow capped mountains. A landscape that endures the hottest temperatures in the country while also dipping below freezing at night. Wherever you go in t...

Sarah's Guinness is nothing more than a froth covered pint glass when our waitress asks if we'd like another round. The musician for the evening was an elderly man with a guitar and terrific stage presence. His charisma was turning the few Sunday night bar goers into a rowdy bunch. He sang a number of Irish folk songs that were broke up with hilarious toasts for a room of raised glasses. We tried to sing along with the words he taught us but would end up laughing when he'd scold the room for messing up. As he took the stage again, wrapping up intermission, there was no question another beer was in order. After the show, Sarah and I stumbled back up the cobblestone roads feeling drunker than two beers had ever made us. Our last night in town and we'd found a temporary getaway to Ireland from, of all places, Savannah, Georgia. Strolling along River Street to the buzz of street lights warming up, we were at the mercy of the night. We had just finished a wonderful dinner ...

Wanted: unbiased critic. Ideal candidate must have an artistic eye with experience in photography preferably in the landscape field. You will be tasked with reviewing my work and producing a critique that will push my creative talents while finding a happy median between ego grooming and making me cry. Think you have what it takes? Apply today! All of the critics in my life are either family or friends, few are artists, and none of them see a fault in my work. Sarah gets the most exposure to my work and has yet to find something wrong with a photograph. I view my work much differently, I see maybe, maybe, a handful of solid images in my portfolio. I've started listening to a few photography related podcasts while working at my full time job. On one show the host was interviewing a writer who was describing his journey. The writer watched his friends take off while he struggled to get off the ground. The problem, as he describes it, was the standard for which he held his work. H...

Growing pains are the constant reminder that life's not easy, also the TV show that introduced us to Leonardo DiCaprio. The disruption of progress they cause ties a negative connotation to the term though they often lead to a growth of wisdom. I'm traveling down a path guided by my own intuition and occasional dumb luck. I wish my degree had included a how to course for landing on your feet but instead I was jettisoned into the real world with a piece of paper to shake at people. For two years I've been battling through growing pains, and that's not counting the two years I lost after graduation trying to find my barrings. My dream is to travel the world and take pictures, but I want to share more than the destinations, I want to share my journey. Like I said before, there wasn't exactly a course for doing what I'm attempting to do. There have been a lot of learning experiences already and plenty more to come and I want to share them all with you as they do....