SATW Central States awards

News arrived yesterday that I had six images place in the 2012 Society of American Travel Writers Central States Chapter photo competition. Thank you to the judges and organizers — I’m honored. The real kick for me was in getting 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the People category. What a shock! The photo above was the 1st place winner. I also took 1st in the Action category, 3rd in Food and an honorable mention in International Places.

The awards were announced at the Central States meeting in the Florida Keys last week, which I was unfortunately unable to attend. It’s always great to see the other photographers’ work during the presentation. Hopefully they’ll eventually be posted somewhere online. I’ll share the link here if that happens.

Congratulations to all of the other winners as well!

Balloonfest

A shot from last weekend’s Balloonfest in Anthony, Kansas. Lightroom 4’s new “shadow” slider really brought out the detail in the dark portions of the image. I pushed it a little further than I normally would because I liked the way it affected the faces. They almost look like characters out of a Thomas Hart Benton painting to me.

Worm’s for sale

I’ve been continuing my photo shoots to document various aspects of rural life in Kansas and spotted this sign in a yard in Peabody on Saturday. I don’t really know why, but it just made me smile. More from last week’s shoot to come…

New Orleans revisited

Now that I’m running both Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6 (if only in beta), I’m going through old files to see what the new software can do for some images that I never quite felt were finished. Back in the days of the darkroom, it was a good idea to work a print and then set it aside for a time before coming back to it, reassessing, and trying some new ideas. That’s basically the way I treat digital files as well. I process them almost immediately after capturing them, but I like to come back later to take a fresh approach. These files from New Orleans are from 2006, less than a year after Katrina hit. We made the visit with a group of journalists at the invitation of the tourism bureau to help get the word out that the main tourist areas were largely unaffected and open for business. The impact in tourism numbers was very evident, however, in the quiet streets and restaurants.

In reprocessing these images, I tried to focus on that quiet feeling of a nearly abandoned city. The texture of New Orleans also comes through. It’s an old city by American standards and after all that it had been through it seemed to be feeling its age. I look forward to my next trip there, to see what has changed in six years.

Abandoned places

Call me weird, but there are few things I enjoy more than rooting around in abandoned buildings. The layers of history and questions that arise from strange additions and alterations — it’s fascinating. Earlier this week I got a quick peek at the building above. But this isn’t just any old, decaying building. It’s believed that this is the very second-floor room (it was originally one big open room with no dividing walls) where forty elected delegates from the Kansas Territory gathered to write the Free State Constitution in October of 1855. In fact, it may be the first permanent building constructed in Topeka, Kansas.

This was a quick scouting trip and I hope to return soon to further document the building in this condition — basically abandoned since the 1940s — and throughout its proposed restoration. More to come…

Around the yard…

One advantage of being home this Spring is getting to see everything in bloom for once. Due to the early warm weather, the daffodils and tulips are long gone, but there is still plenty going on around the yard. Extra credit to anyone that can identify all the species…

Wind power, part 2

A couple weeks ago, I was out in western Kansas shooting wind farms for a State project promoting economic development and employment opportunities in rural areas. I got my start shooting out in this part of the world. Throughout high school and college I had jobs that had me prowling the backroads of this under-appreciated state and I came to know it in detail. I’ve roamed all 105 counties and it’s a rare dirt road that I haven’t been down at least once.

Over the past few years, my attention has largely been elsewhere. My photography began to take me farther afield and international travel has been a bigger priority. I never stopped shooting around my home state, but it has taken a bit of a back seat for a while. This year I decided to refocus on Kansas a bit and to freshen up those stock files. That decision led partly to my taking this ongoing assignment of documenting rural areas for the State. It has several aspects, but the common element is that it’s getting me back into the countryside and I’m having a blast rediscovering this place that I’ve known so well, but — in some ways — has changed so much over the past few years.

It was appropriate that this first segment would focus on wind farms, as they may represent the biggest visual change to the Kansas landscape in decades. Even crossing the state on I-70, you can’t help but be awed by a large and growing group of these behemoths in the Smoky Hills near Ellsworth. I shot one of the state’s first wind farms near Montezuma for Kansas! magazine years ago and in the time since, they’ve been sprouting up everywhere. On that first shoot, I only visited a finished wind farm but on this assignment, I would also visit factories, assembly areas and holding yards where the giant components are stored until needed.

What I saw on this assignment is that wind power is changing the Kansas landscape in more ways that you see by driving down the interstate. This is a new, booming industry. It’s not uncommon now to see turbine blades being shipped by rail or passing you on a flatbed trailer as you drive down the highway. In a lot of ways, Kansas hasn’t changed much since I was exploring it 10 and 20 years ago but it has not been standing still. Every time an assignment takes me out into the field, I’m discovering something new about this place.

And I couldn’t resist a quick self portrait while shooting from atop the crane that’s used to load components on rail cars — complete with all my required safety gear:

Unintended portrait subject

Sorry. I usually try to avoid posting cat photos (the interwebs seem full enough of them already) but this one has a story behind it. My wife/business partner needed a new headshot and, as I was setting up the lighting, our cat Piña decided to make herself available as a stand-in while I got everything situated. She was a real pro. She hopped right into the chair and waited patiently as I made test shots, adjusted lights, etc. until everything was set for the real shoot.

I liked this shot in particular because it feels so formal. I added a bit of an oil-painting filter just to push it a bit further into the realm of those thoroughbred horse portraits. I think it would be perfect in a gilded frame, hanging above a cherry wood humidor full of Cuban cigars.

In Print

Here’s a fun clip for the portfolio: I supplied several photos for an article on New Zealand’s food scene by my friend David Lang that just ran in the Chinese edition of Travel+Leisure. I think it looks great.

It may be surprising but I don’t often see the finished pieces that use my photography. Stock sales are often reported rather vaguely so I only know that I have a full page image in a North American text book or a cover for a travel guide to be distributed in Korea. It’s fun to actually see a piece in print occasionally. It’s more fun when that piece is well designed, and even more fun yet when it’s in Chinese. Thanks to David for giving me the chance to collaborate on this project. I hope we get to do it again soon.

That’s the opening page above but here’s the entire spread (full disclosure — the food shot on the bottom of the second page is actually David’s, not mine):