Fall's Arrival

Today I realized (again) that great photography has very little to do with camera 'skills' and everything to do with "seeing."

While headed out the back door of our old garage, my eye caught our lawn rake, sitting handle down in the garden tool caddy. Maybe it was this morning's filtered light, but I had been walking past the tool and leaf for days and never 'saw' this photo until this morning. The fallen leaf had been impaled on the tines of the rake, set back in it's place after use raking up fallen apples in the front yard.

I ran and grabbed the camera, made a quick few exposures in the available light and here is the result. Except for a slight adjustment in contrast and sharpening in Photoshop, this is the image that was "found" this morning.

Five-Minute Self Portrait Photo Project

I wanted to get a few portraits of myself for my Classic Rock radio station Facebook pages and wanted something a little more ‘edgy’ and hard to fit the rock format. One morning the light coming from the east was very nice. So I grabbed the camera with the 18mm wide-angle lens and fired up a cigar. I knew with the wide angle and depth of field I would be pretty close with focus and getting myself in the frame. So I positioned myself in the east-facing doorway of our old garage and started shooting. I hand-held the camera at arm’s length, shooting a few frames with the motor drive then “chipping” to see what I was getting.

I wanted to prove you can get great self-portraits doing the old “hold the camera at arms-length and fire away” method that so many of us do to get ourselves in the picture at the Grand Canyon, at the concert, or with friends at the party. I used a little fill flash from the built-in strobe, dialed down to –2 on most of the images to kick the available light just a touch.

I have adolescent memories of a San Francisco Bay Area TV show host back in the late 60’s early 70’s named Bob Wilkerson. He hosted at late night weekend TV show called ‘Creature Feature’…introducing all the really bad ‘B movie’ horror and cheesy sci-fi flicks from the 1950’s. He sat in a big easy chair puffing away on his stogie! I wanted to get a similar feel to my photo of mystery and macabre with the slow shutter speed blur of the smoke that I had seen done so well by a famous photojournalist years back.

I’m not promoting smoking for all you ‘kids’ out there… It becomes a prop with the shade and my hat to add that element of hip mystery to the image. In post-production, I added some more contrast and edge to the images to get a look that is currently very popular with photographers, advertising and magazine covers.

Well I “survived” my first 'Midwest tornado fest.' The severe weather this past Thursday afternoon/evening brought more than 40 tornados to the state of Minnesota and more to the south in Iowa. Two of the Minnesota twisters were deadly. We were lucky in Fairmont to escape any touchdowns or damaging weather. It was a stressful day watching the TV and listing to the radio reports of what was going on all around us, wondering if we would hear the tornado sirens next.

But as is the case, first destruction, then beauty. At dusk, the massive storm front moved northeast, the sky displayed such almost surreal looking clouds. They are 'Aftermath Clouds' or as a weather professional friend said, they are “Mammatus” clouds and they usually show as a particularly potent thunderstorm moves out of an area. Indeed true.

Contrasts

I’ve mentioned before how impressed I am with the mammoth grain structures that tower above the midwestern landscape. Driving around Des Moines, Iowa recently looking for interesting “stuff” to photograph, I found this silo facility along the mostly unused Norfolk and Southern rail yard. I love to show contrasts in my images and this one has several. I love the “large and small” aspect of the modest brick building along the railroad tracks contrasted with the massive silos in back. I also like the white washed paint of the small structure in contrast with the weathered concrete elevator silos. The other interesting element that I really didn’t notice until doing a post-shooting edit is the left window on the brick building has a very bright, yellow shade behid the glass contrasted to the plain, dark window on the right. The small building itself would have made a fun picture, but placing it in contrast with the huge silos adds some punch.

Fitting Gesture

Country singer Billy Currington had a recent hit song that talks about honoring a departed one with a six-pack of beer. The song’s called “God is Great, Beer Is Good and People Are Crazy.” I found a little bit of that going on over the Memorial Day weekend at a local cemetery outside Northrop, MN. Don’t know the story, but it’s likely an old Army buddy stopped by to pay tribute to a long lost friend with a can of Hamm’s beer on the gravestone and some red, white and blue flowers. Actually quite touching. Thanks to all who have given all for our country!

The Joy of Spring

Ahhh youth! If only we adults could still experience the joy of letting go and being a kid once-in-a-while. A good run on cool, green spring grass (yes, even with the Dandelions weeds) as we head as fast as our little legs will take us to the playground equipment is something "adults" don't do very often, if at all any more.

A close college friend of my wife and his two boys stopped by Fairmont for a quick visit today while on business. So it was to the Channel Inn for fried food and burger lunch on the shores of Hall Lake and then across the street to the park, since the adults took WAY too long to finish eating and talking and the boys needed to burn off some energy for the ride home to The Cities.

The point is, deep down inside, we all want to be like kids. But the parent inside us says: "Stop fidgeting, sit nice and don't even think about going out to play." But some of us, like me, need to allow ourselves "to go play" more often. We would enjoy our lives a lot better.

Locomotive Study

One of amazing thing about trains is their massive size. Even a "small" industrial switch engine is big, compared to, say, the average Honda.This old 44-tonner locomotive is sitting on a disconnected spur track in Blue Earth, MN. I like the graphic design of the working parts.

Corn is poppin up in rows in fields around Southern Minnesota. The little guys are about an inch tall. Worries are an overnight cold snap (A 'freeze warning' issued by the National Weather Service) could damage the tender young plants. I love the way the late afternoon sun highlights the tiny corn plants. The rows remind me of the Napa Valley wine country with the row upon row of grape vines beginning to bud. These pictures taken in Martin County Saturday (05-08-10) off Lair Road in Fairmont not far from my house.

'Homemade' Tractor Switch Engine

I love railroads and the Midwest has a great percentage of active rail lines running through it, from major heavy rail traffic routes to the rural branchlines on light rails and well-worn ties. In Fairmont (Mn.) there is an old rail spur that still serves as a grain transload facility near downtown.

Randy Kabe owns Southern Minnesota

Seed Cleaning Service and currently transfers corn and other grain from truck-to-railcar. The small operation is based at a vintage grain and coal elevator in Fairmont, Minnesota. Randy says his company currently receives anywhere from three to 10 empty covered hopper cars per month from the Iowa, Chicago and Eastern Railroad’s (off the IC&E’s Jackson Subdivision that operates through Fairmont along with the Union Pacific’s Fairmont Subdivision which crosses the IC&E line in town). Randy says he uses a modified secondhand agricultural tractor to move the cars setout by IC&E crews on a long siding beside his elevator.

He explained his coupler-equipped tractor switcher is a real “homemade,” low-budget piece of equipment that he “dreamt up” to get the job done more safely than the dangerous logging chain method he tried at first.

He bought the used White Farm Boss 4-150 equipped with a Cat 3208 engine and first extended the axles so the huge tires would straddle the railroad track. He then found an old John Deere cultivator at auction and used only the steel beam and 3-point hitch for attaching the coupler, which he got from the railroad. The custom homemade couple setup is adjustable and slides back and forth making it easier to mate with the couplers of the covered hoppers. “Works like a charm,” he said.

How many cars is the Farm Boss able to handle? Randy said, depending on the condition of the ground along each side of the light rail spur, the tractor can move six or seven empty hoppers at a time and can safely pull two fully loaded railcars, though he has moved more. The Farm Boss has even pulled railcars through foot-deep snow during the winter.

Spring: New Life

Spring in the Midwest for me means all the 'white' of snow that was piled up in front of our house and all around the town this past winter is now replaced by "green." New life is all around. Without turning on a sprinkler (like when living in Colorado and California) the grass is a bright, rich green. Trees are beginning to leaf and we have discovered a patch of dirt is now quickly turning into a miniature fern grotto.











Again, I waited until the lighting was "right" to make the images. The setting sun popped out from behind some rain clouds just long enough to bring brightness to the plants and leaves.



All these were shot with a Nikon 300mm on my D200 within a 3 minute time span.

Photography Website

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Grain Building Graphics

One thing I enjoy about the Midwest are the many grain and bean elevators that punctuate the skyline.

Some are massive tall concrete skyscrapers, others small, and unassuming. In town (here in Fairmont, Mn.) there are a handful of elevators still in day-to-day operation, and several still served by the railroad (which is very cool).

I love the graphic element these modest-sized structures have.

I hope you'll also see the art in the everyday.

About the light

They say photography, 'great' photography, is all about "the light." I agree. That is the huge line that separates a snapshot and an image with impact. This image is of the double door that leads from the garage to our kitchen. How many times I have open and closed these doors coming and going since moving in this past November is anyone's guess. But now that the sun has shifted as it sets off the western horizon, the light streams through another multi-pane door highlighting this wall. The light of the setting sun coming through the window painted a picture the other evening on this old door and the wall behind it that I hadn't seen before. The 'light' makes the image.

Sign of the Times

One thing that strikes me in the Midwest is the open expanse of sky. In Colorado, we saw a lot of sky, but it was rimmed with the 14,000-foot Rockies that surrounded our 7,100-ft. valley. Here in this part of south-central Minnesota, there is a lot of sky to play with in photographs. I think this will be an on-going theme in some of my images. Took the camera out today on a shopping trip and found this sign on a rural road as the overcast sky began to clear. Though far from being original, this image illustrates the concept of everyday objects or people placed in the context of open sky as a graphic element. I used simple fill flash from the built-in flash to add some "pop" to the sign as I metered to keep the detail in the sky.

It's a Brand New Blog...errr Day

Thanks for checking out new my photo blog of the Mid West. Since I'm a new transplant to this region of the U.S., it's a very different landscape visually. I'm making myself get out and shoot pictures to keep the flow going and try to have that connection with my cameras. I hope to share some of what I see here in Fairmont, Minnesota, as well as the surround regions of the state. The one thing that is different from the Rocky Mountain region of Colorado I just left is a wide expanse of open sky. Colorado had a lot of sky, but was rimmed with the 14,000-foot mountain peaks. Here tree lines and the ever-present elevator punctuate the skyline. I see this open expanse of sky as a theme I will try to play upon in some of my images.

Check back often as I will try and be faithful to updating these pages. All images and text are Copyright Joseph Kreiss 2010.Unauthorized use is prohibited