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Posts published in “Day: September 24, 2009

The inner workings of my brain are a mysterious thing

It occurred to me last night that what I was talking about the other day was ROI—Return On Investment. Except that I’m not looking for monetary return, but a body of creative work to share and distribute. I don’t know why that term has never come up inside my head in all the years I’ve been using the same method of evaluating purchases. It’s not like I didn’t know it either.

Have a drawing of a unicorn.

unicorn2

An inspired triptych.

While in Minnesota, I was looking out at the hazy expanse of seemingly endless water on Lake Superior and I was reminded of Sugimoto Hiroshi’s Seascapes. Standing on the edge of the inland sea there I thought I should probably see if I can create something like I remembered them to be. I ended up taking three photos, all of Lake Superior, at different places and times of day. I am going to get them printed and put them on my wall which I think will be nice, but I am having a hard time deciding which ones I like more, color or black and white.

Here are the color ones.

Here are the black and white ones.

They will hang in this order, left to right, on the wall as 12″ square prints. I highly recommend clicking on the photos for a closer look or even going to Flickr to look at the 2K sized ones.

My only hesitation is that the last time I printed black and white photos for the wall, I ended up hating them. But that might be because that was a whole lot less thought out than this. Anyway, I’d love your comments.

The North Country, Minnesota – 9/12/2009

I few weeks ago I went up to Minnesota with my friend Mikey W for a week in the woods of uninterrupted, extreme relaxing. The goal was to get some work done, which happened to a lesser extent than desired, but we also trekked through the Minnesota State Fair, accomplished a whole lot of drinking beer, made some fires much too large for the tiny little fire pit we had, fished for tiny little guys not worth eating, and rocked the hell out of the Indian Casino in Walker, MN. Not bad at all. And, of course, I made a bunch of photos. I have some thoughts on the development of these afterward.

Here are a handful of my very favorites.

Check out the whole gallery here:

The North Country, Minnesota Gallery – 9/12/2009

On this set of photos I really spent a lot time making local adjustments within Lightroom. The light during the week was very difficult with lots of hard shadows, reflections, areas of wide dynamic range. It made getting good exposures right off the cuff fairly difficult. Add severe haze to the mix for the few days we were at Lake Superior just north of Duluth and you’ll understand the conditions. While shooting I aimed to get a balanced exposure, not too hot in the highlights, not to dark in the shadow, so that I could extract as much detail as possible back at the computer. I think I did a pretty good job on these, especially at making my local adjustments fairly seamless. What do you think? Is there anything glaring here that you notice? Do you notice at all? Thoughts?