05-09-12 Belgian Delicacies

I'm not sure if lust makes the list of mortal or deadly sins. And I'm not sure that having a profound desire for real whipped cream and fresh cherries piled on top of a freshly cooked waffle right now constitutes lust. I suppose I could look all of this up but I don't want to know the answer.This delicious breakfast was served in a small cafe in the beautiful city of Brugge, Belgium. Deb and I were there a few years ago and I found this photo as I was working on cleaning up old, unnecessary things on my computer. But Belgian waffles are necessary and so is the photo.But, alas, my breakfast of oatmeal and skim milk is calling me. That's what I have almost every morning when I am home. Fidelity, of course, is no sin. It is a virtue. . . .Canon 5DII 1/200s f/2.5 ISO500 50mm (Canon 50mm 1.2L)

05-08-12 Picture-In-Picture

I took this at Evie D's baptism back in February. I don't really have much else to say about it, though I suppose it is an example of how photographer's try to see and capture things that other people wouldn't.

05-07-12 Thick Frost

I took this back in February and, no, I am not feeling nostalgic for winter. Incidentally, the tree in this post is the same tree in this one. Thanks to the bees, the flowers become little apples.

05-06-12 Warped Reality

If this is too abstract, I'll tell you what you are seeing. These are water drops on the window that I look through when I am sitting at my computer. It was raining on Saturday and I was captivated by the look of the rain. I took several photos that focused on the rain drops but this photo is focused on the lens effect of the water drops.And, through the lens of the rain drops, you can see the mesh of the screen on the window and the grass and trees in our back yard. But it is all upside down because that's what lenses do. In fact, the lens of our eye turns the world upside down and then our brain turns it right side up again. The human body is a weird machine.Click here to see another version of the same subject with a different point of focus.

05-05-12 Sunken Garden

Here's another quick shot taken with my iPhone and processed with Instagram. The location is the sunken garden at the Como Park Conservatory in St. Paul, Minnesota.

05-04-12 Conservatory

In an Instagram photo a "real" photo? Of course. This is a quick shot I took of the Como Park Conservatory in St. Paul, Minnesota, while waiting for my photo students to finish their own photographic enterprises.Here's another "real" photo, taken by one of my second year LATI Photo/Media students, Kelly Ortmeier.

05-03-12 Desi

Every once and a while I discover a photo I'd forgotten I had taken. Such is the case with today's portrait of Desi. This photo was taken in 2002, when I knew very little about portraiture and digital photography.What I did know was that the secret to good photography was good light. In this case, there is some ambient light in the old farm house we are in. But I was also using a Canon strobe light and a white shoot-through umbrella to my right. The beauty of this lighting set-up was that if I used aperture priority with my Canon flash, my Canon camera would meter the flash just right. It provided wonderful light that looked like window light. You wouldn't necessarily know that this is an example of flash photography. (I checked the metadata, and, if you look at the catchlight's in Desi's eyes, you can see the umbrella.)Canon 1D 1/160s f/1.8 ISO320 50mm Scott Shephard

05-01-12 May Flowers

To set the record straight, calla lilies are not normal "May flowers" in South Dakota. These flowers were growing in the planter outside my aunt Betty's California home. They were planted by a neighbor as a gift to and remembrance of the memory of Betty. They are as nice a tribute as any, if you ask me.

From Another Time

While going through my Aunt Betty's photo collection, we came across this portrait of her sister (my aunt) Phyllis. I was struck by the beautiful, Rembrandt lighting. I also like the sepia tone of the print. I remember reading that toning was more about preservation than it was about creating an effect. Of course, it would be decades before color film would be introduced when this photo was taken - the early 1920s.Three other things strike me about this photo. First, the aspect ratio is very odd by today's standards. I have cropped this photo a bit and the original was narrow and tall. Why? I don't know. The second thing that I noticed was that Phyllis' right hand is blurred, no doubt because the photographer had to use a slow shutter speed. Old films were slow and required several second exposures. Finally, I am impressed with the perfect condition of this photo. It was properly processed and then properly preserved.Who will be looking at our photos 90 years from now and writing commentary?In my continuing effort to get more people to see my students' photos, here's another great portrait, done by Kendra Gortmaker. Her subjects are her daughter and husband and she used availably light to make this photo. Here's Kendra's web site.

Lil Ann

This is an informal portrait I took of Ann, who was a friend of my aunt Betty. Ann is 90 years old but looks, sounds and acts like she is at least 20 year's younger. You've got to love Ann. And her red Ford with vanity plates.And this photo was taken by LATI Photo/Media second year student Ashley McCormick. It was taken in one of the many famous New Orleans cemeteries. Here's Ashley's web site.

Pacific View

This post has more personal meaning than it does photographic value. It is a quick shot I took of the display for my Aunt Betty at her recent memorial service in California. The cemetery is called Pacific View and though the Pacific ocean isn't visible in this photo, it is visible from Betty and Cliff's niche.Pacific view has conventional graves, as John Waynes' proves. But this cemetery has several buildings with walls of niches. We don't have anything like this in South Dakota and I'm not sure why. We have more space? Is is cultural? I've not read it but I just put The American Way of Death, Revisited on my reading list. Maybe I would get some answers there. . . .

Winging It Again

Because my wife is a Delta Silver Elite member, we sometimes get exit row seats, which are often located over a wing. And because we have been booking our tickets "late in the game," I often get a window seat, rather than my preferred aisle seat. And because our plane left Minneapolis an hour late, I saw the sunset just off of the tip of the starboard wing.And because of all of this, you are seeing a rather mundane wing shot. But in truth I am posting this today so I really have the opportunity to feature another great student photo, this time of a window in an old house. The photographer was Danine Jacobson, the photo is an HDR manipulation and it won a prize in a South Dakota student photography contest. Here's Danine's web site. And here's another view of this same window.