Kamel & Amanda's Wedding

What a wonderful day with Amanda and Kamel in Albert Lea, MN. It was a beautiful setting at First Lutheran Church and the day was a great one. It started to drizzle a bit towards late afternoon which put a damper on our outdoor, post-ceremony shots, but a great time nonetheless.

And yes, that is a photographer's shoot through umbrella that the couple is using in the rain. A functional, yet nice accent with the dreary weather!!

Enjoy

Design Workflow

I have been getting a few projects finished and fortunately for me, getting some design work done. I so wish I had more time to spend in Photoshop just letting the creativity run wild. I am working to find more of a balance in my workflow to do that.

Now off to Amanda and Kamel's wedding in Albert Lea. Gonna be a great day.

Lakeville South Lacrosse

Journeyed back up to my old stomping grounds (I will spare the long story) to shoot the South Lacrosse boys. A quick shoot turned into a pretty sweet poster. This is the first draft. We'll see where it goes from here....

Easter Kids

Too often I am taking photos of other people and other people's kids. Today I got some great shots of my OWN kids. Also some nice shots of my two nieces too. We had a nice little natural light setup in the bay window at Gma and Gpa's house. I also used an off camera flash/umbrella with Pocketwizard to offset the strong backlight of the window.

It was a great Easter Sunday with the family...and some good photos to remember the day!

Food Plot Creation 1

Got started with the initial field work on the food plot this weekend. I spent part of the day Friday prepping the 11 acres of CRP/switchgrass to be burned. I went in with a brushhog behind the tractor and mowed down two rows of grass and Phil came behind me with the chisel plow to create a firewall for the burn. The chisel

plowing is also a good start on getting some of the initial ground turned over for planting.

Then on Saturday AM we went over and burned. It was a quite a sight to see the power of fire and how quickly it gets its work done. We started on the downwind corner to create a back fire. This slowly burned into the wind and created a barrier for the upwind fire to burn and die into. Once the upwind fire was started the 11 acres was down in minutes. When the two fires met each other it was quite a powerful updraft. I'm sure they fed off each other in some fashion.

As quickly as it was started the show was over. I also realized that this was the easiest way to shed hunt! Flattened black earth that only minutes prior was 5-6 feet tall! It was amazing that under the torched grass there was already green shoots starting to pop up. Amazing how the spring does this to the earth. This left a nice patch to be disced, dug, rolled, planted and rolled again. Should be some fun.

Ecology Class Turkey Chasing 2.0

Had another great morning in the valley today. Last night I moved our blinds to a different spot more in "the bedroom" of where I thought the gobblers would be. In fact, watched a few toms head into there last night. Good choice. We were right in the thick of it this morning.

We met about 5:20AM again and headed out. Got the kids into blinds, got decoys set up, camera on the tripod and we were set.

Heard quite a bit of gobbling again across the top of the ridge to the north starting at about 5:45. So much chatter in fact, that I was a little bummed that we again weren't in the middle of the action. Just about then, at about 5:52 they started hammering right up the draw from us. And they went crazy for about 20 minutes. There were two or three of them on the roost there.

Rich and I called for most of that time. I did a mock flydown with my hat at about 6:15AM. Within minutes, those birds were also on the ground. We had one tom on his way. He came down the ridge and got to the barbwire fence and hung up at 97.5 yards (according to the rangefinder). Stayed there for a few minutes, strutted and started back up the ridge.

We hollered at him quite a bit, but he didn't like what he saw. I keep thinking about that fence...maybe he just didn't want to cross it. We also had that Pretty Boy tom decoy out there and maybe he was a little intimidated? Who knows. Either way, it was a fun morning and great to have the kids in the midst of all that action.

Ecology Class Turkey Chasing 1.0

I joined Rich Kincaid and his KWHS Ecology class for part of their turkey unit this spring. Rich and I have chased turkeys together for many years and this was a fun morning.

We met the kids in Sogn Valley about 5:15AM and headed out to some blinds that I had put out yesterday afternoon. We were setup on the top of a pasture between two stands of timber that typically hold roosting birds. We had a total of eight kids along today. Rich and I stuck out decoys including Rich's new Pretty Boy setup.

We were in the blinds by about 5:35 and heard our first gobble real early at 5:42. It was a couple ridges over, but it sparked the morning conversation! There were lots and lots of gobbles for the next 30-45 minutes before the birds hit the ground. None of them were in the timber close to us as we had hoped.

We called hard until about 7:30AM hoping to lure a few of those lonely gobblers over our way. No such luck.

Like it typically does, it got a little colder once the sun came up and the students got a little restless. We were on our way to the trucks by about 7:35.

Rich and I are taking another group of kids tomorrow (Thursday) and we are considering moving the blinds to a spot that will be more in the heart of the roost.

Here is a little video footage.

Derrick & Amanda's Wedding

What a fabulous day with Derrick and Amanda in rural Goodhue, MN. These guys were so fun to be around and one of the rowdiest, craziest wedding parties EVER. It really was a great day and a great evening!!

Enjoy!

Cameron's Second Birthday

Yep, where has the time gone!?!? Birthday number two!? Are you kidding me? It was a great day with lots of friends and family. Got a guitar, a wagon, a CD player, and my favorite...a bag of M&Ms from Dick!!

My mom and dad made me an Elmo cake too! Love that red frosting. It was a really great day.

Enjoy just a few of the photos!