coneflowers

Exhibits, awards and publications

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This past Friday night was the opening reception for the 4th annual Horizontal Grandeur fine art exhibition at the Stevens County Historical Museum in Morris, Minnesota.  The exhibit brought together artists from across the country, all living in states with prairies.  Inspired by Bill Holm’s essay, “Horizontal Grandeur,” there were inspiring and wonderful interpretations of  the prairie theme.  I was honored to have two of my photographs juried into this show.  This image, “Dawn’s first light on the prairie” was photographed while I was an artist-in-residence at  the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site in West Branch, Iowa.  My second photograph in the exhibit is the image from my April 11, 2010 blog entry “Pasque flower welcome to spring.”  For a complete viewing of the pieces in the exhibit, please visit the website for the Stevens County Historical Museum at www.stevenshistorymuseum.com.

Here in the Twin Cities I’m a member of the Minneapolis Photographic Society — a group of wonderfully talented photographers with diverse interests.  Each year there is one image that is selected as Color Print of the Year and one that is selected as Monochrome Print of the Year.  This year I was awarded the Color Print of the Year for my image “Through the red barn window.”    To see more of the award-winning images from the group, please visit the website:  http://www.mplsphoto.com/mps/site/a28yearend.php

And lastly, I am excited to have a photograph published in the July/August issue of  “The Iowan Magazine.”  This image “Swept into the center” is the opening spread of the portfolio section titled “red.white.blue.”

It’s been a busy and exciting few months, and I feel honored with these exhibits, awards, and publications.

Coneflower blooms

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Under the coneflower 50052The heat of summer brings the purple coneflowers into abundant bloom.  And one of the best places to photograph these delights of summer is in my own backyard.  Most photographers understand how important it is to be in close proximity to what you choose to photograph, allowing you to be there when the light changes, when the scene changes, and to observe and “see” the subject in much more detail.  So my backyard is the perfect practice-field for me.  Last night we enjoyed a beautiful evening — nice light, no winds — a perfect setting for photographing.  This bloom was calling to me to sit on the ground and photograph upward, capturing the opacity of the petals, and colors of the entire plant, and to see it from a different perspective.  Little did I know that there was a small insect hiding underneath too, posing just as I snapped the shutter on the camera.

Kansas wildflowers

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Kansas wildflowers_StaatsWe just recently returned from the Biking across Kansas ride where we traversed from the Colorado border, across the wide state of Kansas, to the eastern border with Missouri.  As the state has had plenty of rain this spring, the landscape was lush and green.  Although I was focused on bicycling (as opposed to photographing), what jumped out to me were the beautiful wildflowers that were dotting the fields and roadsides.  The coneflowers, butterfly milkweed, daisies, spider-wort — all were bursting into bloom.  Last year at this time I spent over two weeks in Iowa and was fortunate to document the daily changes in a prairie area.   That experience gave me a new appreciation for the wildflowers that grace our landscapes with their burst of color and beauty.  So our mode of travel across the state of Kansas by bicycle gave us front-row seats to this amazing display of blooms.