Just Another Day at JTG

Jimmy's To-Go, Reedsburg, Wisconsin. Circa 2009. Taken on my iPhone.

My parents are wrapping up the end of another successful year today, so this post is very appropriate. This photo was one of those rare moments that makes me confident in my photographic eye for scenes, people, interesting things. I love every element of this photo: the worn-looking picnic table in the foreground, the hot dog stand in the background. And I don't know who that guy is, but he's posed just perfectly in his foundry uniform, waiting for lunch.

I love it so much that I even put it on the cover of my book, Jimmy's To-Go: The Beginning, that chronicles the first and very successful year of the Jimmy's To-Go saga.

Truck Series

HipstaTruck, taken yesterday at MadCat.

Slowly but surely working on a 2011 calendar for MadCat... we're probably going to use a photo of the truck for the cover. Now the assignment is to make the old girl look good.

I took the above pic with the Hipstamatic app on the iPhone. It's not the greatest calendar picture but I think it's pretty kickass anyway. The photo to the right is with my regular camera.

Andy wants to replace the numbers on the license plate with the year, 2011, so I laid on the parking lot to get this pic with the plate front and center and everything else kind of spreading out, looking epic. Didn't hurt that the skies in Wisconsin have been amazing lately - choppy and white, like the cotton ball creations we made while learning about clouds in second grade.  Stereotypical skies.

We'll figure it out.

Fourth

Published in the Reedsburg Independent, July 8, 2010. Taken at Pineview Elementary School,

Fireworks are notoriously difficult to photograph. The challenge is in the timing. Fire too soon and it's just the tail. Fire too late and it's just smoke. You've got to get the camera settings right too, otherwise the lighting is all screwy.

Jeff's instructions for taking Fourth of July photos always include the phrase, "If you mess it up, we can always use a photo from last year," which is mildly comforting.

This year's fireworks  seemed good to go, despite the sky having been overcast most of the day. Then, right before dusk, a downpour started. Apparently the organizers decided that because they'd already spent the entire day setting up, they were just going to shoot em off anyway and all at once, so that's what they did in probably the shortest fireworks show in recent memory. I ran down to the park to get this shot of the few brave souls who were left. We put it on the front page.

And Now for Something Completely Different

 

A video I made of Oscar playing with the Turbo Scratcher.

More photos soon.

Lucky Shot

Taken in the courtyard of Tobacco Row, Madison.

I always have my camera with me, and walking through the gorgeously groomed courtyard of our apartment building is never an exception. I had been eying the bright purple and contrasting orange on these flowers for quite some time, as well as the yellow and black bumble bees that frequent them. But I hadn't taken a photo of them yet for lack of ideas on how to make them interesting. After all, macros shots of flowers are like shooting fish in a barrel. It's not hard to make them look good. Making them look interesting is the challenge.

The above photo was a complete lucky accident. I spotted this monarch walking home one day and literally only had one shot before it fluttered away. I was only able to capture one image but boy did it turn out well.

Attempted Obligatory Fall Colors Photo

Rock Springs, Wisconsin.

This area of Wisconsin is gorgeous this time of year. The fall colors on the Baraboo Bluffs are breathtaking, and yet I haven't found a good way to put them in a photo. I'm not entirely happy with the photo above; it just happens to be the best one I took today.

I can usually see photos in my head - when I see something I want to shoot, it kind of clicks in my head, like a mental image of what a photo would look like or how I could do it. The fall colors simply have not been that way. They look gorgeous in person, but when I was picturing a photo in my head, I couldn't think of a way to capture that. It wasn't so much trying to do it justice but just trying to make it look interesting, something other than a muddle of colors.

I tried. :)  Maybe I'll have better luck next year, or at least be able to figure something out by then.

CR Bridge

Dearly departed, taken several years ago.

When I went to Coe, I liked to take long bike rides along the river from Ellis Park to the Czech Village, through the art ghetto, through downtown sculptures in the middle of the night. I liked the house boats, the old neighborhoods, the factories. It made me feel connected to where I grew up, and to the people I grew up with, much more than my college ever did.

The summer after I graduated, the Midwest flooded. While I was dealing with the mess in Reedsburg, Cedar Rapids got hit a hundred times worse. All the places I frequented were gone, inundated with water. I saw the place I got my nose piercing on CNN, sitting in at least three feet of water. The place I knew and lived for almost four years was no longer there. I haven't been back since.

The bridge above connected a factory to the rest of the railroad. It was destroyed during the flood when the house boats I loved so much washed downstream and collected against the bridge, eventually collapsing it. Even though it was taken on my crappy cell phone, the picture itself is like a ghost to me. I haven't been back to see the space where it used to be, so it's weird to think that it's no longer there, that the places I used to know no longer exist.

Tabytha

Em's cat posing for a portrait.

Emily's apartment is pretty dark after sunset with only a few lamps to light it, making it very difficult to take crisp photos of her two dark colored cats. However, they look fantastic in natural light. Tabby's eye just pop and Mason, her black longhaired cat, looks so regal.

But they and the long, dark Midwest winters have inspired me to learn lighting this winter. I have no idea where to start but I want to be able to take pet photos regardless of the environmental lighting, without having to wait for a sunny day.  :)

Monona Bay photoshoot

Taken today at the Monona Bay railroad bridge, Madison, Wisconsin.

This location is just a block from where we live in Madison. I noticed it the other day driving along North Shore... I thought it was neat how the railroad tracks are so straight and the telephone poles are so crooked. The black and white just made this picture in my opinion.

There are tons of points of inspiration in our neighborhood. I'm just finding that I need to keep my eyes open. I don't need to travel to exotic locations to make great photographs. Madison is enough. :) That's something I've always said about writing as well: Writers don't have amazing, life-changing, extraordinary experiences. They take the ordinary and make it extraordinary. I'm finding that my favorite kinds of photographs do the same thing.

More pictures from this outing after the jump.