Iron Range, part 2: Sparta

I'm continuing to document the area of northern Minnesota in which I grew up.  These were taken back in July during a photo walk through the disappearing town of Sparta.  The light wasn't great and my time was limited, but believe me: this location is a photographer's dream.  I barely scratched the surface of this place.

The shot below was actually taken the day I did my Gilbert photo walk, but the location is actually closer to Sparta so I'm including it here instead:

Harter family portrait session

I feel a little weird posting another family's photos on my blog, but I want to share my work. I shot these around mid-October when the fall colors were at their peak. This was a favor to some friends and also good practice shooting portraits.  I wanted to see if I could pull it off and to ask myself if this is something I want to do more of.  Sessions like this (and hours of editing) are fun but not as fun as, say, working on a short film.  This is also the kind of work that demands perfection.  My skill level isn't as high as my tastes, which can lead to frustration.  But overall, I think my friends received some decent options for a Christmas card and I learned a thing or two for next time.

Desk restoration project

This desk was used in Gilbert Elementary School back when my parents went there (and who knows how long before that).  It got to be in rough shape over the years with rust and peeling paint/stain.

I took it apart and stripped it down to bare wood and metal.

The wood damage and ink stains lightened a bit with sanding, but there was no way I was going to get rid of them completely.  And since the desk is going to continue to get heavy use by multiple kids, I was okay settling for less than perfection here.  Veronica picked out the purple paint, which I applied (also less than perfectly) along with a stain/polyurethane finish.  I added some bumpers to the underside of the lid to keep kids' hands from getting smashed... and voila!

The place to myself

I ended up with the house to myself this weekend.  This is only the second such occurrence since Veronica was born, and with a new baby arriving in September, it is probably going to be last time for an even longer stretch.

As much as I love time with my wife and daughter, I've been really looking forward to this weekend.  I have a few projects lined up like restoring an old school desk that has just been too difficult to tackle with a three year old around.  She sure likes to help, especially when paint is involved!

Other fun plans:

- Watch the sci-fi thriller Prometheus
- Work on my "Grind" video mood piece
- Get some exercise
- Have a drink

The bummer is I had a work install happening on Friday night and Saturday morning (just finishing up now!), so some of my best hours went toward that.  I'm also sick with a pretty bad cold that is slowing me down.  And of course, there are a bunch of chores to do around here and errands to run.  Enough blogging about it -- time to make use of this time!

Iron Range, part 1: Gilbert

File this under my list of ongoing projects. I want to catalogue the old buildings in the small town of Gilbert, Minnesota. I got up early one morning during a recent visit to my parents' house and snapped these before anybody knew I was missing. The plan is to eventually go back for more, hopefully on a cloudier day for the diffused lighting, especially if I'm going to convert to black-and-white anyway. These were all taken with multiple exposures to capture as much detail as possible. Click on them to see the detail.

Photo project: Mural capture

My Godparents had us over for a delicious brunch the other weekend and also gave me a photo assignment: to capture the mural their talented son-in-law painted on a wall in their basement. They are moving to a new house, and they want to preserve what they can of this artwork that is obviously very special to them.

My goal here was to simply capture the mural as it really exists. To do that, I applied the HDR technique, which involves taking multiple exposures and combining them to reproduce a larger range of contrast.  What you see below is actually three images: one under-exposed, one exposed properly, and one over-exposed.  I think it helped balance out the lighting in the room and capture extra detail in the shading.

I also boosted the saturation, removed lens distortion caused by the wide angle, fixed discoloration from sunlight coming in on the right, patched lens flares, and sharpened the image.  All this helped make up for what was lost in the digital translation to the camera.

Painting by Erik Lundgren

This was not a big project (not nearly as big as painting it must have been!), but it was an interesting challenge.  I think it will look good printed on canvas, hanging in my aunt and uncle's new house.

Settings on Canon 6D:
- 24mm
- f/10
- 1/2s, 1s, 2s
- ISO 200

2013 recap

© Kacie Jean Photography

2013 was a year of change for us.  We moved from California to Minnesota, and two months after arriving in Minnesota we moved from the city to the suburbs.  I started working in a real office (still for Ameriprise), R started a job with a new company (Boston Scientific), and Veronica went from alternating days with daycare and a nanny to attending a Montessori school full-time.

Living in Santa Barbara felt like a great secret that we had stumbled upon.  It seemed if other people knew what the place was like, everybody would want to live there.  Even when we were busy caring for a child or working hard to afford the higher cost of living, there was something about the place that made it easy to get out of bed in the morning.  After five years of living in fear that this paradise would be taken away, we brought the change upon ourselves.  R found her new job in July, and we were embarking on our giant road trip a month later.  It felt fated to work out the way it did, and the timing just made sense.

Veronica appears to be handling the shift well, but there are times when it's clear she misses our old home.  It's a complex, human reaction that changes from day to day. She has such a good memory.  She'll still pull out things about the place that I had totally forgotten about or little things I hadn't paid attention to.  Seeing her "write" letters to her old friends or hearing her talk about the fountain outside our old condo breaks my heart.  Where we are now feels more permanent and that is comforting to me.

We sort of became numb to big, life-changing decisions.  It felt like we rolled the dice on a lot of them and eventually looked to see where we ended up.  We reverse-90210'd ourselves to a more conventional path.  That's not a bad thing.  Our mortgage is a third of what it was.  And it is really nice to be able to visit our families without requiring a flight and a week of vacation to do so.  I miss the extra time with Veronica that working from home allowed me, but seeing her with her grandparents more frequently helps make up for that.

Due to the move, our travels were scaled back in 2013.  We did make some small getaways to Pine Mountain, San Diego, Disneyland, Monterey, and Yosemite National Park.  We also spent a week visiting family in Minnesota before we realized we'd be living there shortly after.  But the most memorable trip was probably our "transitional journey" from Santa Barbara to St. Paul.  We stopped at Disneyland (again) and the Grand Canyon along the way.

I managed to work on a few creative projects during the year, most notably this scaled-back performance video, and I finally started my long-term retrospective blog series.  I'm hoping to continue with some similar projects in 2014.  And as always I'd also like to get more serious about my photography, if I can find some inspiring light in Minnesota.  You can keep up with our family photos over on my other blog, although I have to warn you my output has slowed considerably since the move.

I need to get this posted.  As usual, the longer I spend on it, the shorter it gets.  Cheers-

Photo project: "Overshadowed"

This was more of a technical exercise than a creative achievement because it's not an original concept.  I got the idea from a magazine and put my own spin on it with the shadow of Mickey (as opposed to a galloping horse statue).  I like shadowy lighting.  I like chess.  And Mickey Mouse has been a dominant presence in the last year plus of my family life.  I thought something like this would make a good 8x10 print in a game room / play room, perhaps in our basement after we finish it.

Settings on Canon 6D:
- 50mm
- f/18
- 20s
- ISO 200

Post-production in Adobe Photoshop Elements 9:
- Removed dust from lens and chess board.
- Removed marks from the wall.
- Straightened and cropped to 5:4 ratio.
- Sharpened.
- Adjusted contrast, made monochrome.
- Added a shadow to the board between the knight and Mickey.
- Added vignette via gradient mask and burn tool.