Hi everyone-

Just a quick post today. Leaving to go visit with my father and family. He is having a hip replacement today.

This image was shot this summer at the North American Indian Days on the Blackfeet Nation, MT.

As you know great light is really important for creating a good portrait. Well, at this location lighting and access with an unobstructed view are a bit tough.

But if you hit it at the right time there is a perfect spot that where the light is just right as the sun begins to set. Depending on the weather and what is going on around the area it might not last for long but when its good, its very good.

I try to get that spot every year and have been pretty successful most of the time.

Have a great day!

HI everyone-

As you might have noticed today's post is just a little late. Sorry about that but I just plum FORGOT!! Can you believe it?

I have been trying get a lot done around here (at the house) and got busy first thing this morning and before I knew it, it was the middle of the afternoon!

So anyway, today's image was shot on the Belview Road just out side of Choteau, Montana. ONe afternoon a pretty large thunderstorm moved through the area and Created some spectacular skies. This image is shot looking southwest toward the Sun River Valley west of Agusta, Montana.

The angle of the sun created a brilliant red sky as the rain fell from the clouds. I hope you enjoy this image as I was a bit on the nervous side as the lighting crashed around me.

Have a great day and don't forget to check out all the great Skywatch action be clicking here: --> SKYWATCH

Hi everyone-

Today's image started out as an experiment and really ended up looking nothing like what I had set out to do.

I figured out during the process that I did not have the proper components to create what I had in mind. So that will have to wait. I am excited about the prospect of creating something completely new however, so I'm sure you'll be seeing and reading more about that as time goes on.

Back to today's image...

The Blackfeet Sentries stand at the four main entrances to the Blackfeet Nation in northwestern Montana. These larger than life statues were created, on a commission from the Blackfeet Nation, by artist Jay Polite Laber. Jay was born on the Blackfeet reservation but after his families home was destroyed by a flood moved to New Hampshire. Eventually Jay returned home to Montana.

Jay attended college at and is now a professor of art at the Salish Kootenai College in Montana.

The statues are made entirely of cars damaged in the 1963 flood on the reservation. The base on which they stand was created from rocks taken from the walls of a local mission school.

Interestingly I believe it was the mission school that my grandfather attended in his childhood. I am trying to see if I can substantiate that fact.

Have a great day!



For those of you who might be interested, here is the SOOC version of the image.

Hi everyone-

Today's images were shot earlier this month at the North American Indian Days in Browning, MT on the Blackfeet Nation.

I found the two images interesting because of the vast difference between them.

So many of the Indian Nations are struggling to keep their cultures alive within their people, especially their young people.

This year I was so happy to see a huge increase in the amount of children participating in the pow wow. More than any other year that I can remember. I hope this is a trend that continues.

While most of the tribes struggle in some way to keep their culture alive all are developing or have programs in place to do just that. But I think that the most important part is family involvement and passing traditions and culture onto their children. Many families are obviously making this a priority from what I have seen.

But modern ways and influences are obviously something that will be hard to balance with. Technology has brought the world to the door steps of these nations. While this sounds great many of the people who live there would like some sort of balance between their traditions and culture and that of the modern world.

Today's two images I think speak to these points. The first shows family involvement, and the passing on of the culture and traditions to the youngest of family members. And it represents the innocence that comes with childhood.

The second image shows the juxtaposition of the influence of the modern, outside world on the older youth of the various nations.

I didn't set out to capture images that showed this struggle when I was shooting but through the editing process I noticed these two images and the story that they seemed to tell.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

I hope you had a great weekend.

I want to start out to day's post by saying Happy Birthday to my mom. My mom is truly one of my best friends and I look forward to every conversation, visit or call. She is responsible for so much of the prosperity and love in my life and I can not thank her enough for that. You mean the world to me! Have a great birthday!

Today's image was shot at the North American Indian Day's this year. I hope you enjoy it!

Oh and for those of you wondering, Naangide e Dibishkaawin Ingashi is Happy Birthday Mother, roughly translated to Ojibwe (Chippewa)

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

As some of you know my friend Bryan Allen joined me in Montana for a few days to do a little recreational shooting. We photographed the area, the town, the mountains, Glacier National Park and the North American Indian Days.

All of the places we shot were pretty much void of people with the exception of the Indian Days Pow Wow. Well for those of you who know Bryan, you know that he is hands down one the of the best people shooters out there. So to come to Montana and not have any people for Bryan to shoot would just not be right.

So I asked my cousins if they would be our models for the day. The happily agreed. So we went down to their house got everything ready, came up with some loose concepts and headed out to see what we could come up with.

The girls were great sports and really put up with almost everything we threw at them. We shot at two different locations and ended up shooting almost till dark ending the shoot with a rather hair raising few moments. But more on that later...

I have a ton of images to go through and process from these shoots but I wanted to share one of the images right away. So here are the girls at our first location. It is the old grain mill that you saw in yesterdays image.

I hope you enjoy this series as much as we enjoyed shooting it.

Have a great day!

Hi everyone-

Well I am here today patiently waiting for the snow that probably isn't going to come. Between staring out the window and going through all of my information for my tax preparations I took a break and looked through some images from the rodeo I posted last week.

There are a few more i wanted to share. I hope they aren't getting old. I am a huge rodeo fan so if it gets to be too much just let me know.

Today's image is of a clown distracting a bull so the cowboy can safely recover from being bucked off and get to safety.

It's a dangerous but very important job, one I have a lot of respect for. It takes lot to put yourself in between something that is pissed off and out weighs you by many tons and someone who is laying on the ground depending on you to by them the time to get out of Dodge.

I also wanted to address a question that Woody posed yesterday in the comments section. He asked what my thoughts were on shooting RAW vs JPG or some other form of image.

Initially I rejected RAW, as many did, out of fear. What is it, what do I do with it, etc... But once I read enough about the 'wonders of RAW' I decided to try it out. What happened next was simply amazing. Of course the first thing I thought was why haven't I been using this for 2 years!?!

Using the RAW format has revolutionized my images. I strive to get the shot right in the field but that does not always happen. In the days of JPG or film, what you got was what you got. You had to make it work, do the best you could with post processing or scrap it altogether.

Now I can essentially re expose my image in photoshop by using the RAW converter. I can do it globally or I can process the image several times and make more local corrections or changes and the blend them together in photoshop later.

The possibilities are endless. I am not an expert be any stretch of the imagination in the use of the RAW converter or even everything I can accomplish with this format and tools. But doing the few things that I do know how to do is really unbelieveable.

So to answer your question simply I think RAW is the way to go. But there are a few complicators to just making an blanket statement like that... Fisrt off is that RAW files are a lot bigger than what you are using now so they will eat up storage space quicker. And secondly the Photoshop RAW converter now supports jpg images.

This means that you can now do things to jpg's that you couldn't before, at least easily. So now you have to decide what you want to use. Keep in mind that quality wise there is no comparison, RAW is the way to go.

If I am shooting for a client, or shooting on one of my trips for the purpose of creating images I always shoot in RAW. If I am shooting a fire, I might consider shooting jpg. (most of those images are not going to be printed huge) However I don't do it that often. I normally do that to conserve space if I am running out of memory.

I do shoot in jpg mode when we're on vacation and are just taking "Hey we were here type of shots".

Like I said I am not an expert in all things RAW, but those are just my thoughts. If anyone has anything to add please feel free to do so.

Hope that was helpful. Have a great day!