Carly!

My very good friend Carly is applying to grad school in Chicago for theatre administration and needed some creative headshots for her application. We met at the studio and shot with the gorgeous light.

Roosevelt University!

I went to Chicago for my second round of events for Roosevelt University a couple of weeks ago! I love these events so far-each is unique and full of extremely talented musicians. How cool is my job?! I get to listen to incredible music, meet eclectic, driven people, travel AND take photos! I love it and feel very blessed. Enjoy!

Check it out!

I bought office paper from Echo Paper online and in honor of my purchase of 100% recycled paper they are planting a tree in my name! Now that is a responsible business, if you ask me. Check them out!

Creating your art

" Recent photo history offers a textbook example of the perils that success itself can lay in the path of continued artistic growth. In the first third of this century, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams and a few fellow travellers turned the then-prevailing world of soft-focus photographic art upside down. They did so by developing a visual philosophy that justified sharply-focused images, and introduced the natural landscape as a subject for photographic art. It took decades for their viewpoint to filter into public consciousness, but it sure has now: pictures appearing in anything from cigarette ads to Sierra Club books owe their current acceptance to those once-controversial images. Indeed, that vision has so pervasively become ours that people photographing vacation scenery today often do so with the hope that if everything turns out just right, the result will not simply look like a landscape, it will look like an Ansel Adams photograph of the landscape. Separated by two or three generations from the forces that spawned the vision they championed, they were left making images of experiences they never quite had. If you find yourself caught in similar circumstances, we modestly offer this bit of cowboy wisdom: when your horse dies, get off."

-Art & Fear

Art & Fear

I just bought another copy of one of my favorite books about the artmaking process, "Art & Fear" by David Bayles and Ted Orland. If you make art, want to make art, used to make art and stopped, or love art, you should read this book! The first time I read it, I found so many personal connections within it and ended up underlining almost the whole thing! I gave away my copy to a fellow photographer friend during a photo retreat and decided it was time for me to own another copy. I'm excited to see what I get out of it this time around...

"It is about committing your future to your own hands, placing Free Will above predestination, choice above chance. It is about finding your own work."

Fort Wilson Riot

My friends of the band Fort Wilson Riot came to the studio over the weekend to do some new promo photos. We had fun with their record player and albums they brought as props. These three are wonderful people, great musicians and dear friends. Check them out at www.fortwilsonriot.com! And a big thank you to Jake Lindgren for styling the shoot.

Newborn Anna!

World, meet Anna! She turned one month old yesterday and in honor of it, I did a portrait session her and her parents at their incredible home in Minneapolis. Becky and Lars are so kind and easy going. Their condo was like a giant lightbox, which to any photographer, is a dream to photograph in! We did this shoot for Christmas, just in time. Congratulations you guys on having a beautiful, healthy little sweet girl.