Eric Bowen's Photo Blog

Goooaaal!!!

2013-02-19T09:31:00.000-06:00

Tim Marsico of the Colorado Hockey Club "Rampage", scores a goal for the win in the championship at the U12 Cold Corner Cup in Craig, Colorado.

Steph's Transformation

2012-08-20T21:40:00.000-06:00

The Story of Steph's wedding day transformation:

STAGE 1 - AMBIVALENCE

STAGE 2 - PAIN

STAGE 3 - FEAR

STAGE 4 - DELIGHT!

Bonspiel

2012-04-28T22:44:00.003-06:00

John West, curling guru, at the 7th Annual High Altitude Open Bonspiel in Colorado Springs.

2012-03-12T11:33:00.003-06:00

The Red Rooster in Long Lake, Minnesota. My neighborhood bar for the past few years...

2011-10-09T07:31:00.003-06:00

Just lying around... This is one of my favorites from a fun Senior shoot I did yesterday with Danielle.

DUSTDEVIL 35: A new book of my photos from Iraq

2011-10-02T09:02:00.001-06:00

DUSTDEVIL 35 By Eric Bowen & John Camp by Eric Bowen | Make Your Own Book

Photo Advice Contest

2011-08-19T12:02:00.001-06:00

The nice folks over at PetaPixel (http://www.petapixel.com) are running a photo advice contest (http://j.mp/ppsgmg). Post the best photo advice you ever got and win a couple nice prizes!

Here was my entry:

"The most "interesting" photos the ones that show the world from a different perspective and open people's eye to the magic hiding in plain sight:
Shoot lying on the ground, shoot standing on a ladder, use a wide-angle, or a long telephoto, shoot at slow shutter speeds, shoot into the sun!
f8, 1/125s, 50mm is for tourists... "

Thanks to Layne Kennedy for the original inspiration!

Black & White saves the day! (aka: escape from white balance hell)

2011-07-11T09:34:00.003-06:00

Sometimes you shoot a great image in horrible lighting conditions. This photo includes an unwhitebalancable mix of indirect sunlight, florescent light, and incandescent light with all of the above bouncing off orange walls...

The solution: convert it to black & white!

Sometimes things don't go according to plan...

2011-06-26T22:45:00.002-06:00

Stillwater, Minnesota is one of the most popular locations for weddings in the Minneapolis / St Paul area. And on this particular Saturday with 45 minutes between the ceremony and the reception to shoot the wedding party at a scenic location outdoors we ran into road blocks... literally!

All three classic Stillwater locations the bride and groom had chosen to shoot pictures at were already taken BY OTHER WEDDING PARTY'S shooting their own photos!

That left the flooded water front in front of the reception hall at the WaterStreet Inn as our last possible outdoor location...

This could have been BAD... a ruin the day sort of BAD... instead the wedding party rallied and made the most of what we had to work with.. and created more great memories of the FUN we had shooting pictures at the flooded band shell and on the BUSY lift bridge!

2011 Orono Alliance Scholarship Winners

2011-05-25T22:00:00.000-06:00

You'd be happy too if you just won a $1,000!

A home for literate birds

2011-04-11T20:16:00.001-06:00

Bibliophilic bird houses created by Orono Middle School students for a fund raiser. Sorry Mom, I really should have gotten you one...

Captured! - The one shot portrait challenge

2011-02-14T14:27:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking about portraits lately... More specifically the idea of taking ONE photo that manages to capture the true essence/soul of the person being photographed.

I've managed to capture some great portraits over the years, but most of my favorites are of friends... partly I just take more pictures of people I know, but I think the emotional connection helps make the subject comfortable enough to let their guard down and let me capture a real image of them... I would love to get better at capturing images like this of complete strangers!

Here are some of my favorites that I think hit the mark as a single image with a little commentary on what I like about them:

John Kriesel lost his legs and two close friends (pictured behind him) to an IED in Iraq. But instead of breaking him the experience has made him stronger. Despite adversity he is still a happy optimist, and this year he was elected to he Minnesota House of Representatives!

Andrea is a US Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot, and this picture was taken in the cockpit waiting for clearance to take off for a mission into a very sketchy landing zone in the heart of Sadr City in Baghdad to pickup a suspected chemical weapon in a plastic bag... Many people would be looking a little tense at a time like this, but not her... The smile couldn't be more relaxed and genuine, and I think it captures the core of her personality.

Denise is a passionate gym rat and long-time fitness instructor despite a full-time "day job" at a technology consulting company. She is also one of the happiest people I know, and I think this shot captures her true passion and personality!

"Paper Clip Bob" is a long-time bartender at Axel's in Loretto, Minnesota. He has a totally dry unexcitable personality, and that trademark paper clip. Captured!

Steph is a member of the USA Women's Bandy team and also a full-time Minneapolis Firefighter. She could probably check you into the middle of next week on the hockey rink or carry you out of a burning building, but at her core she is happy and charming with a smile for everyone! I think this image captures the lurking intensity and easy smile...

Theresa has a serious corporate job at a major Fortune 500, but she also owns a farm with her husband and two sons. She is the perfect example of somebody who isn't defined by their work!

NCAA Women's Basketball Referee

2011-02-13T03:31:00.000-06:00

Women Bandy players have balls

2011-02-13T03:21:00.003-06:00

Steph Johnson, a member of the USA Women's Bandy team.

Bandy is basically a cross between ice hockey and field hockey... Played in skates on a big ice rink with a ball instead of a puck. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/sports/olympics/29bandy.html

Love my D700 for shooting sports in low light

2011-01-31T21:59:00.002-06:00

Brayden skiing a JV race at Hyland.

This shot was taken in very low light (early evening under lights). The full frame D700 does a great job of making great images in these sorts of challenging conditions.

Nikon D700, ISO 1000, f3.2, 1/500 sec, 170mm

Winter Engagement Photos

2010-11-29T14:50:00.000-06:00

A fun winter engagement shoot with Joe and Nicole at the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.

Family Photo Fun

2010-10-01T07:39:00.000-06:00

Long live the King!

2010-09-18T08:35:00.000-06:00

Orono High School Homecoming Coronation at half time of the the football game.

Josh holding a sparkler

2010-07-04T21:37:00.000-06:00

A kid on the 4th of July... no class! (it's an inside joke...)

Book Burning: Last Day of School!

2010-06-10T21:40:00.001-06:00

Kyle and friends burn their old workbooks and papers on the last day of school.

We never did this when I was a kid, but it's a fun way to kick off summer vacation!

Mother Humpback Whale and calf frolicking

2010-03-27T17:53:00.003-06:00

I got to spend a half an hour watching a mother humpback whale teaching her calf all the "sassy" tricks a young whale needs to know for the tourist trade in the waters off Maui, Hawaii earlier this week!

How to migrate 100,000+ photos to Aperture 3 with minimum pain

2010-02-24T08:38:00.003-06:00

I've had Aperture 3 for a couple weeks now, and I've been reading some great Aperture 3 blogs (such as http://photo.rwboyer.com/) and a lot of frustrated forum posts about the pain people are having converting their libraries from Aperture 2 to Aperture 3.

After some painful experimentation I'm happy to report that I've found a simple solution that has be relatively pain free merging about 10 managed libraries with about 100,000 photos into one referenced library.

The problems: Lots of people have been reporting problems trying to upgrade libraries to Aperture 3. Migrations run overnight and then crash right at the end... etc, etc, etc... Lots of discussion about repairing all your libraries in Aperture 2 before you start upgrading... etc, etc, etc...

The solution: DO NOT TRY TO UPGRADE YOUR EXISTING LIBRARIES!!! Instead create a new Aperture 3 library(s) and IMPORT your old library(s) into it. The key point here is that Aperture 3 can import from earlier library formats without upgrading them. So far this process has been almost problem free for me.

My issues: The only issues I had with this process were with a couple of libraries that I had copied to a Linux NAS device. Apparently Aperture libraries do NOT like being stored on non-MacOS formatted drives (I knew this about external FAT USB drives, but I had mistakenly assumed that *nix XFS would be ok). Fortunately, I had alternate backups of these libaries on Mac formatted external drives (redundancy is your friend :-).

Bicycle Army at Papa Charlies

2010-02-20T17:11:00.001-06:00

Bicycle Army is the BAND, and Papa Charlie's is the BAR at Lutsen Mountains ski area. These are my first real pictures trying out my new Nikon D700's low light capabilities (I'm impressed!)

Nikon D700, ISO 3200, 85mm, F1.8

Nikon D700, ISO 3200, 85mm, F1.8

New camera on the way!

2010-02-16T09:53:00.001-06:00

I just sold the older (backup) of my two Nikon camera bodies on EBay, as well as my professional MiniDV video camera, and I just ordered a new Nikon D700.

I'm excited about the dramatically improved low light performance of this camera (the D700 uses the same full frame sensor as the D3 which can basically see in the dark!)

Go Daneen!!!

2010-02-08T20:24:00.003-06:00

Deb (mom) and Mae (big sister) cheering for Daneen (11) cranking the Slalom course at Trollhaugen (below)!