I am getting all my ducks in a row and that includes all my website addresses. I will be deactivating this blog shortly and everything will be now over at at a much improved blog I have been working on recently. The link to my new site is….
www.benberndtphotography.com/blog
pretty simple
~Ben
Three weekends ago, we hearty folks living in Minnesota, had our first snow of the year. I had a couple hours free that morning, so we had a family fun day in the snow. Last year Grace had a hard time moving around in her snow suit, but this year she had no problem. I am really looking forward to all the winter fun we are going to have as a family.
I can honestly say that I have never received a ticket and I have only been pulled over 2 times…first for having my trailer lights go out and second for giving some drunk friends a ride home on a cold winter night and the police were just targeting people. Anyways… I am a good driver most of the time and when I am not it usually involves trying to keep up with party bus drivers who don’t feel the need to obey traffic laws.
So four weekends ago, I was shooting a incredible wedding over in Oakdale, MN and they had a party bus taking them over to the reception venue in Saint Paul. We were going to stop at parks that weren’t busy along the way to take the fun creative shots. Since the parks in Saint Paul are often filled with other wedding parties, I wasn’t really sure where we were going and in what order. So I needed to stay with the bus at all costs.
Well this driver has a thing for running red lights….not once, not twice, but three times. And on the third red-light-run that I followed him through, I was tagged by a police officer. It’s not the cops fault, I ran the light fair and square. So I pulled over in one of those little corner convenience stores that are rather common in urban area’s and the officer walks up to my car. I quickly explain that I am the photographer for a wedding party that was in the bus in front of me and I really need to get back to them ASAP. I fully expected to get the ticket and I just wanted him to hurry up and give it to me. By this time, the bus was easily a good mile or two down a road that has stoplights every block. Instead of giving me the ticket, he runs back to his car and says he’ll clear the way for me. He then turns on his lights and sirens and we go flying down the road.
So I got a sweet police escort through Saint Paul and I didn’t have to pay a big ticket. Total rockstar move by that guy and easily one of the highlights of my year.
yeah… everyone on the bus was pretty stoked to see me come flying up with the cop.
I love the city of Duluth and when Shawna asked me to meet them up there for an engagement shoot, I was so excited. What I didn’t expect was the crazy weather we had when we were up there. As soon as I rolled in I was kinda shocked to see …. nothing! There was a thick fog everywhere and pretty much blocked the entire waterfront and most of the lower city from view.
Fog steals the color and contrast out of photos and makes everything a bit more interesting as you really can’t use much flash. All you can really do is embrace the conditions and have as much fun as you can. The fog did eventually lift for use and it turned into being a really awesome day.
~Ben
I have been pretty awful this year at updating my blog and webpage. Previous years, I was really good at getting a slideshow up for most of my wedding shoots and had a fair amount of teaser shots up as well. I know this is just an excuse…. but oh well. This year I have been able to meet with a lot of awesome couples and that has kept me editing/shooting/meeting just about every day of the week. In a real effort to hit my 3 week turn around time for all shoots… blog and webpage updates have been demoted to the back of the back burner. I don’t foresee this changing in the near future since I know everyone loves getting their photos edited out fast and that’s a huge priority for me.
So a huge thank you goes out to my clients for being so incredibly fun to work with and being great about the lack updates.
~Ben
I have this very bad habit of not editing out my fun photos after I shoot them. This isn’t a new habit either, I have been doing this for at least 5 years now. The result is a 500 GB hard drive nearly full with images that I sorta forgot about. Since I shoot in raw file format almost 100% of the time, it is not as simple as viewing them in thumbnail and doing a quick sort. I literally have no clue what they are. They just carry a date and sometimes a folder name. Sometimes I may not even go as far as that. I bet I have at least 40 folders in there that have a “new folder” in the title and I just dumped the photos in there.
Most of my editing time in the warmer months is spent editing out wedding/engagement photos. This means I am sorting/editing/backing up around 4,000 client related photos a week. To give myself a little break from those photos, I have been searching for some hidden treasure by randomly importing photos into Lightroom. Some of these date back to 2005 and it’s pretty interesting to see how my style and eye has drifted since then.
Here are a couple from 2007. Nothing mind blowing, but I figured it was fitting for the time of year we are coming up on. I am going to eventually expand out my webpage to feature more of my fun photos that I do in my off time.
~Ben
Many of you already know this, but starting October 16th . . . . . I will be a full time photographer!!!!!!
I have been working hard towards this goal for the past two years and had intended on doing this at the end of next summer. Well, a couple weeks ago, I was sat down at my dayjob at Ameriprise and told that my job was going to be eliminated as of 10/15/2009. There was a good opportunity to do another job that was being created, but I never really felt called to do thats as it was. So I figured I’d explore the severance package as another option. I will give it to them, they are doing right by me on the severance side of things. I called Rachel up and asked her if she was okay with going back to teaching this fall(which as the following week) and she said she’d look around. What she found was a fantastic job just 3 miles up the road from us. She interviewed on a Monday, was hired that night and then started the next day.
So here we stood:
Ben: severance package [Check]
Ben: Lots of fun weddings and other shoots planned for the next 2 years [BIG check]
Rachel: Awesome new job [Check]
2 little girls that need someone to watch them: [ oh boy..... ]
Thankfully, both My mom and Rachel’s mom are great grandma’s and are pretty flexible with their weeks. So a few calls were made and they signed up for full time Grandma Duty for the following 7 weeks.
We are nearly 2 weeks into the 7 week period and things are going about as well as you can expect…(really good). I am incredibly excited to focus purely on what I love to do and not be distracted by a 2 hour commute and corporate b.s everyday. The icing on the cake is being able to spend the days with Hannah and Grace. I can’t wait to be Mr. Mom and go on all sorts of adventures with them. One of my biggest fears was to get too busy with work that I miss out on being their dad. Thankfully we don’t have to worry about that now.
~Ben
A couple weeks back I spent the day with Rick and Thanh for a incredible wedding. I have actually known Rick for a couple years and was really excited to see the two of them finally get married. While I am not completely done with all their wedding photos, I worked out a few Teaser shots to carry them until later this week when they get the rest of them.
Enjoy!!
*** for some reason, wordpress is killing my quality when I link to the photos. The actual photos are tack sharp 
***
It was much to nice of a day to stay inside, so the three of us went out for a fun walk in the woods near our house. These walks are more of an adventure for Grace then her normal walks through the neighborhood. She runs all over the place pick up things she finds and yells “DADDY!!!, Come look what I found!!!! Then we talk about what it is and then she runs over to another new thing and we talk about that acorn, stick, bug, snake, etc. I remember back when I was a kid and all my little adventures in the “big wilderness” commonly known as my backyard. I really am glad that Grace has the same sense of adventure that I have.
~Ben
Of course little Hannah came along for the ride. Pretty soon she’ll be keeping up with Grace.
Rachel and I shot a wedding for Liz and Matt over in the Stillwater, MN area and were stoked to see that they had brought in a photobooth for their guests. Right away we knew we had to hit this up before we left that night. I thought they turned out pretty good.
