Search

Today for Week 15 of "Tuesdays with Todd and Brad Reed: A Michigan Tribute," our gallery managers, Sarah Genson and Rachel Shoup Gaudette, and I shot photos at Rachel's parents' farm on First Street, east of Custer. As Sarah and I were driving to the farm, we spotted these two horses in the Shoup's field. Right away I thought about our photographic concepts of "the little object in the big world" and "clouds are your friends." F9 at 1/160, ISO 100, 70-200mm lens at 70mm

One of Michigan's most distinctive and attractive lighthouses, White Shoal Light, has helped guide mariners safely into and out of the Straits of Mackinac for more than a century. I passed by this lighthouse at a distance on a Coast Guard ship a few winters ago but today the Shepler's Lighthouse Cruise boat Captain Mike Rossman brings me close enough to fill my Nikon's viewfinder even with a wide-angle lens attached. F8 at 1/800, ISO 400, 14-24mm lens at 24mm

After I waited over an hour for this immature bald eagle to fly, it finally took flight and headed the wrong direction. Luckily I was using my 600mm F4 Nikkor lens with a 1.4 teleconverter on my new Nikon D7000 camera body so I could still show a little detail of this young raptor as it looked for food along the shores of Lake Michigan. F6.3 at 1/8000, 6400 ISO, 600mm lens at 840mm

Workshop at Ludington State Park

Epic Manistee Blast

Lights Over the Hamlin Dunes

Four Carferries

Wagner Falls Near Munising

Every summer, my mom and family rent a cabin near an inlet on Hamlin Lake named Indian Pete Bayou. All year I look forward to spending time with the family around the camp fire and photographing Hamlin Lake. My family and I have witnessed many great sunsets from this particular spot, but this was one of the best.

I have been known to do crazy things to get a photograph. On this occasion, I was frustrated because I could not position myself to capture this sailboat and its reflection, yet omit the other boats from the scene. I had two options; climb a tree along side of the road, or stand on the roof of my car. My car still has a large dent in the roof.

Unique photographs are often right in front of our eyes. Looking closer for pictures opens a new visual world featuring more detailed, stronger views of its parts. On this summer night, the base of the Pentwater South Pierhead Light provided an abstract view of the moon rising.

Dwarfed by the forest, a cross-country skier glides silently along the Logging Trail on one of those winter days that winter lovers live for. I have skied the Logging Trail so many times I have memorized the views that will greet me over the next hill or around the next curve. Yet I never tire of my Logging Trail journeys. There is something comforting about knowing a place. It is a feeling like home.

The 112-foot-high Big Point Sable Lighthouse towers over the shoreline and forest in this November 4 view from the Ridge Trail. A giant white pine provides a counterpoint for the composition I had envisioned weeks earlier before the color peaked.

This is one of the lifeboats from the City of Flint 32. The City of Flint 32 was one of the many past carferries that put Ludington on the map when this port had the largest carferry fleet in the world. F5.0 at 1/125, ISO 100, 18-50 mm lens at 18 mm

I am a total creature of habit. When I am out driving around looking for photographs, I have realized that I always drive to the same places and take the same roads. Today I forced myself to find a road I had never been down. This scene was a great surprise when I turned east on Jagger Road off of Jebavy Drive. F22.0 at 0.4, ISO 100, 18-50 mm lens at 35 mm

Every spring since I was a very small child, I have spent time in the Michigan woods with my family looking for morel mushrooms. Today, I had the amazing honor of hunting for the elusive mushrooms with one of the best morel mushroom hunters in North America. Roger Thurow, a Scottville, Michigan native, has won the national morel mushroom hunting championship multiple times. He took me to a few of his favorite spots and showed me the ways of a master. I will never forget this day. My wife, Betsy, and our kids enjoyed eating the bounty.

I don't know who was smiling bigger when the sun finally came out today, this sunflower or me. As the famous National Geographic photographer Sam Abell might say, I was "in the presence of a picture."

Mid-May is one of my favorite times of the year. The woodlands are coming to life and there seems to be a new visual discovery to be made at every turn. I love the way trillium were blooming at the base of a tree trunk along M22 near Empire.

While hanging out of the window of a small airplane and trying to photograph the Ludington City Beach, I noticed this beautiful speedboat anchored and enjoying the calm water on Lake Michigan. We teach our workshop students to look for scenes like this where there is a small person or object in the big world.

A setting full moon greets us as Brad and I wait for dawn's early light. The light of the moon should give us a jump on spotting a snowy owl we know is hanging out in a West Michigan field.