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May Workshop at LSP

When I was a kid, my brothers and I spent a lot of time climbing trees in our neighborhood near Lake Michigan. One of our neighbors had a huge old beech tree in his yard and he would let all the neighborhood kids climb it. While I was photographing this tree in Marshall, Michigan, I could hear all the laughter and voices of my brothers and friends in my head and it made me smile.

Stepping In

My dad and I enjoy photographing these Scottish Highland Cattle south of Hart, Michigan. This one stared me down and looked as if he might charge at me at any moment. I know that little wire fence would have done nothing to protect me, but I couldn't resist trying to make this image. I love his swagger.

Our assistant manager, Rachel Gaudette, lives very close to Ford Lake in the eastern part of Mason County. For several years, she has been telling my dad and me to shoot a sunrise over her lake. Today, I finally took her advice and was blown away by the gorgeous sunrise that erupted.

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.

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.

Fawn

A diseased tree had split in half about four feet up from the ground and a bird made a beautiful little nest in the remaining top of the stump. I put my 14mm wide-angle lens extremely close to the nest. This photograph was taken close up yet does not look like a typical close-up. With a wide-angle lens, if you do not get very close to the subject, the subject will look tiny and the photograph will often lack emotional impact.

Sleepy Time – Brad Reed While my aunt Sheryl was vacuuming her living room, she looked through the large picture window and noticed a fawn sleeping peacefully in her pachysandra bushes right next to the house. She immediately called my dad and me and we rushed over with our cameras. I put my lens right on the glass of the window and made this image. I love the heart shape of the bushes that surrounds the beautiful sleeping fawn. Nikon D800. F1.4 at 1/640, ISO 100. 85mm lens at 85mm. On a tripod without a flash. May 13, 2014 at 9:59am.

 When I heard the news that Aunt Mary had passed away, I was shocked. I was in disbelief. I was instantly heartbroken. We had just shared a nice visit at my mom and dad’s anniversary party on Monday, and it didn’t seem possible that she was gone. When I talked with others who knew Aunt Mary, they all had such great memories to share. She was a very special lady, and extremely kind hearted. She was always smiling. I knew that I wanted to make an image in memory of the wonderful life that Aunt Mary had led. I had hopes of getting out and shooting the sunset or sunrise in the days following her passing, but with other activities that I had to attend, that didn’t seem like a possibility. Around 8 o’clock on Wednesday May 21st, David, the kids and I were packing in the van to head for home from Ludington, when I looked towards the lakeshore. The fog that had plagued the lakeshore all day had lifted, and the sky was beautiful. David ordered me to the shoreline while he took the kids home. I thought about where I wanted to shoot. I thought of the strength Aunt Mary had and that even after being diagnosed with polio at a young age, she never stopped pursuing the things that she loved. It quickly became obvious to me that I needed to head towards the First Curve at the Ludington State Park in order to photograph the jetties. These jetties always stand tall through the waves, even when the ice and snow surrounded and covered them during this brutal winter. I walked down to the waters edge and took a look around. Standing there, I previsualized a photograph that would show the motion in the waves because it would remind me of the fluidity of music, one of Aunt Mary’s loves. It was important to me to nail the technical aspects of the photograph in order to honor Aunt Mary’s love of education. Lake Michigan was very cold, but I KNEW to get the composition that I was envisioning I had to roll up my pants, take off my shoes and get in the water. I am not a fan of water, especially ice cold water, but I was reminded again of the strength that Aunt Mary had shown during her lifetime. We all miss Aunt Mary and always will. Her big smile, laughter, and ability to see the best in every situation will be remembered for generations to come by her family and friends. I love you Aunt Mary!

Mid-to-late May is a magical time to step inside northern Michigan forests. The leaves on the hardwood trees have formed but are most likely not yet full-size. The forest is splendid, especially because the not yet fully-grown leaves leave more space for sunlight to reach the forest floor. May 22, 2020 was a picture-perfect day for my wife, Debbie, and me to hike the morning away on the Mt. Baldy Trail at one of the Mott conservancy trails along M-22 north of Arcadia. We observed many scattered trillium and other wild plants the first half-hour but when, after a couple of miles of hiking, we came upon this hillside covered with trilliums, I felt like I had entered a trillium dreamland. It was time for me to stop and try to find a picture-perfect spot to plant my tripod and make an image worthy of what I was seeing and feeling. My wife knows me. She knew this was going to take time. When I am blessed to find a scene like this, I know better than to rush; I want to make the best art I can, art that moves me and hopefully others. Debbie likes to keep moving so, as she often does, she hiked on, leaving me to catch her when I knew I was finished, knew I had made an image I felt good about. Thank you, Debbie, for putting up for years with my stop-and-go approach to hiking; I know it is not easy sometimes. We had already hiked several hundred miles together in 2020 before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. In all that time, I never made a photograph that moved me like this one. Our reward that day was curbside-pickup takeout sandwiches and beer from Stormcloud Brewing Company in Frankfort, savored with a tailgate picnic at Frankfort beach.

Often when my dad and I travel together in his truck on photo adventures and he is driving, I am worn out by the later afternoon. It is a common occurrence for me to take a nap in the truck while he continues to look for photographs. Today at Stocking Drive at the Sleeping Bear Dunes, I woke up from a long nap to find my dad photographing some trillium he had found alongside the road. I dragged myself out of the truck and grabbed my camera and started looking for my own photographs. Soon I was full of adrenaline and wide-awake making this image of a lone trillium. Nikon D800. F2.8 at 1/5000, ISO 1600. 14-24mm lens at 14mm. Handheld without a flash. May 16, 2017 at 4:49pm

This is the view from the top of the De Zwaan Windmill, located in Windmill Island in Holland, Michigan. Mesmerized by the endless fields of tulips, I locked in on this particular area of one field. I patiently waited for the sunlight to reappear from behind a large cloud and then for the wind to die down enough to make the photograph I had envisioned. D800, F11 at 1/320, ISO 1600, 70-200mm lens at

The older I get, the less pressure I feel to fit in with the crowd. My parents have always taught me to be comfortable being myself, but sometimes that comfort doesn't come for people until they are older. I was inspired looking at these red tulips and how they stood out from the crowd. I shot them with my 85mm 1.4 lens at an aperture of 1.4 so that the extremely shallow depth of field made them sharp and all the other tulips blurry.

Goodbye moon

My dad and I often tell our photography workshop students they need to think of themselves as puppeteers. We try to control exactly where the viewers of our work will first look in our photographs. By using a super-telephoto 600mm lens as well as a 1.4 extender, I had a very shallow depth of field. Then I moved within 15 feet of the flower, which is as close as that lens will focus. Finally, I set my aperture to F5.6 in order to have the shallowest depth of field possible. This combination of lens choice, closeness, and aperture helped me isolate one tulip in this photograph.

A good portion of the homes and cottages on Bass Lake between Ludington and Pentwater are seasonal. As I was capturing the beautiful sunrise this morning on the southwest corner of the lake, I imagined the people who own and rent these homes in the summer months can't stop thinking about Bass Lake all year long.

Photographing Michigan commercial fishing operations has long been one of my photographic muses. On this day I was struck with how the light was coming through a gill net wound on a reel at historic Fish Town in Leland.

Even on a busy July or August morning, Pentwater has a peaceful and calming atmosphere. Every time I visit, I just want to kick back in a comfortable chair, listen to good live music, and drink a beer. On this early morning in May, Pentwater had not fully come back to life yet, but it still had that wonderful calming effect on me.