Category Archives: Photographs

“Napalm Girl”: Who Created This Famous Image?

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Children flee a napalm attack in Tr?ng Bàng on June 8, 1972. Left to right: Phan Thanh Tam, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, Kim Phuc, and Kim’s cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. The “Napalm Girl” photograph galvanized an anti-war movement in the United States.
Associated Press/AP

53 years ago today a photographer clicked his shutter and one of the world’s iconic images was created. Officially known as “The Terror of War”, until recently it has been attributed to AP photographer Nick Ut who won a Pulitzer Prize for this image.

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Daiqing Tana

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DaiQing Tana, Columbus Ohio

DaiQing Tana, Columbus Ohio.

The annual Asian Festival in Columbus Ohio falls on Memorial Day Weekend. Daiqing Tana is from Central Asia. She has a beautiful and unique singing voice and she is a talented folk dancer. She mostly sings Mongolian music and does dances that are typical of Central Asia. She performs with the group HAYA. They were in town for the Asian Festival.

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Do Your Due Diligence Before Booking Photo Shoots

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Portrait collage of some of the people I have worked with.  To fit this format some of these images are seriously cropped. Click to see a larger version.

My first photo shoot with a professional mode was with Sarah. Before our shoot she had checked me out. And as for me, I had checked her references. I learned she was well known and highly respected. But I was more of an unknown quantity to her. She did not know anyone who knew me. She wanted to have an in-person meeting at a popular outdoor mall. She showed up with a male companion who hovered not too far away. She asked a lot of questions. Part way through our get acquainted meeting she nodded at him and he walked away. I knew I had passed some kind of test. She was doing her due diligence. Unhappy things have happened to models who do not thoroughly check out the photographers they plan on working with.  Photographers have had unhappy experiences too. Once Sarah was confident about me, we scheduled the shoot.

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It’s All About The Light, A Tale of Two Portraits

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Nicole in a church foyer.

The Graceland University choir were performing at a church in Grove City Ohio, and I was in the foyer to take casual photos of some of the choir members. The cool colored evening light was streaming in the north facing foyer windows, turning everything blue. I clicked the shutter at 7:08:40 pm.  The light is not good. Sometimes I love blue, but not for this image. The image also looks hazy and lacking in contrast.

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Photoshop’s Easy to Use Background Removal Tool

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Nicole, casual portrait, Grove City Ohio, May 7, 2018.

Seven years ago, the Graceland University Choir (from Lamoni Iowa) was on tour and I caught their performance at a church in Grove City Ohio. I was in the lobby taking casual portraits of the choir. This young women happened to step into the sunlight that was streaming through a lobby window, making for wonderful, warm “short side” lighting.  Short side lighting means the light is shining on the side of the face that is away from the camera.

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Total Photos vs Choosing “Selects”: What Is Your Percentage of Keepers?

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The Conference Chamber, The Auditorium, Independence Missouri. My favorite image of the morning.

I was photographing a Communion service at a church conference in Missouri using two DSLR cameras and an iPhone. All told, during this one service and the short time before and after, I created 354 images.  So how many “selects” did I pick?  When an editor asks you for “selects” from an event, that means they want your best images in chronological order. The editor will narrow that down even further when deciding which images to publish. Several photographers were covering this event as a team so I didn’t have to worry about capturing everything. This article explores the selection process between taking the photos and the final published images.

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Blue-winged Teal

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Blue-winged Teal

I take our dog for regular walks at our local lakes.  I watch the waterfowl come and go with the seasons.  I always have my “toy” camera gear with me, just in case (link below). For the last two weeks I watched the number of Blue-winged Teal slowly drop from 54 to 11. I wanted a photograph but they were always way out in the lake and too far away for a good image. And then it happened.

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Loons, Seney National Wildlife Refuge, and the Return of ABJ

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Loon, Seney National Wildlife Refuge, July 1, 2019.

Seney National Wildlife Refuge is one of my favorite places on the planet. Loons arrive every year in the spring, one of the many reasons to go to Seney. Not only are they fun to watch and photograph, there is nothing quite like hearing the call of a loon. Seney is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula just north of Germfask.  As an added bonus, ABJ has returned once again to Seney this spring. More about him later.

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Graceland University Symphonic Band Concert – April 18, 2025

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Jack Ergo, pianist, Graceland University Symphonic Band Concert

After 24 years at Graceland University, Jack Ergo is retiring, so this is his last performance with the band as a faculty member.  Parker Worden, the band director, planned the concert as a tribute to Jack. This is a selection of photos from the concert.

Click any of the images to see a larger version.

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Happy Birthday, John Muir!

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John Muir

John Muir

Today is John Muir’s birthday! He was born April 21, 1838. He had a profound influence on how Americans viewed our wild lands and his influence led to the establishment of many of our National Parks and other protected lands. He was nicknamed “The Father of our National Parks”. Tomorrow, April 22, is also Earth Day, so I am combining the two in this article.

Here are photos from some of my favorite national and state parks along with quotes from John Muir.

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Living Art Studios Dance Recital, Spring 2025

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Dance Recital, Living Art Studios

One of the highlights of the year in Lamoni Iowa is the annual spring dance recital featuring the dance students at Living Art Studios. The award-winning Graceland University Gadets also performed. This is a selection of photos from this year’s recital.  If you want a print, you can order prints here. Ordering information is at the bottom of this page.

Click any of these photos to see a larger version.

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How To See and Photograph the Blood Moon Eclipse, March 13-14, 2025

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Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse from Lamoni Iowa, May 15, 2022.

Don’t miss it. This total eclipse happens this Thursday-Friday, May 13-14 (depending on your time zone). This article will show you how to photograph it. To see it, just grab a lawn chair, a warm blanket, a cup of hot chocolate, and go outside and enjoy the show. A pair of binoculars adds to the show. Continue reading →

Winter, Great Sand Dunes National Park

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Deer, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Colorado

I usually prefer to go to Colorado in the fall to create landscape images, but I needed to be in Denver in early March anyway. So I headed south to the Great Sand Dunes and arrived February 28, 2008.  The temperature was 44 degrees, so pretty pleasant for photography. It can be much colder in late February.

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Sami Lynn, A Valentine Portrait

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Sami Lynn with rose petals.
Sami Lynn with rose petals.

It was a week and a half after Valentine’s Day and most of the dozen Valentine’s Day roses in a vase on the dining room table were done and had been thrown away, but a few were still looking good. I asked Sami to lay on the floor, handed her a long stemmed rose, and I carefully arranged her hair. Then I stood up and pulled the best looking petals off of more roses and randomly dropped them on her. Some didn’t land quite right so I re-positioned a couple of them.

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Patrick Demarchelier, Fashion Photographer

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Patrick Demarchelier

I recently watched The Devil Wears Prada for the first time. Fascinating and fun movie. In one scene, Amanda (Meryl Streep) the very particular and tough-as-nails editor of RUNWAY magazine says to Andy (Anne Hathaway) her new 2nd assistant, “Did Demarchelier confirm?”  Andy is clueless. So Emily (Emily Blunt), Amanda’s 1st assistant, grabs a phone and says, “I have Patrick”. I got the Demarchelier reference instantly. I am a huge fan of Patrick Demarchelier’s work. You may not recognize his name but you have probably seen his work.

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Some Days Are Amazing!

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Snowy Egret Feeding

Some days are “so so”, some days are average, and some days are amazing. Summer is not my favorite time of year to photograph birds at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, but July 14, 2016 was an amazing day. This photo of a feeding Snowy Egret was just one of many fine images from the morning. He stabbed at his prey and it came out of the water but not in his beak.

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Beth: “The Incident”

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Beth warming up in the car after the incident.

It was January 24, 2020, out in the country in Decatur County Iowa.  “The Incident” is etched in my memory!

It was five years ago today at about 4:30 in the afternoon. It was cold and the wind was fierce, but Beth and I were determined to get a portrait of her playing the violin in the snowstorm. Why were we doing that? That story is here.

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