My wife and I were at the University of Minnesota Landscape Arboretum on Sunday for a bit. Here some fun shots you might enjoy.

While visiting my sister for Thanksgiving I took a break from all the turkey to have some “camera fun time.”

I had a couple of goals in mind while shooting. My first goal was to get some photos that my sister and her husband would want to hang on their walls. I tackled this by getting some shots of their new house and his old trucks, some old barbed wire for the rustic western look they are going for in their decor, and some shots of their kids and horses. My second goal was to get better at capturing clouds and good sky details in my photos while still getting good foreground exposure. My approach for that was to set my exposure to 1.5 stops under-exposed and bump up the foreground when I processed the photos on my computer afterwards.

Enough talk. Here some of my favorites and the slideshow.

The barbed wire shots.

My favorite of the barbed wire shots:

My brother-in-law’s truck (classic Dodge Power Wagon):

A couple of the scenic shots and my niece:

One of the “nice things” (frrm a photo standpoint) about the part of North Dakota where they live is the air pollution from the coal burning power plants and the effect that has on the sunsets. The one below is not at all uncommon. I loved it.

The best part of being a professional photographer is the toys I can bring while on vacation. I shot these while visiting my brother in Oak Harbor, WA and on a trip my wife and I took to The Olympic National Park.

From a photography standpoint one of the things I tried to accomplish was to get some fun angles and perspecitves.

The picture below is of the world famous (see the salmon can) Pike Place Fish Market. I have several shots which show more of the fish stand, but I like this shot better because you still get the feel, but it is something that is a little out of the norm.