Dave Badman

My old friend Dave Badman was in town to install a piece of artwork at a financial office in Arden Hills. Dave asked me to help him because some of the parts were very heavy. There are about 8 parts that needed to be mounted on the wall and bolted all together. Dave and his welder Mark did an amazing job of engineering to get everything to fit. The photo doesn't do it justice. The grinder markings give the panels a shimmering quality that is almost 3D and seems to be in constant motion.

Ever since we finished art school at the University of North Dakota, Dave has run a very successful jewelery design business in our hometown of Grand Forks, ND. In more recent years he has gotten into large metal installations like the one above. Last year he designed a stainless steel and copper fireplace front for our basement.

Panoramas: Boston Sci. Campus

Here is another panorama shot. This time on the campus where I work. This building is our training center and is one of the newest additions to the company.

There are 7 photographs shot in portrait orientation. They were assembled in Realviz Stitcher, cleaned up in Photoshop, then color corrected in Lightroom. I could have done the adjustments in Photoshop but I wanted to test out the connection between Photoshop and Lightroom for created images verses straight out of the camera photos. Plus I'm getting to like adjusting in Lightroom rather then Photoshop.

The second pano has a Lightroom black and white effect applied. I thought it was cool.

Click on the images to get a gainormous size version.

MN State Cyclocross Champ

On Saturday I went to what is considered the last bike race of the year here in Minnesota. I went to shot photos as I don't do cyclocross - yet anyway. Cyclocross is a hybrid of road and mountain bike racing. It involves obstacles that require racers to sometimes get off their bikes and run up stairs or over barriers. Each race is different. Its a great event for spectators because it's a circuit race (allowing you to see the racers over and over) and you can be fairly close to them. You can yell encouragements right in their ear! Or, as in the photo above, offer them shots of whiskey!

I have 80 photos on Flickr but the above one is my favorite. I only got the 3 shots but they were perfectly timed (accident, not planned) to convey the moment.

A guy I ride with at work, Frank Rowe, was also there taking photos. Frank has some nice shots that can be found on his blog here.