I received my 2,000th visit yesterday to my website. Thank you all for visiting and sharing your thoughts on it! I know some people get a few hundred visits a day on their site, but, for only being around a year and having visits from all over the world; it’s a neat thing for me.)

 Thanks to Amanda who designed this site around a year ago! Stay tuned for some new changes to the site and some new pictures of the fall and winter scene here in ND.

Thanks again!

Dan Francis - Photographer

Last weekend I took some senior pictures for my cousin. We walked the Island Park stretch and some back alleys off of Main St.  After those were done, we headed up to the roof of the studio and grabbed some neat shots of downtown Fargo behind him.  He was a good subject, and wasn’t hard to work with at all; very easy to pose and was up for some fun shots. Here’s a few pics: 

Leica

Need? No, this is simply a want.

For the days ahead: Here are lyrics to Survivor - “Moment of Truth”

(Random Trivia: They also sang “Eye of the Tiger” which was the number one song when I was born and was of course played throughout Rocky III.

——————————-

When you’re alone, you ask yourself
what are you searching for?
Deep in the night, a dream is born
one that you can’t ignore.
If you think you can find the passion
and you’re ready to take a chance,
If you really believe you can make it
then the power is in your own hands
It’s the moment of truth you’re giving it all,
standing alone willing to fall.
If you can do it, get up and prove it,
get up and show them who you are.
It’s the moment of truth, it’s all on a line,
this is the place, this is the time,
waiting forever, it’s now or it’s never, nothing can stop you now.
Once in your life, you make a choise, ready to risk it all.
Deep in your soul, you hear a voice, answering to the call.
Though you know that it won’t be easy,
it’s a promise you made for love,
for the people that keeps believing,
and the one that you’re thinking of.

Such a dorky 80’s tune/background music, but the words are what have been on my mind for the last month.

More later.

- D

The Fargo-Moorhead Camera Club has been around for 70 years.

This year they had a cake made.

Last night was our first judging of images for the FM Camera Club. I placed in each category:

1st in Digital Modified:
 

I should have told them that I didn’t photoshop this.

 I received 3rd in Color:

 
 

          I originally had this a lot longer with more water and clouds, but the judge though there was too much wasted space, I probably could have cropped it a bit more.
I also received 2nd for my portrait of the president of FMCC:  The Assignment was: “It starts with A”  So I did “Anger”

 I received 2nd in Black/White:

I really like this picture, and thought it would be a 1st place, the judge though it needed to be cropped in a bit, (lose the hair and the ear) but, not sure if I agree.

So, that was it, I’ll get a medal for sure at the end of the year for placing in 3 categories!

This should be a good season.

Next month: Amanda will be entering her first set of pictures.

An Image of mine that made the front cover of The Pioneer back in 2006.

As I was looking through some archived files I found this: It was taken June of 2006, my old town’s newspaper hired me for the week while it’s main photographer was out of town. I was out at the fair  waiting for the sun to go down so I could take some night fair shots. The sunset really showed it’s colors around 9:45 p.m. (on the longest day of the year) I went out into an open field and set my camera up on a tripod and snapped a few shots.  There was some other options for the cover shot such as kids swimming and some kids selling lemonade by their stand, but I hand picked this shot for them.

So, this was the first time I was featured on a front page of a newspaper. Well, I should say, the first time one of my photographs was featured. (My 4th grade Class made the same newspapers cover way back in ‘94.)

We are now available on twitter.com! If you use the site, please friend us and you will be updated everytime we  have a new post.

http://www.twitter.com/danfrancisphoto

Our little office made it to the newspaper last week. They had a not so great photo in the corner (it was some other photograph from a different photographer and the subject was a wax skull?, :editor error: ) anyways it covered up my photograph shown below (without my name underneath.) So, after I removed the photograph in the corner and put my name under the photograph (in photoshop) here is the article in all its glory.

A friend of mine wrote the article and did a great job. Thanks Cassie!

The Space makes it into the High Plains Reader newspaper

Yesterday and today I took my class out to a nearby park.

If possible I wouldn’t even be in the classroom for the semester, however, it’s not always possible with weather and it turning cold in the next week or two. In the past, I would talk about shutter speed or Aperture, and then actually go outside and work those features with real life situations. But when it came to portraits and posing, I decided to take it to the park. 

I started with a speech about why posing is important and why portraiture is important, about how taking pictures of people pays you right away while landscape, might not right away. We went over a few different poses, the important styles like turning the body and watching the details that might hurt the image.  I then split them up into groups and had them take some pictures of their classmates in the park.  some filling the frame, some expressions and some using a prop.

Next week, we talk about the pictures they’ll be taking this weekend, and learn a bit more about photo shop.

Week 5 is done, bring on the last week of Sept.

Here is an image that I took while they were out taking portraits, I still have Fine art in my heart.

This illustration represents my last 5.3 years of working at a Photography studio as their Digital Artist/Graphic Designer:

Nuff said.

go here to see other funny clips of “what the duck”  http://whattheduck.net/

-D