All The Right Movesfli-The Monster I've Become

Super fun local band, I love these guys they always are so fun to photograph and collaborate ideas with. To top it off they have some killer tunes as well! They have a CD that comes out this Summer called "The Monster In Me" featuring 6 NEW songs and was produced by Jordan Schmidt.

The CD will be released to I-Tunes on June 10th and the will be doing short tour before having a local CD Release party on June 20th at Station 4 in Minneapolis MN.

www.myspace.com/alltherightmoves

The photo shoot was truly a flash of lightening to cross my brain because the guys only gave me one week to come up with come up with a collaborative concept to portray with lighting and still make them look mature and fun.

With only one week to work with we had a few ideas and then at the last minute changed ideas and quickly chose a location...which happened to be Braden's house. Right in his teeny tiny living room. I maybe had 13 by 12 feet to work with, (Literally what u see in the picture was the space I had) but the guys were awesome and before I had gotten there they had the room cleaned up and shades covered and all. I never asked them to do anything and it wasn't all necessary but they rocked it out to help the shoot go smoothly and for that I am greatly appreciative!

Once the shoot began we decided we didn't like the couch design so we placed gray sheets over the couch and wanted super bright lighting that popped yet keeping the theme of watching television. So I had one light barely behind and to each end of the couch with 30 and 40 grids on them and a large softbox to light them from the front right above the camera.

Keep rocking it ATRM!! :) - www.myspace.com/alltherightmoves


You can, also view these on FLICKR and FACEBOOK

Funeral-SGT Kurt Kruize

In Memory of SGT Kurt Kruize from St. Cloud, Minnesota, and his dedication to his Country. May God Bless his family and those that loved him. He left four children and a wife in the hands of the Lord if anybody would like to offer help to the family let me know and I can get you in contact with them.

My sister has started a fundraiser of which you can donate here: http://wwpproudsupporter.kintera.org/faf/donorReg/donorPledge.asp?ievent=308932&supid=260873370 but if you do not have money but would like to donate something to the silent auction or would like to perform as an artist please contact her here to help: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=384742081772

Thank You

Republican Party Rally - Sarah Palin & Michelle Bachman

Wednesday at the Republican Party Rally Sarah Palin came to support Michelle Bachmann in her running for re-election. There were thousands of people there in support for the event including press and many many bloggers and protesters.

Please feel free to serf the web, watch the news and read local newspapers to educate yourself on the topic from both the Republican and Democratic views. Below are a few general links to help describe this specific event:

http://www.startribune.com/blogs/87652272.html

http://www.onenewspage.com/news/Politics/20100407/9870532/Michele-Bachmann-Sarah-Palin-Rally-In-Minneapolis-LIVE.htm

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/04/07/sarah-palin-rallies-for-michele-bachmann-on-wednesday/

Day with the Sis-Portrait

Oh Lordy, I visited my sister since she is on Spring Break and we ha the most adventrous and wonderful day! We met in Maple Grove so we could go to PF Changs for lunch <----Which was AMAZING (Those lettuce wraps, mmmmm)

All Natural Light-Me on left Sister on the right (Jessica)

While we were there we just kept it cool and walked around the outside mall, since she had never been there before. We were on a mission to find her some flip flops and mom a new purse. However, we had gotten sidetracked twice...

Once to try on silly urban one outfit/jumpsuit clothes and make fun of eachother and another to try and find me a new bra at Victoria Secret. Come to find out my safe all black bra's are not sexy and she tried to show me what style I should be getting, so I don't dress so Mom-ish. I felt like I ahouls have been on the show "What Not To Wear" but for undergarments lol. Some things she had me try I felt like a hootchie mamma Story Goes-----> I left empty handed haha

Lyndon Maurice Miller-Portraits, haha not related

This is a client I had met through the military. He needed head shots for a website he was creating. Most the images are all done with Natural light. The top image next to the theater is the only image I had used artificial lighting. I just hand-held a portable 580 EX II connected through pocket wizards. I held it with my left hand and to the camera's upper left.

Forest Haven Insane Asylum

Forest Haven Insane Asylum-24Jan'10

While on Military orders at Fort George G. Meade, MD., a few friends and myself went to scope this so-called creepy insane asylum out. I was ecstatic as soon as I heard the word abandoned and had to go! I wanted to go multiple times because I knew I was going to have a tendancy to take some "touristy" images my first run through. Good thing I planned on going more than once because I was so excited and in thrill mode because we had to be sneaky that I had left my ISO at 1200. Yeah, I was sooooo bummed with myself. Anyhow, We had to park way far away near a bar called Remmingtons and hike up and behind the bar and cross a road then hike through the woods for a good, eh, mile or so before we got there and had to keep hidden from patrol cars.

The second day I had gone, I went after work and the sun was setting that is when I got the outside image of the main building. That night I had only gotten a couple images because it had rained and the sun was setting too fast and it was pitch dark inside and kinda scary to be at in the dark.

The third time I had went was my last chance before I left to return to Minnesota and it was blistering cold and I didn't have anyone that could go with me. So I went with a pocket knife in hand, camera around my neck and a tripod in the other, haha. Yeah, it was creepy cuz I am not an ugly girl and it's a great place for someone to get raped and killed! Anyway, I went inside and was always doing tactical movements and clearing rooms with my little knife before I entered, haha. After about 2 hours my fingers were frozen, even in my gloves, and when I would hit the shutter I would shake the camera, getting camera shake. So I had to call it a day after just a couple hours. Then I drove 20.5 hours straight to Minnesota to sleep in a comfy bed.

I wish I would have found the place sooner to take more images or different views and angles, but that I will leave for the next time I visit the East coast. Thanks for visiting!

FOREST HAVEN INSANE ASYLUM- INFORMATION

An old shut down mental hospital and insane asylum. It was a costly reform effort for the mentally handicapped: dispersing Forest Haven's 1,100 residents, and the other people subsequently committed to city care, into small, privately operated group homes scattered throughout the District. This new, community-based system would provide sensitive, individualized care in homelike settings -- care monitored by a large network of city and federal protectors. The haven consists of multiple buildings, including a church, classrooms, an office building and more.
In the 1990s, District and federal taxpayers had unwittingly financed a system marked by municipal ineptitude and private profiteering: a system that had fostered abuse and even death.

More than 350 incidents of abuse, neglect, molestation or stealing have been documented in group homes and day programs in the '90s, according to the records of four District agencies and federal and D.C. courts. Those serious incidents involved companies that collectively run 70 percent of the city's group homes. Yet in that time, the District government levied not a single fine against a facility operator for maltreating the retarded. A convicted embezzler, a psychologist who billed the government for treating the dead and a man who paid go-go dancers as "group home consultants" were among those paid by the District to run group homes and therapeutic programs for the retarded. In the name of taxpayer-financed "day treatment," some of the District's retarded wards were dispatched by the city to work for wages as low as 50 cents a week -- work for which their day-program owners profited through private contracts. Other retarded people, in the name of therapy, shoveled manure at a group home operator's private farm. One man was locked for months in a "private treatment room." Others languished with no day treatment at all. The District official responsible for overseeing such day programs for most of the '90s ran a travel business for the city's retarded on the side and bought a private home for the use of a treatment program operator he supposedly supervised.

Some buildings are still in use by the army, for building tactical movement training.

There is not a website dedicated to Forest Haven, but if you would wish to learn more please go to

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/march99/grouphome14.htm