A few more photos from my time reconnecting with my home state of Minnesota. After being in Vegas for the majority of August working and shooting digitally I am excited to be back home and shoot some more film for this project especially at the great Minnesota get-together next week.
You can read more about the project and see more photos in my earlier blog post.







Here is a short-film we shot and produced during the Miss Universe pageant about the story behind the swimsuits.
A food and beverage cart sits idle after a long day on the arena floor.

We are thrilled that two of our photos have been selected by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts for the Art Perchance event that is a part of their Third Thursday events. Sadly we are working in Vegas so we won’t be able to attend.
Read more about the Third Thursday events on the Minneapolis Institute of Arts website.

Staten Island Ferry Reflection - One of the accepted works.
We have been on assignment in Las Vegas for most of August and will be here til the 23rd documenting the Miss Universe pageant.

A short flip-book portrait series we did of a few of the contestants.
This project is my conversation with an old friend that I finally understand.
I grew up in a tiny, central Minnesota town with a population that teeters at 554. Many would recognize it as Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon region. I moved back to Minnesota this year after being away for almost a decade. I lived in a variety of places from an island off the coast of North Carolina to the heart of Manhattan.
That time away helped me appreciate all the things I took for granted as a child. Little did I know that having cattle graze(the photo below) in your backyard wasn’t normal for most people. I am reminded of warm summer days spent on my bike speeding down gravel roads to go swimming at the lake and Mr. Beutz’s scary old radiator shop that I now see as a work of art. These memories serve as photographic sparks in helping me rediscover a place I once again call home.
This project is my way of reconnecting with a place I only knew as a child and young man. This is my reunion with a state that I left, but that never fully left me.
A few working scans from the Hasselblad, which has become my camera of choice for all the personal projects I’m shooting right now.






Snapshots is a new category on our blog that gives a us an outlet to share recent and past work. For over a year, I have been wanting to post photos to the blog without a commitment to write anything – simple posts with photos doing the talking. After doing some serious house cleaning on the blog over the weekend I decided to make it happen.
Enjoy.
Kites with Lights at the largest natural sand dune in the east coast on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.


Thanks to the Wall Street Journal, I had the joy of driving down to the middle of Iowa a few weeks ago to spend an afternoon with Eugene Sukup for a story about the proposed death tax. At 81, Eugene still shows up for work daily. Spending an afternoon with him I quickly realized what he and his company mean to the local community. He was a gracious man who made my job easy. Thank you Eugene.
Read the article and see the photo they ran on the WSJ site.






I was happy to receive an email in my inbox earlier this summer from the Magenta Flash Forward competition letting me know that I was chosen as an honorable mention for one of their 2010 Emerging Photographers for my Served Out: Aging and Dying Behind Bars project. There’s some great talent on the winners page of their site. Congrats to all the winners.
A trailer of the video portion of the project was also screened for the first time at the LOOKbetween festival we blogged about earlier. I’ll try to have that up to share with you all soon.
A few outtakes from the project. See more at the Served Out: Aging and Dying Behind Bars section on our website.






Tim Gruber and Jenn Ackerman use both photography and video to tell stories for editorial and commercial clients.
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