Tim Gruber and Jenn Ackerman use both photography and video to tell stories for editorial and commercial clients. 
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Coming Soon! Every year we'll be publishing at least two magazines of our work. Look for our first issue soon.
It’s a land of 11,842 lakes, home to food on a stick, SPAM in a can, the Jucy Lucy, one mega mall, and Wally the Beerman. Now it’s also home to Jenn and I.
We are beyond ecstatic to be calling Minneapolis home and the past few weeks have been filled with unpacking boxes and getting settled in. The books are on the bookcase and prints are hanging on the wall. Being settled has never felt so good.
If you find yourself in Minneapolis or the Midwest don’t be a stranger and say hi! Jenn loves to host and I love to grill. So you’ll leave merry and full.
A few diptychs shot from our moving truck.
We also shot a short-film on our move. Watch it below.
On a mobile device? Watch a friendly version of Hello Minnesota!
Anytime we travel we make sure we bring the Polaroid. Here are some recent Polaroids from our travels.
See more from the project in the American Tourist gallery on our website.
By now I know well enough that you can’t put a lot of weight in contests, but we all know they’re good for keeping our name out there. I was happy to be included in the Communication Arts Photography Annual for my Served Out: Aging and Dying Behind Bars project. Communication Arts dedicated a full two pages to the project and the reproduction was spot on.
Contest season is practically upon us again and this will be the first year where I no longer focus my efforts on photojournalism contests and make the shift towards contests seen by more art buyers and magazine photo editors. One thing I’m going to miss about the PJ contests is how dirt cheap they are compared to a lot of the fine art and glossy magazine contests out there. Entering 15+ images for a mere 40 bucks seems like such a bargain now.
The project on the Communication Arts website:
Jenn and I love to go on walks. For us walks are therapeutic. It gives us time to hash out a lot of ideas. Sometimes those ideas die quickly(our minds cook up some crazy ideas) and other times we have ideas that actually stick. Most of all it’s nice to get away from the computer and just give your mind a little time to recharge.
Depending on my mood I’ll bring a camera with me or if I’m lazy I’ll just wing it with my iPhone. On Saturday I was feeling lazy but Jenn brought her camera and of course the day you don’t bring your camera you come across a kid with a Scream mask surfing. Thanks to Jenn I was able to take a few frames for myself.
Moral of the story. If your gut tells you to grab your camera listen and grab it. Or fall back on your loved one.
Pardon my lack of posts recently, but between marrying my best friend, Jenn Ackerman, a honeymoon, and a lot of good ole life I’ve been pretty busy.
Photo by Jim Korpi
Many thanks to Jim and the rest of our talented and wonderful friends; Kainaz Amaria, Chad Stevens, Matt Eich, and Sonya Hebert who all provided us with such a poignant and beautiful documentation of our day. As a photographer you couldn’t ask for a better gift. Thank you all so much!
Sorry for the lack of recent updates. Between freelance assignments, shopping my book around to editors, and snapping photos for myself my time in NYC has kept me busy.
I’m in the Bahamas for the month of August on assignment. I’ll post more when time permits, but most likely don’t look for any updates until September.
Enjoy the rest of your summer.
Take a local dive bar with a cast of characters mix in a few Morgan Cokes for good measure and let the karaoke singers take the stage and what do you end up with? A fun little personal project I call American Singer.
Jenn and I spent our free time when we were living in Dallas working on it. Jenn shot video and I shot stills.
If you can’t tell by looking at the other projects on my website(American Trucker and American Tourist) American culture is becoming a theme and passion for me.
As I wrote on my portfolio site American Singer showcases performers both good and bad, eager and meek it is a visual study of the characters who make karaoke the entertaining and at times deafening spectacle it is.
Check out American Singer on my website.
A few images:
Hey folks updates will be slim if at all for the month of April.
Jenn and I are fortunate to be doing what we love to do as a couple for the Miss USA pageant. It’ll be 24 days of little sleep but I’ll try to get a few updates in if I can.
Take care.
Tim
Life in Appalachia is a body of work I photographed for the most grueling and demanding class I experienced in grad school. During the course of that quarter I experienced some of my brightest and darkest patches as a photographer. Shooting the same essay topic with all of your classmates can be hell esp. when they are a talented and driven bunch. Some of you may have seen this work and for others it will be new. (I wrote briefly about the essay class in this old blog post.)
At the time I saw this body of work as a failure and was never very fond of it, but now with time and a fresh edit(broadened the scope) it is growing me. Or maybe I am homesick and this body of work brings me a little closer to a place I love and once called home.
Check it out if you have time.
I spent a portion of tonight looking through some old images from a coal essay I worked on in grad school for an Appalachia gallery I’m hoping to throw up on my website.
Around that time I wrote this in my journal:
Will I ever be good enough? The idea often haunts me. Do I have what it takes to make it in this profession? Do I even want to be in this profession? The competition at times feels stifling.
I still have a year and a half before the reality of finding a job sets in. (Now that reality is here.)
In this time I can focus on my growth as both a person and a photographer.
What happens when my concern grows to wanting a family? Raising a son or daughter to the best of my abilities?
Will my photography suffer? It may, but my life will be in full blossom.
The spring rains bring the fruitations of life.
I can’t wait to bask in those rains when they arrive.
Here are a few images I’m drawn to tonight. That will likely change come morning, but tonight I’m going to enjoy them.
