Welcome,

My name is Bob Mintie. I orignally took an interest in photography 30-some years ago when I was learning with my dad's Petri Penta SLR (dead now, but still in my office). Also had fun with a couple polaroids at the time. I bought a Pentax ME Super back in the 80s (also dead now but next to the Petri), that camera went through hell and back for 20 years getting wet and dirty, and a ton of use when I lived in Japan for 2 years. After a long break from photography I got going again in 2001 with a Canon S45 that I still use today when I don't want to haul around an SLR.




I like to travel and shoot whatever I can. Because of where I live there's alot of North Dakota scenery here. But any opportunity I get to travel and shoot I take. My Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D got me into the digital SLR world. I wouldn't have known KM was going to give up on the camera biz a month after I bought my stuff. Kind of a bummer as I always research the smithereens out of something before I buy.

I've recently switched over to Canon with a 40D. Currently I'm doing the computer work with Lightroom and I love it. Still run Photoshop 7 for when I need that certain tweak only PS can do.

I shoot in Aperture priority 90% of the time, exceptions being full manual for night or tricky stuff like star trails or fireworks and shutter priority when the lighting is low or a long focal length makes it hard to avoid shake. Shutter Priority protects me from not paying attention from shot to shot when speed matters. The center AF sensor is the only one I use, spot focus, recompose and shoot. Although on occasion I let the camera try to track a moving object, otherwise recompose every time. Lately, I've come to really like using auto ISO. The 40D keeps it between 400 and 800, not too high to have a noise problem but gives another stop of flexibility. After each shot it's all about the histogram and I throttle the EV up or down as needed. I shoot only RAW unless it's just some fun family/vacation pics. I think it's important to understand technical side of photography from focal length and depth of field to where your lens is at it's sharpest. I only shoot through the viewfinder, the way God intended it, I have no use for live view mode, at least not yet. Remember how awsome SLR viewfinders use to be? I can still look through the Pentax and wish today's digital SLRs looked like that. Big and bright prism in a $200 camera back then. And the image splitting center prism to help manually focus, I want that back! The viewfinder is the one feature that has gone down the drain over the years, unless you're spending alot of money. sorry to digress....

Some of my stuff isn't true to the scene, as in the sky gallery. Sometimes I like to oversaturate or do some selective coloring for a surreal effect. Alot of people would disagree with that, but photography is an art, so I get to do what I want! Besides, ever look at some scenic shots in photography magazines? Either some people have cameras that capture more of the spectrum than my feeble eyes or there's some saturation shenanigains going on. Although I try to restrain myself from going nuts with PS filters or LR presets, too much of that and operating a camera isn't a craft anymore. Except for my taste for surrealness at times, the goal is to produce a image that needs as little processing as possible right out of the camera. As a minimum, I adjust levels and sharpening on just about everything. I also love the Lightroom-unique vibrance control which boosts weaker colors while leaving bold colors alone.

My wife Cindi got into photography about 5 years ago as well, it was a lot of fun teaching her the things they didn't explain so well in her photography classes. We've has a lot of fun outings shooting together, especially when we're camping.

I Hope to build this hobby into something bigger someday, but it seems like the market is flooded with stock images. I always like to chat about camera stuff so feel free to leave any comments.

Besides this site being an outlet for my hobby, it's also a storage place for family photos and short video clips. I made the password to the family galleries easy for anyone from Cindi's family or mine to figure out. Click on a protected gallery for the password hint. With my kids now living hundereds of miles from me, every pic of them has become priceless to me. I love the way photography preserves memories and in a small way, cheats time.

Enough rambling for now, thanks for visiting my site.

Bob

17 July - Added Gallery for Northern Neighbors Day, the annual airshow here. New camping stuff in the family galleries.

Here's some playing around I did while out camping. Take about a 20 sec exposure, then while the shutter is open take a flashlight and "draw" something.