"New and Improved"

We've updated our web site and added hundreds of images to the archive. Stop by joemamer.com and take a look.

Photo(shop) by Jim Brandenburg?

A few months back, I was browsing various blogs and came across renowned photographer Jim Brandenburg's site. If you're a photographer from Minnesota (or nearly anyplace else) you know of Brandenburg's outstanding collection of images and his long history as an editorial shooter for National Geographic and other top publications. On this particular day, he had just posted an image from Crow-Hassen Park Reserve near Rogers, Minnesota. You can see the posting here.

Here's Jim's image. It's an outstanding picture of rolling hills, wildflower covered prairies, and a lone tree in the distance. So outstanding that I had to see this landscape for myself.

I waited until the day I thought the flowers would be in bloom (too early I found out) and made the 1-hour trip from my house. It didn't take long for me to realize that finding a lone tree on the prairie would be difficult. The day was pleasant as I headed down the sandy trail. Before long I came across a scene that looked like it could be the spot. Problem was, the hills weren't high enough and there were small bushy trees nearby the large tree.

Here's my image. Something seemed out of place. I considered my surroundings a moment. Jim mentioned that the photo was from a recent trip, so the image is at least a year old. I hiked up to the trees and inspected the smaller ones. In my novice opinion, they were at least 5-10 years old. Since this is an active prairie restoration area, its unlikely that they would have been allowed to grow there unchecked.

Here's an overlay of the two images. By rotating my picture slightly and scaling it to match the tree's height, we can see that the horizon line has been changed, wetlands removed, and trees and other types of plants have been removed.



Now, to be fair, Jim never claims that this is an editorial, untouched image and I have yet to find any statements by him regarding his use of Photoshop. I was just surprised and frankly a bit disappointed to see such an extreme amount of alteration to the image.

So, is it still as good? Would you be as disappointed as I was to reach the destination and find it's different than presented?

Jelly's Gold

I recently licensed an image to St. Martins Press for the cover of a novel. The book, Jelly’s Gold, was written by Minnesota Author David Housewright.

The image shows the St. Paul Minnesota skyline with the Robert’s Street arched bridge crossing the Mississippi River. The original image can be seen here at joemamer.com. Heres a panoramic image from the same shoot.

See more Minnesota images

Stock Images

Recent Images by Joe Mamer Photography can be viewed at joemamer.com

Minnesota Urban Places

Photoshelter has created a great new way to share images. The slide show above shows the images in one of my image folders at Photoshelter. Want to add it to your web site or blog? Great! check out the controls in the lower right corner and copy the HTML code to your site. Another great feature is that you can buy a print or license an image just by clicking on the image as it scrolls by. Give it a try!

See more images at joemamer.com.

More from the 'Retro' Collection

Another image from the Retro Collection. I scanned about 20 more images yesterday. All of them about 18 years old, brought back lots of memories. Its always interested me how I can recall so much about the pictures I've made. Even after so many years.

Check out the images at my site here. and don't foret our September sale! Information here.

September SALE!

It's September and its a great time to spruce up your home, dorm room or office. So we're having a sale!

Just give me a call or email to order any print during September, and we'll give you 20% off the normal listed price. Any size, any framing, any quantity - all 20% off!

Browse on over to Joe Mamer Photography and begin your search today.