I’m excited to introduce another great installment in the ‘Out Their Front Door Series’. The series dedicated to fellow explorers of the creative frontier. Blake Rudis runs site and incredible learning resource Everyday HDR (http://www.everydayhdr.com). Talk about generous with his knowledge. Seriously, you can’t go wrong by becoming a regular visitor. I hope you enjoy this post as much as I did. There is a lesson to be learned here and I’d like to thank Blake for sharing it with all of us.

You can find everything Blake here:

• Check out his store for some great Photoshop actions and textures (store)
• www.everydayhdr.com
• Google+

Thank you Justin for this opportunity and putting together such an awesome series of photographers and their stories! I am honored to be included in such a group of excellent photographers. Out my front door huh? Well since I recently moved from the West coast to the Mid-West, I feel it appropriate to highlight the endeavor and how it has affected how I photograph what is out my front door.

Traveling from a location with an abundant amount of landmarks and glamorous landscapes to the middle of America can be a tricky thing for a Photographer. That is exactly what I did a little over a year ago. My wife and I packed up our life and moved from the Bay Area of California to a little town just outside of Kansas City Missouri. I don’t know if you understand the perspective quite yet. We lived in Santa Clara, CA a city of just under one million people surrounded by several other cities of around 1 million people. We now reside in quaint little town called Tracy in Missouri, a town of 219 people. You read me correctly, 219 people.

Despite the culture shock, one of my biggest concerns with such an epic change was, what the hell am I going to photograph now? One year ago Salina and I, Salina is my cameras name, were frequently visiting San Francisco, the Northern Coast, and National Parks like Yosemite. Now we are surrounded by corn and countryside. Shortly after our arrival I came to an epiphany, this will be a challenge for me and my photography. It really was too easy to take a great picture in California, I mean come on we were surrounded by epic beauty and intense landmarks.

To really enjoy my Photography in the Mid-West I was going to have to open my mind a bit more and change my ways. Composition was now going to be more critical than ever. To make the mundane more interesting I would have to ensure my composition was on point. Shooting times were now more critical than ever, sunset, sunrise, golden hour, and blue hour coupled with acute composition would be my only hope for survival! I began doing new things too, working more with my speed light and macro gear to photograph the giant bugs the Mid-West houses. I became very fond of this and developed an awesome technique that has taken my love for macro to a whole new level.

I started to branch out and discover new places. Kansas City has a lot of beauty and history to offer any photographer. It is home to the Kauffman Center which is one of the most difficult buildings to photograph to really give the viewer a sense of its massive size. I am proud to say it is right outside my front door and cannot wait to see where my next adventure in Kansas City takes me.

We started this series with the intent of inspiring others to chase the beauty that can be found out their front door. The icing on the cake is that we all get to experience a little piece of the world through the eyes of some very talented people. Here we are with part 6 of the series with Jim Denham, excelling on both fronts, as he takes us ‘Out The Front Door’.

• Website: http://www.jimdenhamphotography.com/
• Twitter: Jim_Denham

Out My front Door
Jim Denham

Big thanks to Justin for inviting me to participate in his Out My Front Door series. I am a huge fan of the series and of the talent that has presented thus far, so it is a huge honor for me to be part of it!

Your first step out of my front door puts you in the suburban Minnesota town of Cottage Grove, the southern most town in Washington County, residing on the northern banks of the Mississippi River as it heads out of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area. Cottage Grove is a growing area as the urban sprawl spreads from its more populated northern neighbors of Woodbury and Oakdale, which both lie on the outer loop around the cities. The highlight of Cottage Grove, however, is located in the southern area of the town where it butts up against the Mighty Mississippi, being much less populated and lending itself to beautiful parks, trails, fishing and wildlife viewing.

If you follow the river out of town to the southeast, it takes you to the small town of Hastings, MN, one of my favorite places to take pictures in the area, mainly because it seems to be stuck in a different time. This is evident from the minute you cross the Hastings River Bridge into the town. The bridge is an older one with lots of character, and leads directly into a downtown area that could fit perfectly into a turn of the twentieth century town if it weren’t for the paved streets and modern automobiles. On the back side of Hastings is the train station where I have spent a great deal of time with the Canon DSLR. It’s easy access and target rich, with interesting photo ops on the tracks and in the old station that once was used for people to be buy tickets, but now is is a station for the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

Following the river north from Cottage Grove will take directly into the city of St. Paul. If you’re not familiar with the Twin Cities, they are definitely not of the identical type, with Minneapolis being the happening place and St. Paul being older and more historic in nature. Their biggest similarity is their connection with the Mississippi River – both reside on its shores and rely heavily on its traffic.

Being that St. Paul is closer to me than Minneapolis, I’ve spent quite a bit more time there pushing the shutter button. As beautiful as the river area is, my interests have moved further into the city, around the nooks and crannies of the buildings and allies of the town. There are many stories there, most with only the present known, allowing the viewer to develop the beginnings and ends, which is one of the great features of photography and one of the reasons I’m drawn to it!

The east side of the cities is bordered by the St. Croix River which collides with the Mississippi River a bitt further south of Hastings. As you head north on the St. Croix, you run into the town known as the birthplace of Minnesota, Stillwater. Of all of the towns I’ve took pictures in, this one has become my favorite. It has an antique nature to it and about it, being a huge gathering spot for folks to walk the town streets shopping for those antiques, as well as books, kitchen supplies, and wonderful places to eat, including classical diners with soda fountains. It’s hard for me to decide whether to put the camera on the tripod and hunt for HDR urban opportunities or attach the camera to the RS-7 strap and just take street photos.

When it is all said and done, however, most people relate what is out my front door with two things: 1) The Land of 10,000 Lakes, and 2) Long Winters. We have plenty of both.

Out my front door is a great combination of city and country, big and small, gritty and beautiful, warm and cold, old and new. The Twin Cities offers diverse and continuous photo opportunities that are unique to this area. It’s also the place where my son was born and is growing up, which gives it an extra special place in my hear where it will reside forever.

If you have been following the site for any length of time, you have heard me refer to LightAsMagic.com’s unofficial legal council. If you have been following the site for a long time, you know the unofficial legal council is Rick Young. You also know that Rick was the first guest blogger ever to grace the site. I think that was over a year ago? Outside of being a long time photo buddy and unofficial legal council, Rick is an inspiring photographer. Before he sent his post to me, I was sure that I had no business in Phoenix Arizona. Way too hot for me. After I complied the images, I’m pretty sure I will be visiting soon. Take a look. I think you will agree.

• Rick’s Website: http://www.ryoungfoto.com/
• Twitter: @RYoungFoto

I first came across Lightasmagic.com in a Nik Software newsletter. Justin did a great screencast tutorial involving a futuristic looking wine cellar. I was instantly hooked and became a daily visitor. He is a great photographer and has an uncanny ability to not only capture great images, but then explain the “why behind the what”. Whether it is with his DSLR, point and shoot, or iPhone he always seems to deliver. So, when Justin asked me to be a “guest blogger” I was thrilled. At any rate, that’s enough about Justin, after all I am the “guest” and this post is all about ME!

The idea behind this series is to showcase what is out your front door. For me though, it is what’s behind my front door that got me started into photography. Like so many of us, I simply wanted to be able to take decent pictures of 5 1/2 years, 3 boys, and 3 cameras later, I feel I am starting to get the hang of it.

Phoenix, Arizona is a a great place to be a photographer. There are sweeping Sonoran Desert vistas:

There is the high desert:

There are open plains:

There are mountain streams:

Hidden waterfalls:

And there are snowy roads:

Within a few hours drive you have

Vegas

and the ocean

Don’t get me wrong, Phoenix is also a lot like your other major cities. You have your downtown area:

Courthouse

airports

and abandoned buildings

Somewhere along the wayI managed to pick up a few commercial jobs, mainly doing model homes and country clubs,

That brings us back to my front door. Once inside, I am reminded of what brought me to photography in the first place.

One of the challenges is not being pigeon holed into one type of photographer. I don’t want to be a children’s photographer. I don’t want to be a wedding photographer or a commercial photographer. I don’t want to be a landscape or HDR photographer. Even though I do each of these things on a regular basis, I simply want to be a “photographer”… period.