A Blue Ribbon Award at the Natioonal Print Competition

     I titled this print Eli. This is actually a portrait of my cousin while we were in northern Wisconsin, which is where my family is originally from. I still have an uncle who is 83 and lives on the old family homestead. He still heats his house with a wood burning furnace. So every February all the nephews and a few uncles get together to cut wood for my uncle, sort of a guy’s weekend. We bring our chainsaws and play around with some of the old vintage tractors. We started calling this Lumberjack Weekend.

     It was during one of these weekends that I created this portrait. The lighting was perfect; his expression and his rugged look were awesome. The snow on the ground provided me with a great reflector. After playing around with this image in photo shop I thought it worked best in black and white. I was very happy when the image merited and received a blue ribbon at the Professional Photographers of America's national print competition this past summer.