Greg Benz Photography » Minneapolis Wedding and Portrait Photographer

Jake | Minneapolis Senior Portraits

Apr 18, 2011 Posted in Portraits

Jake and I headed down to the Mississippi River and Lake Nokomis yesterday to shoot his senior portraits.  The river is huge!  Every spring I see signs that the parks are closed for flooding, but usually it seems like no big deal.  Those signs weren’t kidding this year.  We went to Crosby Farm park – both entrances were closed.  Lower Hidden Falls Park – closed.  Upper Hidden Falls Park – closed.  So we parked and walked down to Hidden Falls.  The entire parking lot (which must park 100+ cars) was a lake – there were ducks swimming in it.  There were BBQ grills popping out of it.  And there were tops (but not the benches) of picnic tables poking out of the water.  If you look at the dark triangle in the right background of the first shot below, that’s actually the opening of a tree where I photographed Emma and Megan back in the fall.  It’s now under several feet of water.

 

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The Bean and the Chicago Skyline

Mar 31, 2011 Posted in Random

I got up at 5:30, walked down the street from the Sheraton, and had this beautiful view almost to myself (you can see the ghost of a family that got up early to enjoy it as well).  This is Millennium Park, the Cloud Gate (aka, the “bean”), and the many skyscrapers of downtown Chicago.

This is my first HDR using Nik’s HDR Efex Pro, and I’ve got to say I’m pretty impressed.  It’s the first HDR software I’ve used that I liked as least as much as Photomatix.  Very intuitive, I was done with the tone mapping less than 10 minutes with no instructions or prior use.  I really liked the “u-point” technology for controlling the brightness of the reflection of the sky and clouds, really helped save me time.  Of course, I did all the typical Photoshop work I always do after to bring the effects back closer to reality.  Very happy I picked up the whole suite of Nik software at WPPI…

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Lake Calhoun Polar Bear Plunge | Freezin for a Reason!

Mar 10, 2011 Posted in Random

I shot the Lake Calhoun Polar Bear Plunge again this past Saturday. It’s a fundraiser (this is just the one for uptown Minneapolis, there are several plunges) to benefit the Special Olympics of Minnesota. What an event! I’ve shot this 3 years in a row now, and every year it just gets bigger and better. The first time I did it, it was basically an organized group of people jumping into an ice hole. Last year, they had it set up with music, bleachers, a row of hot tubs, etc. This year, they kicked if off with fireworks and raised over half a million dollars for a truly excellent cause.  The rest of the photos can be seen here:  http://prints.gregbenzphotography.com/2011polarplunge

Polar Bear Plunge for Special Olympics Minnesota | Minneapolis Event Photographer

Polar Bear Plunge for Special Olympics Minnesota | Minneapolis Event Photographer

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