By Seth A. McConnell

I keep getting told I’m going to get struck by lightening if I call Greg Laurie’s event at the Ice Arena The Crusades one more time. I only call it that because that is what the people I’ve been photographing have been calling it. So I made images at the Crusade last night and it was kind of fascinating. I was really unsure what to expect visually, but the good people are Harvest Crusades delivered visually with a nice light show and an interesting stage set up.

It is interesting in the fact that everything on the stage leads your eyes to the jumbo-tron. Every arrow is pointing at an upward angle that draws you to the middle which is an arrow in itself. It just draws your attention straight to it. Even though Greg Laurie was less than 50 feet in front of me I kept catching myself staring at the screen. I knew I had to include it in my composition. Its a little dominant but it goes with the stage set up they designed.

The light was nice though and the patterned spot lights made for some interesting crowd shots.

-S

I’ve seen big horn sheep before, but never this close. And without collars on them. Usually they are far off in the mountains of Montana near my parent’s cabin, but this was my first time encountering six sheep just hanging out in the middle of the road in Custer State Park. All the other cars were just going by and all I was thinking was, “STOP! This is so cool! Look at the sheep!” So, I channeled my inner wild animal nerd and photographed the sheep for a few minutes before getting to my assignment at the State Game Lodge. There were some females near the lodge, but by then the mystique had warn off a bit.

by Kristina Barker

By Seth A. McConnell

The NAIA national golf championship is in town this week. I didn’t find myself jumping for joy at that announcement, not that I hate golf but I find golf one of the most challenging and often the most frustrating thing to shoot. It takes a lot of patiences and luck to be in the right place at the right time, not to mention the rule of not being in the players line of sight. It adds up to taking the same picture over and over waiting for someone to hit it into a sand trap or into a peculiar lie.

I’ve taken the above photo dozens of times through out the past several golf seasons but this is the first time I captured the sand exploding from the trap like this. I lucked out and got three girls on the first three holes hitting out of the sand, the shots got progressively better each time. Unfortunately all three girls were with the same school, so I picked the best and let the other two fall to the cutting room floor.

-S

By Seth A. McConnell

I had the task of making photos at the Harvest Crusade offices tonight as they held a 24 hour prayer vigil in conjunction with the National Day of Prayer and they were getting in a little of their own face time as they were asking people to pray for the success of the Harvest event next week as well. It was two-fer, if you will, or just good marketing. Regardless I wasn’t sure what I was going to find when I got there. I managed to find a nicely lite, quiet room full of people that were too busy to notice I was taking pictures. I switched my camera to a quieter shutter and went to town. I feel I’ve been struggling making images as of late so it allowed me to work on my compositions and just really take the time to watch and see. It was a nice change of pace.

It was a little too quiet though, people were audibly praying for me as I was standing there which made me a little uncomfortable except for the one person who prayed I would make nice pictures. Made me smile.

-S

By Seth A. McConnell

I spent the afternoon on a ranch near Sturgis Tuesday with Bruce Bruch for a story on cattle deaths caused by the spring storms. Bruch had finished up most of his chores and I was looking for something to photograph so I asked to see the dead pile, not something I really wanted to view but something I knew I would at least have to take a picture of, just in case.

Bruce left me to do my thing as he hung out at the truck, when I turned back he was doing what can only be described as cowboy paperwork, marking in his little notebook the ear tag number of an ailing calf he just gave an antibiotic. I got a kick out of it, no matter what job you have anymore there is some sort of paper work involved.

-S