Minneapolis Architectural editorial and commercial Photographer David J Turner

Revolutionaries

2012-01-19T14:48:00.002-06:00

I did a portrait for this month's MN Monthly story on MN Revolutionaries.
Totally digging creative director Rob Johnson and art director Jeremy Nelson's opening layout.

Pumpkin Goons

2011-11-14T17:50:00.012-06:00

These guys are still hanging around our neighborhood.

See more goons..........Here

Fall Color

2011-11-01T11:36:00.003-05:00

Night Court

2011-09-13T18:33:00.003-05:00

Was shooting some twilight architectural shots and got side tracked by this basketball court.

Walking among giants

2011-09-09T15:29:00.005-05:00

Had a few fun days in Chicago constantly looking up........

Cannonball

2011-08-15T21:32:00.006-05:00

Our 12 year old champion.........
I hope when I am 84 years old and my hip joints have little to no structure........I hope then...... I have a fraction of my dog's spirit that convinces me it's ok to jump off docks, swim in lakes and act crazy about brightly colored floaty things.......

Dune Buggies

2011-07-27T14:36:00.003-05:00

Night Landscapes

2011-07-07T17:33:00.004-05:00

Two lanes to California

2011-06-20T23:18:00.003-05:00

I-80 Trucks

2011-06-02T19:32:00.003-05:00

2011 MN Beard Off

2011-04-03T18:36:00.007-05:00

Another fun year making portraits of the contestants and judges for the MN Beard off. To see all the portraits click on the link below

2011 MN Beard Off Portraits

You can also watch a slideshow of all the shots.......

Ice Study

2011-03-21T18:28:00.004-05:00

Shot these over the last few months. Some are all natural light and some I took firing strobes down into the ice.

Winter Swimming

2011-02-07T11:39:00.008-06:00

Took a walk on lake Nokomis Sat morning. Even though she'd probably rather be swimming, Ripley LOVES the snow and still enjoys the lake in the Winter. We wanted to make it to the Cedar Avenue bridge but Ripley decided she wanted to do a little ice fishing instead.........

Winter Fur

2011-01-31T16:43:00.004-06:00

I love the fur my dog gets between her pads in Winter. It is almost impossible not to tickle her when she's taking a nap.

18 + "

2010-12-11T16:57:00.012-06:00

First big snow storm in a long time. Went for a walk at around 1:30 a.m. this morning just as the storm was kicking in........

The New Standards

2010-12-03T15:51:00.005-06:00

Had a fun shoot a few weeks ago creating a few photographs of The New Standards. The band contains two Minneapolis music legends...Chan Poling of The Suburbs and John Munson of Trip Shakespeare and Semisonic. Completing the trio is Steve Roehm on the vibraphone. TNS are kicking off the first of a 3 night Holiday show at the Fitzgerald theater tonight.

Minneapolis Photographer / Going out West

2010-10-11T16:30:00.003-05:00

We took a quick end of Summer road trip out West. I decided to shoot into the sun a little more then I usually do.

Minneapolis Photographer / Fall Drives

2010-09-23T17:29:00.002-05:00

Worked with one of my favorite art directors, Brian Johnson, over at MN Monthly to create the cover for this months issue.

"We're goin to need a bigger boat"

2010-08-30T16:36:00.002-05:00

The other night I watched a documentary about one of my favorite movies "JAWS". This documentary really made the point of how disastrous of a production JAWS was. It tripled it's original shooting schedule and budget. At the time this meant the almost certain career death of the 27 year old director, Steven Spielberg. This was only his second major film. While making JAWS, Spielberg made many decisions as director. However two of those decisions were bigger then any of the others. One directly resulted in most of the major production problems and the other decision turned the mess into the first ever Summer blockbuster and an absolute classic film. The decision he fought for and what caused all the problems was he insisted on shooting the film in the Atlantic ocean and not a hollywood tank or a calm production lake in California. Hollywood movies were never shot on the open ocean and for good reason. The ocean was completely uncontrollable. Weather, tides, currents, salt water and boats on the horizon all plagued the production severely. Another major problem was the star mechanical shark was an epic fail in the water. They never got it to work properly. Everything got so bad that the entire crew pretty much considered the film a lost cause. Rumors were flying that Spielberg was going to be fired and replaced any time. Imagine the stress on a 27 year old Spielberg. Knowing your project is over budget, over due, your crew has lost faith in the project and at any time you may be replaced. Then he makes one of the most incredible decisions of his career and as a filmmaker. He decided to almost completely remove the shark from the film. In an interview he says the decision was relatively easy because the mechanical shark just wasn't working and almost laughable. The hard part was deciding how to proceed with the movie after making the decision to remove the physical shark from the movie you are making about a shark. The mechanical shark was originally storyboarded into almost every scene that involved the fictional shark. In a moment of desperation and maybe clarity he decided to fall back on what he knew. He decided to film the rest of the movie as one of his predecessors, Alfred Hitchcock, would do. He was going to let the audience's imagination do most of the work. All he had to do was create the feeling that something scary was under the water. He did this in some really great cinematic ways like shooting with the camera really close to the water line. A perfect example is in the opening scene of the girl getting attacked while swimming at night. Originally he was going to show much of the shark attacking her. The new idea he came up with was to attach cables to the actor and have crew members pulling her from different directions. The scene is absolutely terrifying and it's because we never see the shark. A brilliant example of serendipity, creativity and hard work all coming together. He knew that if he could craft the right tone, the audience would create something much scarier then could be actually shown. I am really inspired by this ability to stay focused and eventually realize the creative opportunity of a complete disaster. The movie JAWS that we know was not the movie Spielberg originally set out to make. However when the disastrous production was almost unsalvageable he had the knowledge,courage and vision to completely change directions. At the center of complete chaos he was able to let go of what was causing the chaos and embrace a new idea......a much better idea.

Minneapolis Photographer / Groups

2010-08-19T12:29:00.002-05:00

Shooting groups of people is always challenging. There is only so many positions you can arrange groups into and still have an interesting composition. Also it takes a lot of concentration to make sure everyone is in position and doing what you need. Recently I had two different assignments shooting groups......

Como Park

2010-07-01T18:01:00.001-05:00

Storm Clouds over Minneapolis

2010-06-24T00:38:00.002-05:00

Here is some time lapse I shot along with the stills on 6-17-2010 in South Minneapolis.

Cloud Study

2010-06-19T20:24:00.002-05:00

We had a storm roll through on Thursday night. Shot these from my front yard in about an hour.

Minneapolis Photographer / First Swim of the Season

2010-04-20T16:07:00.005-05:00

Minneapolis Photographer / OBX

2010-01-26T16:06:00.002-06:00

Took a quick road trip to the Outer banks of North Carolina a few weeks ago. We brought our dog Ripley who is a total water dog. This was our first trip to the obx and it was Ripley's first trip to the ocean. Besides being a beautiful stretch of thin, sandy islands, it's home to Kitty Hawk, as made famous by the Wright brothers....

Minneapolis Photographer / snow color

2009-12-10T15:35:00.004-06:00

We had a little snow fall here earlier this week. The morning after I went to a local arboretum with the intent of making some snowy landscapes. After walking 3 miles I found myself back at the beginning of the trail without having made a single photograph. I didn't want to leave empty handed so I let go of my original idea of wide landscapes and concentrated on some of the fauna in one of the large gardens. I was immediately inspired by the muted color I was seeing.

Minneapolis Photographer / Twins Stadium

2009-12-03T13:55:00.000-06:00

Minneapolis Photographer / cruising

2009-11-09T15:03:00.002-06:00

The other day I was shooting some pick up shots for a local client. We were just shooting some small elements in a parking lot that will be digitally stripped out and added to a different scene. There was something about this outtake that I really liked.

Minneapolis Photographer / Riding Lessons

2009-11-03T11:22:00.002-06:00

A few Fridays ago I joined our friend's daughter, Elena, for her horse riding lesson. It was one of the few nice Fall days we've had so far and the late afternoon light was great. The stables are close to the St Croix river valley which is also a popular ballooning area.

Minneapolis Photographer / Fall Color

2009-10-28T16:44:00.002-05:00

I posted this series a while back but with our disappointing weather this Fall I thought I would post them again. I shot these a few years ago with a cheap little camera I carried around with me. I wished I had my iphone back then........

Minneapolis Photographer / Morning Light

2009-10-07T15:54:00.005-05:00

I had an assignment this week that called for me to be on location by 6 a.m. Besides the getting out of bed part, I love being awake this early......

Minneapolis Photographer / Night Light

2009-09-30T11:42:00.002-05:00

I was shooting some architecture photos last night. There was a parking lot light that was giving me a lot of trouble. I couldn't get the angle of the building I wanted without the light in the way. After I was done I noticed I actually liked the light itself from a certain angle. In the spirit of turning a negative into a positive I made this photo........

Loyde Visits the Studio

2009-09-16T17:44:00.003-05:00

One of the food stylists brought her dog, Loyde, into the studio today because it was his 15th birthday today and he's just a cool dog. Besides being almost blind, almost deaf and having one back leg that doesn't quite work, Loyde gets along pretty well. My dog is 10 and I felt I was getting a little snapshot of my dog in 5 years. He picked a good day to turn 15 as there were many tasty treats being photographed. Besides sampling the caviar, Loyde, was able to get in a full day of helping the stylists, a quick nap and a little art directing also. Happy birthday Loyde!

Golf golf and more golf......

2009-08-14T12:27:00.002-05:00

The PGA championship kicked of this Thursday at Hazeltine golf course. A little while ago I was asked to shoot a portrait of Hazeltine CGCS, Jim Nicol for a national editorial client.

New Hawaii Project added to website

2009-08-06T12:20:00.006-05:00

I added a collections of photos taken in Hawaii to my projects section of my portfolio site HERE.

Here are a few samples......

Lightning Storm and 5d mark II

2009-06-23T12:21:00.002-05:00

We had a spectacular lightning storm roll through last week. I had never seen anything like it. The lightning was so intense and there was no rain, great for photographing. I grabbed my camera and starting taking some shots. I was using the the 5d mark II so I decided to do some HD video. I wanted to keep the definition of the clouds as they lit up but I think maybe I could have opened up the exposure a little. The best view was unfortunately through the power lines.

Lightning storm over Minneapolis on June 17th 2009

Birthday Walk

2009-06-05T15:34:00.004-05:00

Took Ripley swimming and for a walk around Nokomis. She loves swimming but had become really picky about which sticks she would fetch. We found and old retrieving trainer on the lake shore a few weeks ago. She loved it and would sit and retrieve it all day long if we let her. When it's time to go, we hide it in the bushes until next time. Now, every time we walk around the lake she runs for those bushes

Art Buddies

2009-05-27T11:32:00.011-05:00

Last week I was asked to take some portraits for an organization called art buddies. Art Buddies, a program of the nonprofit Creatives for Causes, pairs creative mentors from advertising and design with children from low-income families in south Minneapolis. Last week was the final day. The kids get to put on their final costumes and participate in a parade with their mentors. I was happy to help out and had a really great time. The Star Tribune just featured Art Buddies on the front page of the business section today here.......

Easter morning walk

2009-04-12T19:46:00.005-05:00

Took a walk this morning with Emily and Ripley. I only brought my 50mm and shot everything at f1.4.

Puppy Photo Shoot In 150 Seconds

2009-03-09T18:17:00.003-05:00

This is a time lapse of a photo shoot I did last month.

The moon, Venus and Jupiter....

2008-12-03T11:31:00.005-06:00

I was out on Monday night taking some shots of the moon in conjunction with Venus and Jupiter. I was close to the airport so you can see a lot of planes streaking across the sky. I am working on a serious of photographs documenting lake nokomis that these will be part of.

Happy Halloween

2008-10-29T22:51:00.013-05:00

About 2 years ago I woke up and found this guy had moved into my car over night. I believe it is a common orb weaver. The weirdest thing is that I have no idea what I did after I took these pictures. I don't remember if I caught it, slipped in the passenger side and rode to work next to it or went in the house and had another cup of coffee hoping he would move out on his own. I honestly have no idea what happened to him. We traded the car in shortly after this. I apologize for the out of focus over exposed pictures. It's gotta be the camera.

Bulldogs

2008-10-14T14:36:00.005-05:00

A few months ago I did a shoot for local ad agency Preston Kelly. You can see a behind the scene shot here. We photographed a few bulldogs for a new campaign for Deluxe. The star was a two year old English bulldog that stole my heart, named Matilda. She was awesome! She was patient and did everything we asked. It was very easy to forgive her bacon inspired farts.

Best of.......

2008-10-06T13:34:00.009-05:00

I have a few portraits in this months issue of MN Monthly. It's their Best of the Twin Cities issue.

Whale Tail......

2008-09-16T12:27:00.009-05:00

I made these photos 3 years ago. For some reason I thought of them the other day and pulled them up to work on them a little. I'm not totally satisfied with them but I think there is an idea for a future project some where in these. I just need to work it out.

To see them horizontally click here .

Hospitality

2008-09-09T13:37:00.004-05:00

Here are a few portraits I made for an assignment about the hospitality industry in MN.

MN State Fair in 6 minutes.........

2008-08-25T10:14:00.010-05:00

Went to the MN State Fair this weekend.

You can view a higher quality version by going here and

selecting the "watch in high quality" tag.

Serious Guys.......

2008-08-20T12:04:00.003-05:00

I Photographed a few project managers over at Ameriprise for an editorial client in Atlanta.

Hood Dawgs.......

2008-08-12T15:16:00.006-05:00

We have some cool dogs in our neighborhood. Harriet is cool because she has two different colored eyes. Stanley is cool because his name is Stanley. Also I think he could probably pull a garbage truck down our block if he wanted to.

News People

2008-08-05T17:40:00.005-05:00

I photographed local weather guy Paul Douglas a few weeks ago. I also photographed Fox anchor Robyne Robinson earlier this year.

Dog's POV

2008-08-01T11:19:00.007-05:00

Minneapolis agency Colle+McVoy sent me to St. Louis recently to shoot an ad for Purina. The concept was to shoot a dog show from a dog's point of view. Here are a few quick picks.

Canada eh

2008-07-09T21:59:00.006-05:00

Took a road trip to Toronto a few days ago. Tried out a new camera.

freckles

2008-06-20T11:35:00.007-05:00

Food Stylist Lara Miklasevics was in the studio the other day. She brought her daughter ,Tatum, in to be a hand model for a few shots.

Commuters

2008-06-02T23:20:00.004-05:00

The other day I was on a job that brought me to one of the airport rail stations.

I got caught up in wondering where everyone was off to or coming home from.

I made this little flipbook video from a bunch of the outtakes.

Balancing rocks with the bug

2008-05-14T16:15:00.005-05:00

We spent some time Friday night with our friend's daughter Elena aka "the coolest little girl in the world". You can see more images here.

02138

2008-05-09T14:31:00.007-05:00

Earlier this year I got an assignment from Harvard lifestyle magazine 02138 to photograph Al Franken. I followed him around at a fundraiser one night. The next night we got a few moments with him at his house to take a few
portraits.

SB2

2008-04-14T15:13:00.004-05:00

I was in Chicago this weekend attending the ASMP SB2 seminar.
It was really an incredible collection of great presenters and talented people.
I had a great time and look forward to implementing everything I learned.

I managed to jump out for an hour and drove down to Lake Michigan.
It was rainy all weekend but great clouds.

B

2008-03-27T16:27:00.003-05:00

I found this guy in the studio a while back.

O captain my captain

2008-03-06T17:40:00.006-06:00

Whenever I'm shooting I always try and get at least two versions of a location
portrait. This forces me to explore different ways of viewing the location.
A simple move like turning around 180 degrees can yield a completely
different view and offer another interesting composition. I think the following
two shots illustrate this well. This was an assignment for a magazine that was
doing a story on orchestra hall. The subject is Nate and he is in charge of all
of the events that take place at orchestra hall.

Doctor Doctor...

2008-02-06T15:44:00.000-06:00

I just finished an assignment shooting a few of the many up and coming
doctors in MN. The hospitals they represented include HCMC, North Memorial,
The Mayo Clinic and The U of M.

Fresh

2008-01-09T16:23:00.001-06:00

I am featured in the Jan/Feb issue of Communication Arts magazine.
To see a larger file of the layout follow one of the two links below.

Commarts website
layout

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-23T19:55:00.000-06:00

Downtown

2007-12-06T23:05:00.001-06:00

This is the view from my studio. It's a quick panorama but you can see the site of the new twins stadium to the right.

Winter is Coming

2007-11-26T16:32:00.000-06:00

Went for a walk around lake Nokomis yesterday. Much to Ripley's disapointment the ice was starting to take over the lake.

Wedding Photo

2007-11-15T19:05:00.000-06:00

I've been scanning some old family photos to archive and frame. I came across this one of my mom and dad.
This was taken on Oct 4th 1969. There is something about the simplicity of this shot that I like. I can imagine the photographer saying "go stand in front that curtain, that will make a nice photo".

Fall Part 2

2007-10-29T16:42:00.001-05:00

Did I mention how much I like Fall in the midwest? The leaves, the colors, the smell of smoke in the crisp cool air. I love all the tacky Halloween decorations. As much as I would love to live by the ocean, I'm always thankful to live here this time of year.

We went for a walk on Sunday.

Happy Fall

2007-10-02T17:03:00.000-05:00

Fall is my favorite season, especially here in Minneapolis. I took these last Fall.

Horace Mann

2007-09-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

Here's a couple of print ads I shot for local agency GDB.

Stuff on Emily Fair Style

2007-08-26T22:05:00.000-05:00

Went to the MN state fair this weekend. Emily loves the fair and likes her picture taken at the fair, especially with all the food we get. So this year I thought it would be fun to see how many pictures I could get of stuff on Emily's head before she caught on. Look how excited she is about her Chicago dog.

Canadian Geese

2007-08-22T11:10:00.000-05:00

Organizing some older images today and I found this shot. I took this on Jan 1st of this year in Toronto.

At The Cabin

2007-08-20T15:27:00.000-05:00

Spent the weekend up North at a friend's cabin.

Northern Church

2007-08-01T17:53:00.001-05:00

I came upon this church while I was on an editorial assignment in Northern Minnesota.

Thunderbird Motel

2007-07-23T14:41:00.000-05:00

Here is an editorial portrait I did for a story on the Thunderbird motel. It is a very funky motel with a 1960s tiki, Native American vibe. It has a great bar where we shot this. One of the quotes in the copy I was sent said "everybody has a story about the Thunderbird motel". I had dinner with my parents the day after the shoot. I told them how cool I thought the place must have been in it's hey day of the 1960s and asked if they had ever been there. Turns out one night in 1966 the Thunderbird was hosting a singles party. My dad went there with some friends while my mom was there with some of her friends. My dad asked my mom for her number and as they say "the rest was history". That's my story about the Thunderbird motel.

Painting With Light and Sprint

2007-07-16T15:44:00.000-05:00

When I first got into photography I was attracted to the magic of light exposing film and then watching the prints develop in the darkroom. Right away I started experimenting with light painting. Basically it's the technique of keeping your shutter open as you move a light source inside the frame. The effect is very cool. It is also very difficult to control. That is why it is usually avoided in most commercial applications. I continued to experiment with it all the way through college. Then I entered the world of advertising photography. Where everything is pre planned and tightly controlled and I concentrated on learning the techniques of lighting commercial products for advertising. I love lighting and controlling light but I constantly have to remind myself that you need to experiment. Sometimes you need to let go and just see what happens. I think that's why I like this Sprint commercial so much. It reminds me of the magic that can happen if you just let loose and play around a little. The funny thing is that I know this commercial was highly planned out. It's a national tv ad it didn't just happen in a weekend. I still think the creators embraced the idea that not everything has to be perfect and I like that.

This commercial combines both the light-painting technique and flipbook animation (see "Coolest Girl" post below) technique. I think the end result is very cool.

Be sure to watch the second clip also. It shows the Japanese troop pika pika behind the scenes (and in the frame) creating these drawings. For geeks like me this is almost cooler then the ad........almost.

Coolest little girl in the world

2007-07-15T13:29:00.000-05:00

I made this flipbook animation from around 275 still images. It stars our friends daughter Elena (who's favorite director is Tim Burton). We turned on some music told her to go crazy and I let the motor drive rip. I then put all the images together in quicktime to make this little movie.

Note........The sound doesn't start for about 15 seconds and try to ignore the horrible web compression.

Happy July Fourth!

2007-07-04T20:49:00.000-05:00

Miami and D65

2007-07-01T18:10:00.000-05:00

I was in Miami for a week attending Seth Resnick and Jamie Spritzer's D65 digital workshop.
It was an excellent class and I would highly recommend it.

Florida Keys

2007-06-30T00:20:00.000-05:00

The most photographed dock in Florida

Welcome!

2007-05-05T20:03:00.000-05:00

This is going to be a place for me to post fun stuff and keep people up to date with what I've been up to.

Cheers,

Dave