The Adventures of Mike's Camera- the blog of Michael Hudson Photography
I didn't want to just photograph the sun like everyone else was; I wanted a strong foreground to create an interesting composition. I'm fascinated by all the wind turbines in Indiana. The largest wind farm in the northwest is outside totality, so I had to find some others. I found a patch of turbines in a very remote area northeast of Indianapolis with no towns for miles. Now I just needed to find the right composition with the right turbines.
I had the good fortune to photograph Tom Skilling on a couple occasions. And he really was the nicest guy in the world. He always had time to talk to everyone who wanted to speak to him.
I bought my first drone in 2017, and have now owned three different ones, each better than the last. Drones have made such an impact on my work. I can’t overstress the extra vision it adds to my photography and video capabilities.
Over the last five or six years, video has become a major part of what I do. I shot my first commercial video back in 2009 with a Canon 5D2, one of the first cameras to put professional videography in the hands of anyone who could afford a D-SLR. Since those early days, I’ve upped my game and now usually shoot a two (or sometimes three) camera setup with a Canon Cinema camera and an R5 or R3. I love to tell stories through video.
This was the biggest workshop group I’ve had since my first Acadia National Park (Maine) workshop in 2018- eight photographers from all over the country and one international photographer… New Hampshire, New Jersey (x2), New York, Illinois, Florida (x2) and the Bahamas.
I’ve just returned from my annual summer shoot with Landcrafters of Milwaukee, a landscape architecture firm that does beautiful work. We always plan ahead to shoot on a clear sunny day, starting very early in the morning to showcase the lighting effects they install. The weather this year was perfect, though I’m always surprised how quickly the blue hour passes into normal daylight.
I spent about 30 hours on the streets of London to be at the front of the crowd and see the King's procession go by on May 6th. It was my first Coronation after two royal weddings, and over 100 royal engagements photographed since the 1980's.
Back in the 1990's and early 2000's, when I still did weddings, there was no better lab in the country to send my film to than Burrell Color in northern Indiana. For years, there was a regular flow of film and prints back and forth between my office and their lab. So it was pretty cool yesterday to shoot a video interview of the lab's founder and owner, Don Burrell, in his home for another long-time client of mine. For years his smiling face was ever present at the front of every catalog the lab sent me and it was nice to see that he was just as friendly a guy as he always appeared to be. He even showed us his beautiful home and indoor pool. I told him he'd done pretty well, and he thanked me for giving him my business all those years. Then he even told me to look around– and that I had helped him build that big, beautiful home. You're welcome, Don.
At 5:45am, my wife and I arrived at the college’s dock ready to go, with cameras, lenses and a drone. An hour later, we disembarked on Great Duck; the island is about 200 acres all together. There’s also a private home owned by a local couple who rent it out to visitors, though I was told they’d been living there for the last couple years to ride out Covid. There is also buried treasure on the island, though that’s another story for another day…
My photography comes in all shapes and sizes, and as well as doing commercial photography and video, I’m also a landscape photographer, have written a couple books on the topic and lead workshops. Since 2017, I’ve been leading landscape photography workshops in Acadia National Park, on an island off the beautiful coast of Maine. This year’s dates are now fixed at October 11-16th.
