Last weekend I was one of the volunteer photographers at the City of Lakes Loppet, an amazing weekend-long celebration of cross country skiing – and of the great skiing terrain available here in Minneapolis.

I love cross country skiing. I got my first pair of skis when I was four or five, and every time I go out I remember shuffling around our yard, in love with the feeling of gliding over the snow.

Then, every time out, I get to the first hill and re-remember that cross country skiing is not easy. Especially if you’re going 38 km like the racers in the Loppet. It’s this combination of appreciation for the aesthetics of gliding, and the respect for the engine you’ve got to have as a racer, that made me realize last month that I’ve got to start photographing skiers. This is my first batch of images in a collection that will hopefully grow quite a bit over the next couple winter seasons. Enjoy!

In the Birkebeiner tradition

Didn't get a look at this beard after the race, but I know it was epic.

Skiers reserve their spot on the start line with their skis

Johanna Winters - women's freestyle 3rd place finisher - on the line

Poling away from the line

Two members of Team Fischer 15k in

Johanna Winters finishing strong

Here’s the full gallery for more race goodness.

2010 City of Lakes Loppet – Images by Chris Bohnhoff

I love me a good reuben. Are you with me? The tang of the pastrami, the sour of the kraut and the sweet of the russian dressing, it’s a beautiful thing. I decided last month that I needed some behind the counter photos of a real deli, and visions of reubens were what spurred me on. And while there is definitely room for debating the best pastrami in the Twin Cities, my long standing favorite is The Brothers Deli, downtown Minneapolis.

The Brothers has been around for a long time, in several incarnations; I remember eating at one in Southdale Mall when I was a kid and my mom was a secret shopper for Dayton’s (speaking of old school). Regardless of the location, The Brothers has always been the kind of place that serves bowls of pickles on the tables and slow roasts its pastrami and corned beef on the premises. Which is the only way to go when it comes to a deli, as far as I’m concerned.

I talked to Jeff, the head brother, by phone a couple times to set things up – telling him that I’m a big fan, that I’d love to shoot some during a lunch rush sometime. Our two phone conversations lasted about 15 seconds combined (Jeff’s clearly a guy who has 14 hours of work to do in an 8 hour day), and next thing I knew my assistant TJ and I were there ready to shoot.

Jeff’s crew is a well-oiled machine. All of his employees have been with him for years – many for more than ten – and they know how to get a lunch rush fed. As I tiptoed around everyone, it kind of blew me away how calm everyone was, even though the line was out the door and down the skyway for much of the lunch rush. Each person had their station, and everyone knew exactly what was needed. It was beautiful to watch.

Salad station

Soon-to-be Corned Beef Sandwich

The Grill Captain

Jeff surprised me by asking if I’d be interested in shooting some food shots to put up on the walls of the restaurant. Based on our amazingly quick phone conversations I figured he would have his head down and would forget about me a minute after I was done shooting. But as it turns out, my photos now hang over the deli bar and behind the counter, and there may be more coming shortly. You gotta love it when personal work turns in to paid work.

Next time you’re in the skyways, keep an eye out for a two foot by three foot reuben floating over The Brothers deli bar – that’s my work. Sweet!

Following up on my shoot at the Twin Cities Bridge Center last month, last week I had the chance to hang out with the Minneapolis Grand Slam Club in the friendly confines of the Richfield Community Center. While at the Twin Cities Bridge Center I had been told that if I wanted to understand the Minnesota bridge culture I should really talk to Peggy Kaplan – a long-time competitor and winner on the national bridge stage, and in the words of her husband, an ambassador for the game of bridge. Peggy was nice enough to invite me to photograph the Grand Slam club, which draws some of the more advanced players in town to their Friday night games.

There’s clearly a high degree of focus, concentration, and seriousness to these games. But across the board, the people I talked to wanted me to understand that bridge isn’t just cold calculation and steely glares. In fact, the club has a zero tolerance policy against meanness. How many clubs can say that?

And bridge players consider themselves a family: a couple years ago, one of the Grand Slam organizers had a stroke. He didn’t have health insurance, and the club came together and raised over $6,000 for his treatment. Another member told me how great it is that wherever you go as a bridge player, you can call up the local club and have a social group to connect with. He listed off the places where he still has contact with the local clubs: Des Moines, Omaha, Fort Lauderdale. . .

Thanks to Peggy and the Grand Slam club for allowing me in to your game. And thanks to all of you for stopping by and keeping up with my photo adventures! May we all take a cue from the Grand Slammers this holiday season and adopt a zero tolerance for meanness policy, balance science and art, and look out for our fellow competitors.

All the best to you this Holiday Season!

National champ Peggy Kaplan

A little healthy competition. What’s your game of choice? My wife Johanna and I are on a little bit of a dominoes kick right now. I’ve gone through golf phases, and darts, and cribbage, and I used to play a lot of Skip Bo with my grandparents when I was a kid. Don’t try to play Scrabble with me, though, because I’ll refuse.

My wonderful in-laws have been bridge players since they were in college. I only ever had the vaguest of notions of what bridge even was until a couple years ago when I asked them what the game is all about. For some reason I got intrigued, to the point where I actually read books about bridge. This was completely perplexing to Johanna, and to me, but it was a fun thing to do exactly because it was so outside the normal ways I use my brain; it was fun to try to work through the deep logic exercises in bridge strategy. Unfortunately, Johanna has yet to catch the bridge bug. And since bridge is generally a game that ideally involves a partner and another couple, I haven’t made it too far down the bridge road.

But we did take a beginning bridge class. The in-laws gave me a gift certificate for classes at the Twin Cities Bridge Center, which we took with friends a year ago. At the end of each class, my head swimming with points and suits and bids, I would peek in to the main room on our way out to the car. Every night the room was packed, and I was always struck by the size of this community that I was just starting to get a small glimpse of.

Last week I finally went back to learn some more. Here are some images from my first trip, with more to come.

Bridge Humor

A sampling of the finer points of bridge strategy. You follow?

For the latest cover of Seward Coop’s Sprout! magazine we did a faux apple harvest. Faux because of the fact that our location – a small apple stand at the Dowling Urban Environmental School – had plenty of apples, they were just rotting under our feet, not actually on the trees. But when you’re trying to illustrate the fall harvest, and you’re about a month too late to harvest (and it’s about 80 degrees, but when the issue comes out it’ll be 50), what are you gonna do? You’re gonna fake it, that’s what.

Photographing kids is always an attempt to organize sheer chaos, but these guys did a pretty great job pretending to be cold and pick pretend apples (they did actually eat the apples – that wasn’t a problem).

For those of you photo lighting aficionados out there, an explanation of the first shot above. As you can see in the first shot, the sun was pretty low in the sky when we did the shoot. I knew that there was going to be some action going on, and that it would need to be frozen for the main shot of the family at least. Given that the natural light was fading, and we were in and out of dappled sunlight, I knew there would be some lighting happening.

I love using the sun as a backlight – even putting the sun in the frame to get the nice rings of color – then pumping something in as a key light in front, so that’s what we did here. I had my assistant TJ climb a tree camera right and direct a Quantum Q-Flash towards the family. When combining ambient and strobe lights the main question is what exposure value do you want to give the background in relation to the subject, being lit by the strobe? I really wanted a bright background to give the scene as much warmth as possible, so I adjusted my exposure to give the trees in the background plenty of detail, and to blow out the highlights. Then I adjusted the Quantum to give a good exposure on our family, and blasted away.

First time I’ve ever asked an assistant to climb a tree for me. . . hopefully it won’t be the last.