Photography Projects
Project photography includes a variety of assignments, from brochure work to travel subjects. Even the most ordinary things can be beautiful…
Art Photography Gallery
A collection of my favorite art photography work from across the Western Hemisphere. This work appears in magazines, private photo galleries and stock photography collections focusing on the beautiful outdoors. Stop back again, this gallery is updated often.
Wedding photography in Minnesota and Southwestern Wisconsin
Your wedding photos should be as unique as you are. Every bride and groom, every location, every wedding party is different, and my wedding photography captures that in a set of photos that will become priceless to you over the years. As a wedding photographer, my work is a mixture of portrait and photojournalist shots that at the end of the day tell the special story about you, your personalities, your love for each other.
Check out the wedding photos in my online gallery to see what I mean, then let’s talk about you.
This website is still under development, but for an overview of my wedding photography services visit the link.
A new and improved website to showcase my work
It’s very exciting to be unveiling this new site filled with my writing and photography. This new site format is still being developed, so please check back soon for new posts and information!
by Shannon Porter Photography
Senior, child, family portrait photography | Winona, Minnesota
Unique, compelling, soulful. A portrait should reflect everything that the person on the other side of the lens has to say about themself.
From children to seniors to magazine photo work, this portrait gallery offers a tiny glimpse of the possibilities.
Sittings are customized for your needs and start at $150, including an hour of shooting and a folio of digital images.
Home sweet home
Life’s little epiphanies have a funny way of sneaking up on me in the least expected places, sprinkling in powerful “aha” moments even during the most mentally vacant points of my day.
Take, for example, the dove family in my back yard. Oh sure, at first I thought they were just little cooing trespassers who figured my ladder was the best place for a nest.
Think again. These birds had an important life lesson to share, and I’m just glad I caught it before it was too late.
The ladder never seemed like a particularly good place for a nest to me, it hangs sideways along the garage and is only about four feet off the ground.
But for some reason, mother dove thought it looked perfect and she’s scrabbled together some grass and twigs there the past several seasons.
Because the nest is entirely visible, my daughters and I have enjoyed front row seats to one of the most marvelous circles in life, from the time the bright blue eggs appear to the day the fledglings are perched precariously on the wires up above.
In return, we cluck over mama bird a bit, making sure there is always a bit of water and bird seed around while she sits in vigil on her impending brood.
With no small excitement my daughter announced one day that two chicks had emerged, both curled into fuzzy little balls in the bottom of the nest while mother went off in search of sustenance.
Okay, you’re right, she was probably out trying to find just a moment of sanity after sitting on that nest all those weeks, but seriously, can you blame her?
Anyway, every day we watched as the chicks turned from freakish looking little creatures into feathery birds until they were almost too ridiculously large to sit in the tiny makeshift nest. They were cute, actually they were so ugly they were cute, and I think we all began to feel a little like these birds were a part of our family.
Mama was a good provider and the babies were strong, and some days as I watched her I’d ponder the similarities of this mother outside raising her offspring and me inside raising mine.
Finally the day came when mother dove sat atop the chain link fence and coaxed the babies, it was time to leave the nest.
With a mixture of sadness and pride my daughter and I sat on a bench swing and watched as the first baby made the colossal leap and fluttered next to mom.
But baby two didn’t want to go. It just sat there stubbornly staring back, perfectly content right where it was and unmoved by mother’s urging.
I thought about my own children just then, how the nest of home is safe and comfortable, and how frightening it must be to have to leave it, presumably forever.
As parents we have the mixed role of sheltering our children while they grow, doing our best to keep them from harm but knowing at a certain point they must grow up and leave.
It’s kind of sad really, and just as scary for parents who must coax their children out into the world hoping they have the skills to manage it on their own.
But this baby bird wasn’t budging and mother didn’t seem sad, she was actually getting kind of miffed. All day she sat there chirping encouragement at baby two, and all day it sat there looking back. Sometimes it would walk to the edge of the ladder and peer up at her, but it was just too uncertain to trust its wings and fly.
Perhaps it was afraid to sleep in the now cavernously empty nest by itself, or perhaps it finally decided if mom said so it must be the right thing to do, but sometime late that evening it finally took the leap and was gone into the shrubbery of the chain link fence with its sibling.
I admit it, I felt proud and strangely moved by the spectacle, and the next morning I went out to the yard to see if mom and babies were still hanging around in the shrubs.
What I found in the back of the yard instead took my breath away.
Carnage.
Maybe it was a cat or some other baby bird devouring night creature, but there by the fence was the unmistakable evidence that one of the babies had been killed overnight. There was no sign of mother dove and the other baby, presumably because they fled for higher and safer ground.
I sank down on the bench swing and cried for the baby bird and for its mother, struck by the cruelty of it all.
Just then my daughter came outside for her morning peek at the birds, and though I tried to stop her she knew right away something terrible had happened. I gave her a hug while she cried too.
“Go back in the house,” I told her. “I don’t want you outside right now.”
Wiping away tears, she headed for the back door with me on her heels. “When can I go outside?” she asked me.
“When you’re 35,” I replied.
Hickory dickory boom
I’m being terrorized in my house and I’m sick of it. Yes, I have a teen and a tween, but I’m not talking about them this time.
I’m talking about uninvited guests who lounge around and mooch off my heat and eat my food and generally make this peaceful soul feel alarmingly murderous.
I’ve never been a killer, but the mice who’ve sought refuge inside my big old house have made me start fantasizing about sinister things like BB guns and whether the cops would understand if they showed up and my walls, floors and furniture were full of holes. If you’re cold and want to hide in an exterior wall until spring, fine. But when you try to drag a piece of warm pizza off the counter, eat my one saved candy bar and sit around playing cards in my breakfast nook, you’ve really pushed me too far.
Yes, I know, put everything away and set traps. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The problem, and I’m not too proud to admit this, is that I can’t figure out how to set one of those old wooden traps without snapping it on my fingers at least a dozen times. After a half hour of that misery I’d rather strangle mice with my bare hands, if all my fingers weren’t broken, that is.
When I do finally somehow get a trap set, those infernal creatures just mock me by licking off all the peanut butter without tripping the bar of death.
So I went to the store and got dummy traps, the kind you just squeeze the back of like a big chip clip and it sets itself.
The problem is that those traps aren’t powerful enough to kill mice that have been well-fed on peanut butter. And, feel free to disagree with me on this, but the only thing worse than a live mouse or a dead mouse is a maimed mouse looking up at you with those Fievel Goes West eyes and a disfiguring injury inflicted by yours truly.
I wish I could whack them with a broom at that point, but of course, like an idiot, I feel all guilty and I try to save them.
Right after I tried to kill them.
You get the picture.
I have actually thrown two mice outside and wished them the best, which is stupid because “the best” in their minds is undoubtedly whatever I’m making for dinner, and they were probably back inside before it ever came off the stove.
In fact, the other night it looked like the mouse that was scaling my cockatiel cage for a bite to eat had a little cast on his leg and I’m pretty sure he flipped me the bird.
This, of course, means war. No more Mr. Nice, er, Girl duped by that Disney tomfoolery making adorable characters out of nasty little rodents. No more second chances and guilty consciences. From now on it’s all glue traps and poison, and maybe I’ll borrow a few cats.
All I can say is thank heavens I don’t have a BB gun, because I’d hate to really crack someday and be having this conversation instead with the Winona PD.
The itsy bitsy spider…
Nothing is quite as character-building as being a parent, especially during those moments when your kids think you can solve any problem, and you think you should be running away down the road and you hope they can keep up.
On an excursion through the back roads of Wisconsin we had one of those little character-building episodes as we were meandering our way through the countryside with the windows down and the radio up.
Piled three across in the back seat were my daughters McKenzie and Mallory, 10 and 14, and my very young sister Amanda, 15, who was visiting from California, and as I chauffeured them along we were all laughs and life was good.
Then something strange happened. Freakishly strange. Horror movie strange.
Something flew in the window, hit Mallory in the chest and disappeared between the mash of legs and purses in the back seat. It was small, like perhaps a dragonfly or a twig or something, and after a curious look around no one paid it much mind.
About a half-mile later, all hell broke loose.
In the rearview mirror I saw Mallory, bewildered, brush off her chest. Then Amanda did the same, and then the girls started to scream.
But they weren’t just screaming, they were screaming words that make my blood run cold. “HELP! I’m covered with SPIDERS!”
More screaming. Now McKenzie’s screaming too, and I’m trying not to crash on the tight bend of the narrow country road that doesn’t even have a shoulder to speak of. Oh yeah, and I’m screaming too.
Anyone who has followed my columns knows I hate spiders, they are like Kryptonite for Superman to me. And now I have a few hundred of them in my car.
In the most unsafe fashion possible, I screech to a halt in the middle of the bend, two tires still on the road and the other two on the edge of a deep ditch.
Completely hysterical, we fight the tangle of seatbelts and scramble out of the car. Two of the girls end up in the ditch and Amanda, her foot caught in the seatbelt of my two-door car, ends up sprawled in the middle of the road with her I-Pod player, the only thing she saved from the car, skidding across the road into the other lane.
I wish I could have a movie of us just then, running around the side of the road frantically brushing off what turned out to be literally hundreds of tiny spiders.
After a couple of minutes we calm down, we catch our breath, and we start to laugh. And laugh. Almost as hysterically as we were with spiders on us. It was just so crazy, and after it was over it seemed awfully funny.
But then we realize, with dawning dread, that it’s not really over at all.
The car.
“I’m not getting back in there,” the three say in unison. I agree with them, wondering abstractly how we will make the last hour of our trip home now that we have to abandon my vehicle forever.
Reluctantly I accept the fact that I, the grownup, will have to be the soldier who goes back into the car to fight the spiders, and I wonder how I’m going to do that without any bug spray or at least some vodka.
A pleasant teenage girl stops to see if we need some help. I’m tempted to ask her if she kills spiders, but I decide it’s time to pretend I’m the grownup these three girls think I am.
On the floor in the back seat I find the apparent culprit, some sort of bright yellow and black grub that came in the window absolutely covered with spiders.
Fascinated and horrified at the same time, I couldn’t tell if they were attacking it or merely riding piggyback as it mysteriously flew through the air, and I wondered for a minute how exactly a worm flies anyway.
But with itsy bitsy spiders still all over the back seat and floor I didn’t really have time to care, working frantically to smash them all lest they find good spots to hide only to crawl on me later.
Several minutes go by. I’m sweating and twitching, quite certain I’ll have nightmares for a long time. But at last I am convinced that the spiders are gone.
After several more minutes of coaxing I manage to convince the girls to get back in the car and we are off again with lessons under our belt.
My daughters learned that I am willing to be brave when I have to be, and they eye me with new respect after our little episode.
Amanda has learned that the Midwest is a really freakish place, and she is silently wondering about moving up her flight home.
And I have learned, with the windows tightly shut, that country breezes are overrated and that air conditioning is worth every penny no matter how nice it seems outside.
Your Mom did what?
Every year when I teach my College For Kids newspaper class, I crack up at the things kids will tell me that would probably make their parents faint.
I hear all kinds of sordid details about daily life in little Timmy’s or Suzie’s home, from who was throwing up to what mom forgot to where the dog did what.
But never fear if your child is one of my graduates, because the truth is I don’t believe most of it, and with good reason.
See, I have a daughter who has told a tale or two, and that reality has left me listening to everything now with a healthy grain of salt.
I was a storyteller from the time I could talk, crafting fanciful tales that were as fun to listen to as they were to believe.
For example, I convinced my kindergarten class that the wooden giraffe and elephant I brought to show and tell had come to me by way of my Grandmother’s safari to Africa. And yes, thank you, she had a wonderful time.
So while I’d be hardly the person to chastise a little girl with an imagination, I never suspected that my demure daughter had a blackbelt in storytelling.
It’s just that she has always been so shy, and I’m talking about really, really shy.
Seriously, this is the same child, upon hearing me say she didn’t know how to talk until she was two, said to me rather indignantly, “I knew how to talk. Maybe I just didn’t know you that well.”
Which made me laugh for a month. But I digress…
So when she was in kindergarten her teacher stopped me one day and asked in a hushed voice, “Can I ask you a question? Did you just have a baby?”
I, of course, repaid her for the question with a dumb, blank stare, wondering if I looked like I’d just had a baby. “No.” I responded quizzically.
She started to laugh.
And laugh.
And laugh.
It seems my darling daughter had been fantasizing about a baby brother, so much so that she created him. Right out of thin air.
And her kindergarten teacher had swallowed it hook, line and sinker, although she had lingering doubts only because (I’d like to think, anyway) that I never actually appeared to be pregnant.
So we had a little laugh together there in the hallway, and I told her another story, the only real experience I’d had with my daughter’s “storytelling” up to that point.
She used to go to a wonderful in-home daycare for half the day before she started school, and we loved it except for one thing.
I was mildly troubled that I’d pick her up in the early afternoon and she’d say she didn’t have lunch.
At first I’d feed her and wonder if the morning just got away from the daycare lady, but then I picked her up a few times and actually saw her eating lunch, only to have her tell me later she hadn’t.
Now, mind you, this is by no means an underfed child, so what the whole lunch thing was about was a mystery to me.
Maybe she just liked what I was making for lunch better, I mused.
Then I found out she apparently liked what the daycare lady was making for breakfast better.
It seems that most days my daughter was telling the daycare lady I hadn’t fed her breakfast, something the daycare lady eventually brought up. “That’s okay,” I told the daycare lady, “She tells me you didn’t feed her lunch.”
We both had a bit of an uncomfortable laugh about it, feeling wiser and probably thinking a little bit more of each other.
So anyway, I’m standing in the kindergarten hallway having a good laugh again about the story as I relay it to the teacher.
But she’s not laughing.
“Does she eat breakfast?” she asked me.
Now I admit, I laughed really hard just then, but I was pretty mad when I talked to my daughter about it later. I can earn a Mommy Dearest reputation on my own, thank you very much, I told her.
And so for the record for anyone out there left wondering, my daughter eats breakfast, I never had another baby, and I know that at least half the stuff your kids tell me probably isn’t true either.
Okay, and my Grandmother never went to Africa.