Seasonal Collector's Print #30 ~ Old Growth Oaks

The sweeping green boughs of Old Growth Oaks, Noirmoutier Island, France, our latest Seasonal Collector's Print, pulls us into the beautiful bends and curves of a captivatingly beautiful wood of mossy oaks.

Seasonal Collector's Print #30 ~ Old Growth Oaks, France

"Off the central Atlantic coast of France is the small island of Noirmoutier, known for its sandy beaches, dunes, salt marshes and woods. I've always been fascinated with Viking history and it is reported the first Viking raid on continental Europe was on this island in 799. I was on an assignment for Nikon to premier their new D800, a game-changing 36 mega pixel camera. I had been looking for the perfect landscape when I saw this group of old-growth Holm Oak trees. The branches seemed to reach out like the arthritic fingers of old Vikings trying to grasp the last glimmer of the soft afternoon light."

The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 8"x12" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at any time for $125 or framed for $280. 

"I rarely hang photographs that I have made on the walls of my home. After seeing this image printed at 42 inches, I found it virtually hung itself!  I could not resist. Photographer friends that visit find it hard to believe it was made with a 35mm camera. It has the look of a print made from a large format camera. I now wonder what is left in the advance of camera technology."

Seasonal Collector's Print #29 ~ Prairie Coneflowers

We have a winner!  Our summer seasonal Collector's Print is Prairie Coneflowers.  Prairie Coneflowers received 41% of the vote , followed by Noirmoutier Isle Trees and then Prairie Impressionism.  Thank you for helping us choose the next image to add to our collection!

Purple coneflowers and prairie coneflowers dance amongst the grasses with the prairie wind on a warm August day in Minnesota. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said "Earth laughs in flowers."   -Jim Brandenburg

The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at any time for $125 or framed for $280.

Which image should be the Summer 2011 Collector's Print?

With summer officially over, it is finally time to select our seasonal print!

Please cast your vote below.

Prairie Impressionism

Purple Coneflowers II

Noirmoutier Isle Trees - France

Which image should be the Summer 2011 Collector's Print?

Help us choose our Spring Collector's Print!

Help us choose our next Seasonal Collector's Print from the 3 images below, all were taken in the last few days.  Please select your favorite image on the poll found directly under the 3 images. Poll will close on Friday at 6:00pm.

Turtles in a Row

Mallard Drake Waits

Turtles and Goose

Which image should we use for our Spring 2011 Collector's Print?

Seasonal Collector's Print #27 ~ Open Water at -20˙

We're having an old-fashioned winter this year in the north woods with -40˙ below temperatures and over 60" of snow.  I have not seen a more beautiful winter in many years.  This image was made in the Superior National Forest in Minnesota, near Sand Lake.  A warm spring is preventing the creek from freezing. 

The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at any time for $125 or framed for $280.

Vote for your favorite image...

Avocets, Holland

Sand River, Lake County

Sleigh, Russia

We are having a hard time choosing our Winter Seasonal Collector's Print and are asking for your help.   Looking at the three images above, which image would you like to see as our 2011 Winter Seasonal Collector's Print?  All images were taken within the last two months. Please vote below.  We will announce the winning print on Monday morning!  Thanks for your help!

Seasonal Collector's Print #26 ~ Blue Jay Battle

"Through the years I've noticed that Blue Jays often have a mixed reputation among the casual birders that have been watching the comings and goings at their backyard feeders. The dominant and aggressive ways of this showy member of our colorful year-round resident are not easily missed. We like to attach human qualities to animals - behaviorists call it Anthropomorphism. I believe nature has its own mysterious ways of working things out."  - Jim Brandenburg 

The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at any time for $125 or framed for $280.  To view other prints in the Collector's Series, please visit our website and click on Seasonal Collector's Series.

Seasonal Collector's Print #25 ~ My Loon Family

"With hope and some anxiety, I imagine our loons encountering the oil spill in the Gulf this fall when they migrate to their wintering grounds.   Immature loons will stay there a couple years before coming back to Minnesota.  But loons are resilient and tough birds. In fact, of all the birds, they are our oldest, having looked similar to these 70 million years ago when they swam amongst the last dinosaurs.   It is conceivable that these same loons have been nesting in my back yard as long as I have been here in the north woods - 30 years.  In that time, we have had a surprisingly low rate of success of loon babies reaching maturity because of gulls and ravens preying on the eggs.  Unfortunately, the loons start nesting around fishing opener in this part of the north woods. The fishermen are usually unaware of the nest as they focus on their fishing.  I’ve seen loons get scared off their nest for several hours. Gulls and ravens watch for this, and prey upon the eggs while the loon is gone. 

I've become emotionally attached to these creatures, and every time I walk back to my lake I hold my breath in hopes that they have survived since I last saw them.  Most years the nesting is in vain. Unfortunately, one of the baby loons in this photograph has now disappeared, possibly from a bald eagle.  A few years ago I watched a bald eagle take a young loon, much to the despair of the adults.    We hope to see these amazing creatures back in the years to come. With their incredible ability to survive 70 million years, let’s hope they are able to outlive modern man’s clumsy foibles.”

The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at any time for $125 or framed for $280.  To view other prints in the Collector's Series, please visit our website and click on Seasonal Collector's Series.

Seasonal Collector's Print #24 ~ Summer in Scotland

"A recently discovered frame from a long ago National Geographic assignment in the Scottish Highlands brings one back to those youthful and care-free days of summer and timeless daydreams."   ~ Jim Brandenburg

The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at any time for $125 or framed for $280.  To view other prints in the Collector's Series, please visit our website and click on Seasonal Collector's Series.

Our spring email newsletter was sent out yesterday, please click to read.  If you would like to join our email newsletter list, please visit Brandenburg Gallery Newsletter Archives.

Collector's Print #23 ~ Old Way of the Inuit

Collector's Print #23 ~ Old Way of the Inuit, 1970.  Fine Art Giclee printed on cotton paper.  Size is 12"x 8" at a special price of $75. ($125 value).
The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at anytime for $125 or framed for $280. To purchase, contact the Brandenburg Gallery at 877-493-8017 or visit our website at www.jimbrandenburg.com.
In 1970, I left the University of Minnesota one quarter short of completing my Bachelor's degree.  Dr. Art Aufderheide, Minnesota's well known pathologist/anthropologist, asked me to accompany him to Bathurst Inlet in the center of the Canadian Arctic to make a 16mm documentary film of the last Inuit group to live the old way, by dog team, tents and occasional igloos.  They lived a nomadic life, eating raw caribou meat and fish.  Snowmobiles and houses would come the next year as the Canadian government moved them from the land into the community of Cambridge Bay on Victoria Island.  This was my first big adventure and a challenge as a photographer.  Witnessing death and, what seemed to me, unbearable cold and hardship, the family group I was traveling with exhibited a stoic resolve that was a sobering glimpse into the distant past of my own ancient family that survived the ice age in Europe 10,000 years back in time. Anthropologists have often called the Inuit the happiest group of people ever studied - all the while living in the world's most extreme conditions!

Subsequently, the National Geographic Society was interested in making a television special for NBC from this film footage, but the decision was made to keep these dignified people away from the eyes of the popular entertainment world and retain the many hours of rare cultural footage as a pure document.  That is where it stands today.  The footage has never been publicly shown or televised.  A few years later, I was afforded my first real opportunity to work with the National Geographic, again with the television division, on a special called "Strange Creatures of the Night."  Many years later, I would again return to this stark landscape to make a film of the white wolves called "White Wolf," and the National Geographic/BBC award winning film documentary also called "White Wolf."

This photograph of the nomadic Inuit family symbolizes the austerity of the arctic, a landscape familiar to me having grown up on the prairie where I learned the visual rules of the camera.  To Travel with an indigenous tribe, hunting the old way on that barren and prairie-like landscape, was a dream come true.
I never returned to the University to finish the degree; my photographic career took over my life.  But, sometimes, rewards come late.  Having traded a more formal kind of education for this "in the field" type, I often wondered if I had made the correct decision.  I recently received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Minnesota.  I often talk about circles in life, and I see them often come to pass.  This was one of the most rewarding of my career.

 

Girl on top left is approximately 50 now. The woman on the top right performed a "mercy killing" (euthanasia) on her husband shortly before this picture was made, he was not able to keep up in this harsh environment. Mercy killings were a common practice in the old days of the Inuit.

Jim Brandenburg filming the Inuit, 1970.

Collector's Print #22 ~ Gray Jay Ballet

On the first day of autumn, one of my favorite creatures here at my Northwoods home, Ravenwood, came to entertain me as I worked in my study.  The mountain ashberries were soon shared by many other species of birds as they migrated past my window.
-Jim Brandenburg


Fine Art Giclee printed on cotton paper.  Size is 8"x 8" at a special price of $75. ($125 value). 
Collector's Print includes all 4 images as a single print.

Collector's Print #21 ~ Cherry Tree at Dusk - France

This summer I was driving down a lovely, winding road in the western district of Vendée, France. My long day of shooting in a new and visually stimulating area was over. I was in a relaxed but semi-exhausted mood on my way back home when I first saw the cherry tree with a ladder leaning on it in the middle of a wheat field. With the sun now just below the horizon, it was nearly too late to photograph; I just smiled and kept driving. But the magical lingering light made me reconsider the scene, so I quickly made a u-turn and went back.

The ladder that was left behind was poignant...a prop...a clue to stimulate the mind - a dangerous proposition that very rarely is worth the effort photographically. Countless times I've attempted and then failed to translate that "feeling" onto a final photographic image. But I could deeply "see" the image this time, or was it just my naïve American eyes imagining a romantic afternoon of picking cherries, some bread and wine, and relaxing on a blanket on a quiet, French hillside.

My experience told me there wasn't enough time to gather cameras and tripod, make the long walk through the field, and compose the image. But the scene was too compelling - I needed to try.

When I finished shooting and walked back to the car, the moon lit the path. I felt partly relieved, partly disappointed, but just a little hopeful that the elusive "feeling" from that first glance was waiting to be brought back to life once I returned to my studio in the distant American northwoods.

~Jim Brandenburg


The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at anytime for $125 or framed for $280. To purchase, contact the Brandenburg Gallery at 877-493-8017 or visit our website at www.jimbrandenburg.com.

Collector's Print #20 - Crow-Hassan Prairie

"Here is one of my recent and pleasant surprise discoveries in the Twin City metropolitan area, Crow-Hassan Park Reserve, part of the Three Rivers Park District. No matter when you visit the the 2600-acre park, you will be delighted with the many varieties of native plants and wildlife species. This photo was made on the 600 acres of restored prairie. It won't be long before the Gayfeathers are blooming again. Last August Neil Lucas, distinguished producer for BBC TV, and I filmed some prairie sequences there for the upcoming sequel to the renowned Planet Earth series titled Life."
- Jim Brandenburg


The Jim Brandenburg Collectors Series features four seasonal prints a year. Each season, we will feature a new image that has never been printed, and will be available only at the Brandenburg Gallery. The featured image will be a signed and titled, 12"x8" Giclee Fine Art Print on 100% cotton paper at a special price of $75 or framed for $230. Previous seasonal images can be purchased at anytime for $125 or framed for $280. To purchase, contact the Brandenburg Gallery at 877-493-8017 or visit the website at www.jimbrandenburg.com.

Collectors Print #19 - Trumpeter Swan on New Year's Eve

"Minnesota leads the nation in reintroducing the Trumpeter Swan after the North American population fell to dangerously low numbers and was on the verge of extinction. The Trumpeter Swan is the largest waterfowl species native to North America with a wingspan of over 7 feet. I photographed this Trumpeter Swan on the Mississippi River in -30˙F on New Years Eve 2008."

- Jim Brandenburg

Collectors Print #18 - Caribou in Denali National Park

La Péche en France

La Péche en France is our latest Collector's Print and was taken during one of Jim's most recent trips to Europe.  

"This beautiful little canal is just one of hundreds of canals that run through Europe. Some people own or rent a live-in canal boat and travel from country to country." Jim Brandenburg