Layne Kennedy, a long-time instructor at North House Folk School, recently won second place in the Seventh Annual Black and White Spider Awards in the professional/nature category for this photo, Wrath of Superior. He took the photo while teaching a class at North House. A northeaster blew in and he whisked his students down to Tettegouche where he knew the waves would be fearsome.
Layne Kennedy has been around the world photographing everything from pink dolphins in the Amazon to
Inuit hunters traveling by dogsled in
Greenland. His images have appeared in Smithsonian, National Geographic
Traveler, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, dOutside, Forbes, New York Times, The
Washington Post, Backpacker, and more.
He has contributed to numerous books and has published six of his own. In the midst of all this adventure and accomplishment, he maintains a particular fondness for Minnesota’s North Shore. d He recently won a prestigious award for a photo he took of Lake Superior, and he wanted the kudos to go to the lake. “Nice to see our little pond get some coverage,” he wrote to the Cook
County News-Herald.
Kennedy was awarded second place in the professional/nature category of the Seventh Annual Black and White dSpider Awards, an annual competition judged by photography experts.
His photo, entitled Wrath of Superior, captured waves blasting off cliffs at
Tettegouche during a fall storm. a “I’m just thrilled that Lake Superior gets her due in all of this,” he wrote. d“Nice to see [that] out [of] over 8,000 entries, our little pond gets chosen.
Very cool.” Kennedy has won awards both times he has submitted to the dSpider Awards.
Kennedy, who lives in south
Minneapolis, grew up in Anchorage aand came to Minnesota in 1975 to attend the University of Minnesota- dDuluth. He discovered Grand Marais two years later. “Grand Marais has always been kind of my second home,” he said, adding that he plans to end up here eventually.
He keeps tabs on North Shore weather and runs up if something exciting is happening. “When you think of Minnesota,” he said, “you always think of the Boundary Waters.” It’s
Lake Superior that draws him to the
BWCAW through Cook County and the Gunflint Trail.
Kennedy has taught courses at
North House Folk School in Grand
Marais for the last 10 years and was teaching one of them when he took the photo that won the award. A northeaster blew in and he knew the waves would be hitting Tettegouche hard, so he brought his students down the shore to check them out. They were so big that they were exploding back into the water when they hit the cliffs.
“We got wet,” he said. “Half the class bailed; the other half had to be dragged away.” They were safe where they were, so he wasn’t sure if the ones who left were afraid for their equipment or just didn’t understand the significance of this weather event.
Kennedy did not know he would become a photographer when he finished high school, but he entered UMD’s fine arts program right away when he started college. Opposite the progression of most photographers, he went from large format photography to 35 mm, allowing him more flexibility to pursue photojournalism along with art photography.
“I’m not pegged to one type of photography,” Kennedy said. “It’s kind of like being an actor. You play a role for two weeks and then you go off and do something else.” He gets called to do all sorts of things. “My subject matter is across the board…. I love that broadening of perspective. …That’s a neat way to survive in this business.”
A motto for taking good photographs is, “You have to be there,” said Kennedy. “Sometimes some of the very best photographs are taken from your car window. They’re images taken by happenstance.”
One of his books is a whimsical collection of images taken with an iPhone, “an examination of getting back to the basics of the medium, photographing by instinct, not technique, and allowing the lens to communicate the messages streaming in to the photographer,” according to a description of the book at www.blurb.com, through which Kennedy has published some of his books.
What keeps Kennedy shooting is getting rewarded with good photos, and to get good photos, he said, you have to be out there shooting. “You’re not going to get them from your La-Z-Boy.”
The successful photograph inspires the viewer to ask more questions, Kennedy said. He once took a photo of Cook County artist Howard Sivertson from behind, sitting on a park bench overlooking the lake in downtown Grand Marais. Sivertson’s signature suspenders were showing above the bench, and people who know him would know it was he.
“When something’s talking to you, you need to listen,” Kennedy said. The hardest part as a photographer is communicating to the viewer what you see, what is speaking to you, he said.
When asked what kinds of trends he sees in the field of photography, Kennedy said, “The biggest one is the inclusion of video. …I’m a still shooter.” Many newspapers and magazines now offer video clips on their websites. You can’t be out in the field being spoken to if you’re in the editing room preparing video for a website, he said. You have to be not only the photographer, but also the videographer, the lab, and the editor when you have to create a video of the same stuff you’re shooting still shots of, Kennedy said.
“I feel that anybody can be a shooter,” Kennedy said. “You just have to listen to the messages.” How many times have you been driving, seen something, and said to yourself “that would make a good picture” and then kept driving instead of stopping and turning around? That was something calling you, he said.
Layne Kennedy’s most recent book, with writer Greg Breining, is Paddle North: Canoeing the Boundary Waters-Quetico Wilderness, published by the Minnesota Historical Society Press. It can be found at Drury Lane Books in Grand Marais.
His book 47 Degrees North: Grand Marais and Beyond, self-published at www.blurb.com, can be found at North House Folk School and Birch Bark Gallery.
More information on his work, including his photographs, his books, and the wooden bowls he creates, can be found at Kennedy’s website, www.laynekennedy.com.
Leave a Reply