Hi, I'm Ben.

I am a videographer, cinematographer and photojournalist based in Minneapolis, and I have been making pictures for a living for 30 years. I started as a staff photographer at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, spent years as a photojournalist at KARE 11, and went independent in 2021. Since then my work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, PBS NewsHour and VICE News, and in the campaigns and stories of Minnesota organizations like Xcel Energy, Mayo Clinic, Macalester College and Children's Minnesota.

I co-directed and shot Love Them First: Lessons from Lucy Laney Elementary, which won the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award, and I shot and edited Finding Manoomin, which won an Upper Midwest Emmy. I am finishing two films: Emily Hope, a vérité documentary about motherhood and terminal illness, and Snurch, about the furry community. Yes, really.

How I work

I am usually a one-person crew with a small, very good kit, which keeps shoots nimble and budgets sane. On bigger sets I work as director of photography with a crew. I am honest about what a project needs: if it needs a producer, a writer and an editor, that is Tiny Window Pictures, the studio I co-founded with Lindsey Seavert, and I will still be the one behind the camera.

What clients tend to notice first is that people relax around me. That is thirty years of walking into strangers' kitchens with a camera. What they notice second is that the footage looks like more people made it than actually did.

Off the clock

I live in south Minneapolis with my wife Jessica, a music teacher, and our four kids: Art, Lewis, Bailey and Netta. I fish more than I catch, which is why the fish in my photographs are always held very close to the lens.