You've reached the Flickr page of Ben Allen, a photographer of nouns based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As you'll see scrolling through his work, Ben is all over the map in terms of photography, bouncing from concerts to landscapes to family portraits to epic travel shots.

After seven-plus years of concentrating on concert and festival coverage, Ben decided to make an official run at improving his technical skills and build his portfolio so he could land more paying photography work. Thus, the utilitarian-named Ben Allen Photos transformed from a hobby to a business.

Ben is a big fan of bright colors and dynamic compositions. He also loves capturing little personal moments as much as huge, epic shots. He's absolutely open to solicitations for work. If you are a photographer just starting out, especially with shooting concerts, feel free to reach out to Ben with any questions. Or if you just want to gab about photography.

Ben fell in love with photography at a young age, armed with a 110 pocket camera, charging around the house directing scenes with his sisters and dogs as models. Many of those photos were not good, but he felt a push to keep shooting and to get better. He didn't get much better until I high school, when he signed up for Intro to Photography. The school had an armory of Canon AE-1's and a full dark room for developing film.

In those classes, Ben learned all the basics for the camera functions and how to evaluate a scene for each of them. About the importance of balance in aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. And how to push one and compensate with the others. He also learned a lot about processing prints in the darkroom, and how that was an art form all its own. Today, with digital cameras and Lightroom, you hit fast-forward through a lot of that, but many of those base lessons still very much apply.