Ethan Roberts attended Music in Plymouth last year excited for the Fourth of July-inspired fireworks; he came away with a fiery image of his own. “I was really impressed by the tremendous skill of the fire jugglers and the obvious risks they take to entertain the crowd,” he says. “As soon as I took this particular picture, I knew that I had captured the moment.”
Roberts moved to Plymouth in 2007 from the California bay area with his wife Naomi and son, Noah (now 6); in May 2009, daughter Elsie was born. “We moved to Plymouth for the quality of the schools and the many recreational activities for the kids,” he says. “We have not been disappointed.”
Most of Roberts’ pictures are of his kids, “who are fortunately not old enough to be embarrassed by all the pictures I take of them,” he says, adding he’s been shooting semi-seriously since 2002. “Not as often as I’d like, but more often than she would want, my beautiful wife is game for all the pictures I take of her as well. Naomi sometimes jokes that the reason we had kids was so that I'd have someone else to take pictures of.”
Roberts’ day job is as government affairs director for the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, which is the public affairs voice for Minnesota’s Jewish community, a relatively small nonprofit. Occasionally he gets the opportunity to pull the camera out to snap photos of regional delegates, laughing as he points out he’s deleted images to keep elected officials portrayed in the best light. “Anywhere that the light is right and the subjects are willing is a great place for photography,” Roberts says.
