Steve Fines Of St. Cloud Adds Two Midwest Regional Emmys

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- A St. Cloud man has added two more Emmy Awards to his trophy case.

Steve Fines is the owner of Fines Aerial Imaging.

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He recently picked up two Midwest Regional Emmy Awards for the work that he did with Minnesota PBS on a pair of documentaries.

Fines says one of the documentaries is called "Bdote: A Birthing Island".

Bdote is a Dakota word for where the Mississippi River and Minnesota River come together. It's been a sacred site for them for what is believed to be over 10,000 years. It's a place where women come to give birth.

Fines says the other documentary is called "The Wild West Bank Sound".

It's about the history of music in the Cedar Riverside area from 1960 to about 1980. It really had a draw; it brought in some big names. It was a big area in music development.

Fines has been working with Minnesota PBS since 2018. They give him a call whenever they need some drone work done for a project. He says just a handful of people who work on a project actually get an Emmy.

Fines won two other Emmys for his work with PBS back in 2022.

Top 13 Cities in Minnesota With the Most License Plate Reader Cameras

License plate readers (LPRs) are cameras that automatically capture license plate numbers and can flag vehicles for law enforcement purposes.

This list covers all cities in Minnesota which have 15 or more LPRs in use. Minnesota law requires agencies that use them to report to the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA), which publishes the information, including location when disclosed. The data following is directly from the BCA as of October 2026, and does not include cameras mounted on patrol vehicles.

Gallery Credit: Jaime Skelton