Weather and a Movie

Last Sunday was a pretty full day here at the Journal Star. A few stories fell through and left us all scrambling to fill in the holes in the Monday paper. Among the things I shot were this weather/kids having fun feature and this photo from the opening of a local indie horror film at a theater downtown. The theater shot is of one of the film's producers who was nervously pacing in the back by all of the projection equipment. Being a movie theater, it was very dark so I had to do a long exposure (2 seconds) but this guy was nervous and kept pacing, becoming just a blur in the images. Luckily, he paused right in a spot of light from a screen and stayed there long enough for me to make this frame (camera braced on the railing and prefocused manually with a prayer). The great green color was an added bonus.

Backyard Ice RInk (one year of phlogging)

Today is the one-year-anniversary of this phlog. I don't have anything brand new to put up (not on this computer, you see), but I do have these photos from a few visits I made to this family who've been building an ice skating rink in their backyard for the last nine years. The son (a hockey player) is graduating this year and going on to college so this is probably (supposedly) the last year that the dad will be building the rink. Some of these photos are from a day when the high was 10 degrees (colder in a shady backyard) and I forgot my gloves. That was horrible. This is a very loose edit (um, kinda). Forgive me.

I'll Tumble for You

It's been over a month since the internet went out in my basement apartment here in Peoria, but I finally got it fixed this morning. Hooray. Here's some photos from a while ago of a group of young kids who started a tumbling group. They did a short performance (I mean short) at this Black History Month celebration and I was there to photograph them. The only worthwhile photo I got during the actually performance is the first one here and that is what ran as the centerpiece in the paper the next day. I was more partial to the second shot here, which I took after the performance when the kids were just fooling around and getting some extra practice in with their coach. To be honest, I might just like it better because the sign is fully readable (that's what I do, take pictures of signs). I like the third one just because of that smile. Oh, and I lit this with two dynalights bounced off of the ceiling because it was in an old building with an unlit stage and I'm shooting with D2H's these days. But I think the lighting made a big (helpful) difference.

I shot this portrait for a story on how students should keep their social networking pages clean because potential employers might see them when the time comes to get a job (y'all know this story, it's been around for a while). When I arrived at the college advisor's office, where supposedly a student would be getting hands on help with cleaning up her page, I discovered (not to my surprise) that it was one of those set-up "so, we're here, what do you want us to do?" sort of situations. So, I said, "Judging by what you just said we are going to be doing a portrait. Let me go grab my light kit from the car." I then proceeded to photograph this young lady, who was suckered into this gig at the last minute on a friday afternoon. She had set up her laptop (the kind with a nice, glossy, reflective screen - ugh) open to her facebook page in a tiny white office littered with random notebooks, papers, old computer monitors, random extension chords and power strips, etc. After a trying to make use of the environment I decided to get rid of the environment instead by using one of my strobes to just completely blow out everything in the room except for the laptop screen and the girl. I put one strobe behind the computer with the output pumped way up and then popped a little light in with a second strobe on an umbrella to light the girl's face and the front of the computer. I think I shot this at a 1/4 of a second (hand held, one should always have a tripod, but alas) to let the screen burn in. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Don't Miss

I was looking back through old takes the other day (trying to put together a fresh portfolio) and found this over looked shot from the Highland Games in St. Louis. I think it's funny. That Lochness Monster is staring her down. Intimidating.

Pinewood Derby

A few weeks ago I shot the local scouts pinewood derby. THe gym actually had some nice light situations, which was a plus since the kids just seemed a little bored with having to wait so long between turns and were relatively unemotional. After shooting for a while I decided to go for a panning shot in an effort to get something a little different for this yearly event (the standard photo being image #2 here, which ran as my secondary). I liked the panning enough to offer it as my local lead photo and the paper went for it. So, that's one cheap trick I can't use again soon I guess. Overall an enjoyable assignment I'd say.

Hands

Been shooting more basketball here in Illinois as we work our way through regionals/sectionals. I thought this shot was kind of neat and a little different (because of all the hands of course). I wish there were more face, though. Soon start the state games. More posts once my internet starts working properly again, I promise.

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