A Photo J Student

Spent the day being driven around downtown Dallas by Gretchen, the marketing director for Chamberlin Roofing and Waterproofing. They’re putting together some shots of buildings they have worked on, and some works in progress. I also spent some time photographing workers on the job sites, who all seemed a little distracted/disgruntled to have a camera pointed at them.

It was an interesting experience, and a first for me.

(Note to self: buy steel-toed shoes before entering construction sites.)

Last week I photographed the high school water polo team that my friend Stephen (err…Coach Kniatt) coaches. I’ve never photographed water sports before, and getting an action shot with the ball in the frame was trickier than expected.

I discovered that my D1x (the newest addition to the camera bag) has a max shutter speed of 1/16,000th of a second, which I find pretty ridiculous. I shot some stuff at 2.8 in the direct sun simply because I could.

My girlfriend of 3 years graduated last week. She’s from Japan and English is her second language. She graduated with just under a 3.5 GPA with a business degree in another language, in a foreign country, while missing her family. And she’s embarrassed that I posted this.

IPOY.

I spent almost every daylight hour on Saturday photographing the Denton band Grassfight. They all seemed comfortable with a camera pointed at them and were great to work with.

Everything was shot with two speedlights; one on a tripod and the other dutifully held aloft by Robert, who can no longer feel his arms. We shot in Aubrey and downtown Dallas, and even though we shot all day, my favorites were toward the end of the shoot.

Thanks to Robert and the band for making it a fruitful day.

UPDATE

Also wanted to add that I spent hours a day on David Hobby’s strobist.com before tackling this assignment. It’s really, really good stuff. My photog friends should definitely spend some time there.

Richard, Phil and I shot this piece for the last project in Multimedia Storytelling.

Idea generation has always been a weakness of mine, and that step proved to be the trickiest for us. At one point I had a list of eight or ten story ideas, and they all ended up tanking.

During the week before our rough edit was done, we decided to work with women involved with a crisis pregnancy center. A few days before the edit was due, the sources bailed on us. Cool. Our fall-back plan was the Seeds of Change-sponsored barefoot march. It ended up being a better story than the pregnancy center one, thought not particularly newsworthy. Eh.

The bulk of the time I devoted to the project was editing and learning flash. The flash template is a bit…simplistic, but I had never used flash before this project. I learned enough to barely pull it off.

It’s nice to have team members to pick up the slack. Being a one man team is rough.

Forming the idea and getting the initial contacts made were still the toughest parts for me, though.

It’s done. Insert sigh of relief (here.)

I’m doing photos for a Denton band called Grassfight. After doing photojournalism for a couple of years and sticking to telling the truth with photos, it’s been fun to have some flexibility with lighting and post production.

Kayo kindly posed for me when I scouted locations and this is the style I’m experimenting with. I’m thinking I might back off a little on the contrast for the final shots, but it really depends on what the band wants.

Anyone have any thoughts? (Apparently someone reads the blog, I just had my 1,000th view yesterday.) Grassfight wants a refined, almost noir look set in a city. I can’t help but feel that I’m over-editing, but that might just be my journalism roots talking.

Two celebrity bloggers died of heart issues in the last two months, as reported here by the New York Times.

Bloggers with laptops never leave the office, which is great for bosses and horrible for bloggers. The article references a 22 year old blogger named Matt Buchanan who should probably consider stepping away from the computer and eating some green beans or something.

“He says he sleeps about five hours a night and often does not have time to eat proper meals. But he does stay fueled — by regularly consuming a protein supplement mixed into coffee.”

Hmm…death by blogging? Or death by prolonged unhealthy lifestyle?

It seems unlikely that Matt “doesn’t have time” for regular meals. Seriously, he’s sitting at his computer all day. At home. It’s more likely that he’s in the e-zone and his brain can’t slow down long enough to remind him his stomach is starving. Not that I blame him; I definitely get sucked into xtreme! blogging/websiting/photo editing mode. It’s hard to escape once you’re in its grasp.

Still, it’s horrible that these mens’ deaths are being satirized in blog headlines (like mine for example.) Maybe when we 2008ers read enough about technology causing unhealthy strain, we’ll get a $%#& clue and not be tethered to our gadgets.

But I doubt it.

I’m going outside to get some fresh air.

I spent the day with Donnie for a class assignment. The idea was to document his life from his perspective.

Today we covered Bare Your Soles, a barefoot march to raise awareness of homelessness. The group took off their shoes and marched silently for about a mile. When they arrived at the square, they put the shoes they carried on the courthouse steps to be collected for donation. The marchers were college students, pastors, families, homeless, black, white, old and young.

About a month ago I spent an evening and a morning with my grandparents. Their daughter and son-in-law live with them and care for them. This was a hard trip for me for two main reasons, I think.

One, I usually just see my grandparents at Thanksgiving, Christmas, the occasional family lunch, etc. I think it’s easy for anyone to fake it for a meal. Or an hour or two. On the days I spent with them, I saw how confused my granddad is, saw him have his face cleaned for him, watched him get dressed under his daughter’s supervision, saw him fall asleep sitting up at 8:30 in the morning just because he was bored.

So I saw the messy, awkward behind the scenes stuff.

I also had to be able to dissociate myself from them as family, and just be a journalist; tell their story. I want to do the careful balancing act of being a journalist and being a human, and this was a good test. It seems kind of backwards, but I think I was better able to honor my aging grandparents by being more of a journalist than a grandson, at least for those 6 or 7 hours.