Category Archives: photography

Shooting Strangers…Photo 181 Natural Light Exercise

Tonight I assigned my photo 181 student to shoot a natural light portrait. I told them about how you can’t just go out and find great light, you have to be ready for it when and where it happens. This means having your camera with you all the time and not being afraid to shoot strangers. If you follow this blog with any regularity, you will no doubt know that I am quite a fan of ‘street portraiture’ and as such often shoot complete strangers. This is very challenging, but has produced some of my favorite images…

If any of my students happen to read my blog, I shot this between classes tonight at the coffee shop in the science building. If I hadn’t had my camera with me I couldn’t have captured the light. I saw an interesting character, Hans…He had a large stack of notebooks and was in some great window light. So get out there, drop the excuses and shoot some strangers.

Snow Day Walk About

As you may or may not know, Flagstaff received several inches of snow last night. While this is great for the…skier types…it really interferes with my daily commute (which is by foot). While running errands today I shot a few compositions with my Android’s RetroCam App. Hit the link to see some more…

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Nephilim

 

 

I recently had two pieces of art in a collective show at The Coconino Center For The Arts. One was an inkjet image lift transfer taken on the Queen Mary. The Second was a tea-toned cyanotype of a studio portrait I took last year.

While the show was hanging, students from the Flagstaff Arts and Leadership Academy (FALA) went to view the work. The students assignment was to photograph a piece they liked and write a story about it. One student, Kaia Rodriguez, chose mine. After the show the artists whose pieces were chosen were given the finished assignment. Please click the above image to see it larger and read the story.

Here is the original cyanotype as it appeared in the show. It is interesting to me the way that different people interpret a photo. The only info that hung with the image was that it was a tea-toned cyanotype titled ‘Emily’ (the models name). The creative story this student came up with is great. Thanks to everyone at FALA and especially the student who took the time to look deeper into my piece.

tvC Photo Walk::February 2012

Once again thevisualCollective has departed on our newest monthly activity. Cameras in hand, we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past…wait no, it went more like the above photo, less like Fitzgerald…

In my opinion if you aren’t laying on the ground taking pics you are probably doing it wrong. Hit the link to see a slide show of images from this months installment.

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Beach Bash Photos

This weekend I shot the 4th Annual Beach Bash Festival at The Green Room here in Flagstaff, Ariz. I do a lot of work at this club, but this was a unique weekend, with about 15 bands over two nights, beach volleyball, hot-tubs and a good time by all. Head over the The Green Room’s Facebook page to find out more, or hit the following links to take you directly to the albums from each night…

Friday Night Beach Bash

Saturday Night Beach Bash

Compositionally Speaking Of Course…

This week my students in Photo 181 were required to shoot images representing ‘Rules of Composition.’ A lot of them did really well, some not so much…Busy compositions, camera shake and things creeping into the corners of frames were common issues. They were prompted to keep an eye out for things like, texture, form, patterns/symmetry, lines, depth, perspective, rule-of-thirds etc. etc.

In an on-going effort to practice what I preach and actually shoot what I assign, here are a few images I shot for this assignment. Hit the link to view everything…

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Google Image Search Results…

Did you know you can search Google by dragging and dropping an image from your computer? Google will scour the internet and show you everywhere that image appears. Yup, it’s true…While is isn’t breaking news by any means, I did a Google Image search for one of my images just to see if it appeared anywhere on the internet is wasn’t supposed to…Hit the link to see the results…

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Lighting On The Down Low

I have been stuck in this rut…well I hate to call it a rut, maybe a phase is better…this phase where most everything I shoot in a studio (and really on location too) is high-key. I like the look I get when shooting high-key; bright, clean and sharp. It has become easy for me to get into the studio and throw together a basic high-key set up and go from there, little thought required. My goal over the past week or so has been to break this cycle and get into a darker place, to begin shooting lots of low-key images. With a lighting concept in mind and a few willing volunteers, I set about on this mission. How deep will the rabbit hole go you may be asking? Well hit the link to dive in…

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Panning For Gold…Photo 181 Motion Demo Followup

Last night I posted about a demo on photographing motion in my Photo 181 class. I told my students that it might be good to shoot every bicyclist on the ped-way in front of the Student Union. Then I realized this was actually a good idea and decided to try it myself. Hit the link to see some panning practice…

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Photo 181 Motion Demo

Today in my class we did a demonstration on how to capture motion in photography. I had the students brain-storm the ways to show/shoot motion…Motion Blur, Freeze Action, Panning/Trucking, Zooming, Light-Painting etc. Then we went to the studio and shot some students riding skateboards around the room…

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