Photo Story

All right, so - I have a photo story coming up for class.  It's part of our final assignment and is supposed to take a couple of weeks to complete.  The biggest sticking point is timing, lighting, weather, model availability...  All easily overcome with the proper attitude, I guess.

I don't know how I'll execute the shoots properly, but I can already tell they'll be laborious and tangled - by tangled I mean steeped in problems.  Having that sort of outlook - for me - makes it better when things miraculously fall into place.  Murphy and I are distant cousins, I think, and his laws apply to my life like no one else's

Here are some of the shots from last week's portraiture assignment for Photo 101:

Horizontal Portrait

Vertical Portrait

Generational Portrait

Group Portrait (5 or more people)

Environmental Portrait

Inspired portrait (Edward Steichen style)

The following are from the prior week's Motion assignment:

Stop Action with fast shutter speed

Stop Action with slower shutter speed

Stop Action with fast shutter speed (2)

Stop Action with slower shutter speed (2)

Pan shot with slow moving object - fast shutter speed

Pan shot with slow moving object - slower shutter speed

Pan shot with fast object - slower shutter speed

Pan shot with fast object - fast shutter speed

Blur shot - fast shutter speed

Blur shot - slower shutter speed

Blur shot with fast moving object - fast shutter speed

Autumn Cleaning

We did a lot of bizarro Spring cleaning yesterday.  By that I mean that we did a lot of Spring Cleaning in the Autumn.  Why I capitalized those words, I don't know - but I thought it appropriate.  Don't judge me!

I digress... We got rid of a lot of stuff we haven't used, were duplicates, were broken, had no matches, were *so* last season, took up too much room, were old... and gave the really useful stuff to charity.  We even got rid of a really nice full sized bed and mattress set.  Sturdy, no defects, all hardware intact.  We also got rid of (donated, of course) some really cool comic books and graphic novels, some of them will be collector's items.  Hopefully those who get them will value their rarity and take care of them properly.

Now, some may say - "Carlos, why didn't you put them up on ebay for auction or whatnot?"  Bah.  Too much of a hassle and I don't feel like dealing with crazy people calling about comic books - or crazy people in general.  It's the holidays - 'tis the season for giving, says I

So now we will have a full week's worth of school this week.  I'm pretty psyched, and a bit leery.  It feels a bit disjointed now that we're nearing the end of the quarter.  I don't know about my classmates, but I feel as though the ball of yarn fell out of our hands and has unraveled in a tangle under the couch with the cat fur and dead flies.  I don't like it.  Since we weren't supposed to have off at all (except for Thanksgiving), that "snow day" we had on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week threw everything in a tizzy.

Hopefully the idea I have for my photo story will work well and I win an Emmy; or maybe even an Oscar. I could be like that dude from South America who created that cool special effects movie with $300 and was picked up by Hollywood for a few million because he kicked ass.  I wanna kick ass too.

Wish me luck.


(The following images were done this past year at our old studio.  It was a study of the male form, an envelope pushing exercise for me (I'm not much of a portraiture kind of guy), and a bit of a creative endeavor.  Enjoy)

Down with the turkey - Up with the tree!

Ugh.  I know we got a very large turkey for Thanksgiving - 22.22 pounds of birdy goodness that roasted up well and juicy and succulent and flavorful.

But now that Black Friday has come (and gone), it's time for Christmas!!  wøøt!!

We've started making way for Yuletide decorations and the like - plus, we're cleaning stuff OUT of the house.  We're actually SIMPLIFYING before spring!  Holy Caboly Macaroni!

Well - at the very least we're getting in the spirit of the season, and that's always a good thing. :-D

A nice shot of a road near Mt Rainier within the National Park.

My best buddy Sykkel Spruce with is glowing fixed gear bike.

A thistleberry of some sort that tells a story all on its own...

Snow Day!

And that means I had off from school...  Which, on any other occasion as a much younger person, I would have been all over like a squirrel on nuts, but I really like going to school. Funny as that may sound, I've been enjoying learning more about my chosen craft than I had expected. The challenges are growing more pronounced and the avenues by which to complete my assignments have quickly become blocked by all sorts of natural hazards.

I love it.

It makes me have to think unconventionally - "outside the box" so to speak.

And tomorrow is Thanksgiving, too. Which means "a day off" from school. Ugh. I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving at home, but I'll still have my mind on how I'm going to get that photo story assignment accomplished...

So I'll leave you with a few images to tide you over til I put up more.  Maybe I should start posting an image an entry so that I can get more images out there.  Not that I have a huge following or anything. I rode the ferry with my one follower today from the one class I had this week with him and our conversation revolved around photography and that of nature and underwater stuff. I'm exceptionally impressed with this guy and the work he does. I'm looking forward to our next quarter's class together where more of our images will be creatively inspired and complex.

Happy Thanksgiving to those who stop by and read my humble posts.

A new self-portrait in the Edward Steichen style.

"Glaucus" - a photo manipulation done for class...

"Greek Lad" - fine art portraiture

"Taxi!" - part of my very first fashion photo shoot...

Thar be snows about!

Seems like we've gotten our first 'snowstorm' of the year here in western Washington.  Nice.

No, it didn't stick.  No, it's not snowing buckets as I type this. No, there's no real forecast for more snow tomorrow since they just recently updated the weather forecast to state there would be sun tomorrow for the beginning of the work week...

So it's beginning to start to look a lot like Christmas.  Though Thanksgiving is on Thursday, and we're not really going over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house, it's still sort of like Christmas time is a little early feeling. I don't usually feel "Christmasy" until about April or so of the following year for the past season... {sigh} I guess it's all the jadedness of being a grown-up.

But I'm trying! It's tough to re-program.

Here's our Great Snowfall of November 2010:

And no, it's not dandruff...

Busy!

So these last few days have been busy ones... Starting with Thursday with a morning shoot with Pelago - a company that designs apps and other developmental stuff, and makers of an app called Whrrl - with a group shot for them AND me for school; then there was Color Theory class for 4 hours and a break before Drawing and Perspective class for 4 hours; followed by a short break and drive to Wallingford (upper Seattle) to do an environmental shoot with a fusion/metal band drummer which ended at about 1am...  Yes, that run-on sentence was my Thursday.

Friday was a bit better, but I had another shoot in the afternoon for portraiture.  I think they turned out pretty well.  We'll see how they are received.

Today was yet another shoot for school.  I think some of the shots are very, beautiful - but I don't have the final say on that.  There will be judging, and the judges are harsh - in a good way.  :-D

I still have a few more things to do - and the week is QUICKLY drawing to a close.  I'm hoping to get the last couple of shoots in between Sunday and Monday and be on the road to success.  There's a ghost of a chance that the assignment will be extended for a week due to the Thanksgiving holiday and such, but there are no guarantees...

Wish me luck ;-)

One of my recent favorites

Cutting to the chase - I worked on my 'motion effect' assignment til like, the last minute, and had a HUGE problem coming up with enough light to capture a *tack sharp* stop action shot.  It was a tough assignment given the area we're in here in the PNW and the amount of sunshine we actually get this time of year.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this photographic process, it takes a lot of light for a camera to be able to stop a fast moving object in its film or sensor without blur. If the shutter speed is too slow, or the aperture too small...  You get darkness, or unwanted motion blur.  Bad.  Very, very bad.

The image posted here was of the 13th shot - my creative motion capture.  I used a dancing wind-up robot with my monitor in the background on a screen saver that reacts to sound.  When there is a loud sound the lights intensify and get 'closer' to the screen.  After few, several, many attempts at getting something worthwhile, and just about to call it quits on this experiment, I decided to add a "spotlight" for my "disco dancer" and take a few more images.  This one was near the end of the shoot.  I thought it was exactly what I was looking for and fit the bill.

I love that little robot.  We dance together quite often.  He has friends and relatives at Toys-R-Us - both male and female - always willing to dance.  When I'm not feeling too great, we dance a little and he makes me laugh.  It's a good relationship...  ;-)

Wonders

Well, I was able to get my assignment done for tomorrow.  It was a miracle.  At the last moment, the sun was exposed for a time and I was able to accomplish what I couldn't all the previous days prior.

I still need to get images on here.  I will, I promise...

Oh good lord...

I have no idea how to get 'stop action' photographs of high speed *anything* in the rain.  My poor camera tries *reeeeeeeally hard* to stop action at high speeds, but because there's not enough light, and the restriction of ASA to 400 or less - or higher - depending on how you look at it (okay, okay - 400, 200 or 100 only...!), the shots come out blurry nevertheless.

I've gotten 6 out of the 13 (yep, 13 images total) images that I need for class tomorrow, and I have no idea what to do for the other 7.  My 'creative image' (the last of the set) will most likely be... I have no idea.

My manipulation is a poor representation of my skills, but I was taking more time to do the motion capture shots than I was manipulation.  Ugh.  I don't want the second half of the term to go down hill.  A little cooperation by the meteorological crew up there would be SOOOO nice...

Oh well - one must do what one must do to create!  I have a few ideas still somewhere up my sleeve.  No.  Wait.  That's a dryer sheet up there.  *sigh*

I will post earlier works here soon.  I'm still sorting out this whole "blog" mess and seeing how wonderful it really is in the scheme of things.

Stop the madness

The latest assignment for Photo 101 is to capture 13 images in various motion effects. Stop motion, panning effect and blur effect. We're required to come up with 12 images (4 per type if you're not so good with the math) and one "extra" for purely creative reasons for a grand total of 13 images. Usually lighting plays a huge part in the ability to properly stop action where it's "tack sharp" at all points of the image.

The outdoor lighting has been poopy at best and non-existent at worst. That, and finding a creative subject to photograph without being boring is difficult. Being 'unique' (there's that word again...) is a distinct challenge.

Maybe I should attempt a theme like the last assignment which was on 'color theory.' Hmmm...

The positive side of going to The Big City today was that we moved out of our larger studio space into a smaller one. Positive because we're saving $$$ on rent, and because we got it done in a relatively short amount of time. We still have to move out of the older small space we are forced to rent until February of 2011 and attempt to absorb all of the "stuff" from two spaces into one.

I guess challenge never cease...

In the beginning...

...God created, and we took up where he left off...

In the quest for finding ourselves through various types of expressionism, it seems as though we've taken the power given us as a unique species on this planet and squandered the responsibility and pushed the accountability to the divine.  This very small slice of cyberspace belongs to me at the moment, and I intend to show that there is some creativity occurring in and around my sphere of influence.

As a budding photographer, I still need to find my place in the vast garden with many others.  "Unique" is a word that has become mundane at best, but I will attempt to be as 'unique' as possible.

My intent is to share with you the trek I'm taking to becoming a better photographer.