I’ve been battling a cold ever since grad school got out for summer–a great way to celebrate the end of the year, but at least it didn’t strike during the week before when projects were due!–but yesterday, for the first time since getting home, I felt like making some images.  The bird activity at home has been really great, although I picked a slow day to photograph (less likely to disturb the migrating species, though!).  The suet feeder has been getting a lot of activity from our resident, nesting pair of Red-bellied Woodpeckers and our Downy Woodpecker, but it was really the nuthatch that let me get a good look at him.

Three flash units were set up on stands, combined with the late-afternoon sun, made for a four-light setup, albeit back-lit.  I was trying to get some rim-lighting, and between the sun and another strobe back and to the right, I figured I would get quite a bit.  I certainly got some, but not quite what I wanted.  My key light was backed up quite a bit, and I had a fill on the left, which is casting the nuthatch’s shadow that you can see on the suet feeder.

More after the jump…

White-breasted Nuthatch on suet feeder, Racine, Wis.

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Tags: birds, light, lighting, lit, photography, wildlife
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I’ve finished my introductory piece about Wild Bird Rehabilitation in St. Louis, Mo., the subject of a year-long profile that I began last December for “Fundamentals of Photojournalism.” Eventually, this will be an individual chapter in an interactive Flash interface:

Tags: birds, photography, photojournalism, stories, story, Wild Bird Rehabilitation, wildlife
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At long last, our group project for Advanced Techniques is done….sort of.  In many respects, this is a first draft of our story of Hulett House Gym, a mixed martial arts team in Columbia, Mo.  I’m sure that come this fall, when classes reconvene, we can find a way to perfect this into something that we might submit to cPOY.

Many thanks to my teammates, Chris Dunn, Elisa Day and Matt Cloud, for their hard work towards making this project a success.

Tags: Advanced Techniques, Hulett House Gym, mixed martial arts, MMA, multimedia, photography, photojournalism, slideshow, Sound Slides
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Starting last night and not really ending until early this afternoon, a large storm system passed through Columbia.  It was pretty severe at times: I lost power a multiple points last night, often regaining power just to lose it once more twenty seconds later.  Unfortunately, the storms this morning produced pretty heavy rain, so I did not feel comfortable with following through with my original plan to drive out to St. Louis to visit Wild Bird Rehabilitation, the focus of a long-term project.  I’ll be going tomorrow, instead.

However, the storm did provide the opportunity to photograph lightning from my balcony.  Sadly, by the time I was really set for it, precipitation had finally reached my building so I had to move indoors quite quickly.  The most interesting photo, really, was a 30 minute exposure of the patterns the lightning was producing on the walls of the bedroom of my apartment:

Canon 1D Mark II N & 16-35mm f/2.8 L II; exposed 30 minutes @ f/8, ISO 200

I would have used the 5D Mk. II for its superior noise performance, but its battery was dead.

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Tags: lightning, photography, shadows, thunderstorm, time exposure, weather
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View of Elm and Hitt Streets, Columbia, Mo. Canon 5D Mark II and 24mm f/3.5 L TS-E lens

The other morning I found myself on the rooftop of the Hitt Street parking garage at sunrise.  It had been a long night of paper-writing and I decided to take a break before finishing it up and going to bed for a nap before class later that day.

While I’ve owned a tilt/shift lens since 2005 and have used it extensively for landscape and architectural photography, mostly for the Scheimpflug effect, but I have never before intentionally made use of the tilt function to distort my subject.  Vince LaForet’s “tiny landscapes” inspired me to try my hand at the technique.

Of course, my first few attempts were utter failures because, while I was able to compose the image properly and could “see” my subjects transforming into “toys” in front of me, I then stopped down the aperture to get proper depth-of-field.  Why not, I thought–that’s the way it’s done, right?  Wrong.

More after the jump…

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Tags: architecture, perspective control, photography, tilt and shift, tiny landscape, toy car
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This is an image I made on my way back to my car last night after working in the journalism school library for a couple of hours.  I was only parked on the third floor, but decided to go up to the roof (sixth floor) for a different perspective.  Next time, I’ll take my tripod and tilt/shift lens.  It’s nice to take the occasional break from photojournalism!

View of the MU School of Journalism from Hitt Street Parking Garage, Columbia, Mo.

Tags: architecture, Columbia, dusk, landscapes, photography, skyline, twilight
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West Boulevard Car Wash, Columbia, Mo.

I made this image last Friday while scouting for locations for a group “painting with light” project.  I had just gotten off of I-70 and was headed back home when I noticed the way that the “Chevy’s Fresh Mex” sign was framed by one of the car wash stalls.  I turned around and pulled over to make a couple of frames.  The weather cooperated to to give this an eerie feel.

Photographed with a Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4 IS, exposed 1/40 sec. @ f/5.6, ISO 200.

Tags: car wash, photography, photojournalism, pictorial
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Romantic ghosts of prom past on the MKT Trail, Columbia, Mo.

For a group project for Advanced Techniques, Vivian Esparza, Charles Ludeke, Lesley Freeman, and I met up at the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial along the MKT Trail in Columbia, Mo. to make a long time exposure with added light–also called “painting with light” for its surreal effect.

Charles friend, Michelle, agreed to be a model for us on the bridge. After thinking on it for a bit, we decided that we should include a male figure in the photo, and Charles volunteered that he had a yellow tux (rental) in his car from a social gathering a on Friday night.

The background trees were lit with a Nikon SB-900 gelled green. I fired it off at 1/4 power for the nearer trees, and worked my way up to 1:1 for the background trees (knowing that they would be far too dark otherwise). Vivian did a great job of painting the bridge blue (an SB-900 with a blue gel), and Lesley walked along the bridge once with a flashlight aimed downward (on the ground, along the railing). Lesley then used a different flashlight, gelled red, to paint the post and upper railing of the bridge.

Finally, Charles and Michelle would pose on the bridge, and I used my Canon 550EX with the Panera straw-grid, dialed at 1/2 power, to “freeze” our ghosts in the frame.

All told, the exposure came to 5.7 minutes @ f/8, ISO 200 using a Canon 5D Mark II and 70-200mm f/4 IS lens @ 81mm…and a couple hours of experimentation. It was a great collaboration….and I think we might go back in a week to do something a little bit different ( but not in time for class).

Tags: Advanced Techniques, light, lighting, lit, painting with light, photography, strobe
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