I've been in Denver since late Wednesday night and it has been quite the roller coaster since I arrived. Both of the weddings went really well (images coming soon) and I had a great time shooting Alicia & Ulrick as well as Tasha & Dave.
All seemed well until I found out that my mom was admitted to University of Colorado Hospital for some abnormal pains. They ran some tests and everything appears to be just fine. They decided to keep her overnight just to be on the safe side, which I'm fine with. I was a little concerned and it was on my mind during most of the wedding tonight. She on the other hand didn't seemed phased. In fact she was more concerned with how the wedding went than her own situation. Being a good photojournalist means I rarely leave home without my camera. I was able to make a few frames in the room playing with some reflections if only to document her (hopefully) short hospital visit.
I bet you didn't have as much fun as I did tonight.
Typically an assignment to shoot soccer in the rain would be a photographer's nightmare but I guess I'm just not your typical photographer. I spent the good part of three hours (including two lightning delays) covering one of our local teams in a IHSA Class 3A sectional semi-final at Jacobs High School which is actually just a few mile from my house.
Thanks to my Nike golf rain gear and Think Tank rain gear both me and my gear stayed dry. The best part was that the local team came back to tie the game with 10 minutes remaining in regulation and scored the game-winner just two minutes into overtime. I got all three goals and some decent action and jube so I have no complaints tonight.
I'm headed to Denver for a few days to shoot two weddings and I still need to pack and get in bed so I'm going to cut this one short. I have to be back at the office at in less than six hours. Off to pack...
This weekend marked the beginning of what will be a graduation marathon over the course of the next couple of weeks. Our paper covers all twenty or so graduation ceremonies in the county so there will be plenty of opportunities to photograph the never ending pomp and circumstance. I imagine that you can get burnt out after shooting a few of these so I'm glad that I'm going to miss several of them next weekend when I'm in Denver to shoot a few weddings.
Thursday and Friday I was in the gym at McHenry High School East and Marengo High School. I was delighted to arrive at Richmond-Burton High School today to find out that the ceremony was outside under blue skies and sunshine.
I tried to get in close and shoot with a wide angle as much as possible to really put the viewer in the moment. At first that was a challenge because it's hard to hide from a group of teenagers with a Tiger Woods hat on and a pair of large black boxes hanging from each shoulder but they soon forgot that I was there and I was able to capture some raw emotion. I was really surprised that I didn't see any tears in my first three ceremonies. Hopefully I'll be able to find some contrasting emotions on Tuesday at my next ceremony.
Monday I was given a 6-pack and an assortment of stickers/signs from the Sheriff's office and told to make an illustration on a new program that is trying to reduce teenage drinking. The only catch was that I already had two assignments that afternoon/evening and still had to tone photos for the next day's paper.
I wanted to keep it simple and straight to the point so that the message didn't get lost in the illustration. I set up a mirror on a card table in our studio and brought down a black seamless background to help me build the basic setup. I used a pair of red gels on a speedlight to create the background. I used another speedlight with a snoot at camera right to illuminate the yellow colored sticker. Initially the bottles still had the labels on them and while they were not readable I didn't like that they were preventing some of the color to shine through the bottles. After removing all the labels with some water and elbow grease I set the shot back up and the resulting image is above. Other than a crop the above image is straight out of camera. I really enjoy doing controlled studio setups like this because I can visualize the end result and then use my ever growing lighting knowledge to execute the image.
I'm pleased to announce that I have accepted an internship with The Columbus Dispatch starting in mid-July. I've been on pins and needles the past few weeks wondering where the next chapter of my career was going to take me. The Dispatch was far and above my first choice and I'm fortunate to have been offered the opportunity to work with a such talented group of people. Seriously, check out their 2008 Pictures of the Year.
...
I'm having some trouble trying to describe how huge this is for me. I've worked so hard over the last nine months trying to improve that I don't think that it has quite hit me.
Quite honestly I owe much of this opportunity to photo editor Kevin Martin at The Baton Rouge Advocate. I just missed out on landing an internship there for this current winter/spring and Kevin called me last fall to let me know that he appreciated my work and that although I didn't make the cut that I should continue to work hard because I was close to being what they were looking for. This past month, after reconnecting with Kevin, he made a phone call to Columbus (unbeknown to me at the time) on my behalf. Keep in mind that I have never even met Kevin. My work still had to stand for itself but this got the ball rolling and after a month of going through the process I landed the internship today.
It just goes to show that, as he mentioned in an email to me today, "in this profession you are always auditioning, because someone is always watching." It's people like Kevin who remind me that I'm lucky to work in an industry that is open and willing to help others succeed.
Today was a good day...if you forget my lackluster performance on the golf course this afternoon. Two greens-in-regulation for a 3.0 handicap is embarrassing. Good thing I'm off Wednesday because I obviously need to practice.
"Bhante Sujatha (right) of Crystal Lake watches Saturday as final preparations are made before the Blue Lotus Temple's Visakha 2009 Buddha Day Celebration to honor Buddha at Congregational Unitarian Church in Woodstock. Monks, including Sujatha, from McHenry county and the surrounding states traveled to participate in the celebration of Buddha's birthday, enlightenment and death."
Today was one of those days when I look at my assignment schedule and know its going to be a great day for photos.
I know very little about religion and I'll be the first to admit it. So when I showed up to photograph a Buddha celebration this afternoon I was as lost as a six-year-old at Six Flags without their mom or dad. Lucky for me I had two things working in my favor. First, I was an hour early. Great photos can be found before and after an event. Second, I could not have more welcomed by such a great group of helpful and honorable people. Everyone was glad to see me and willing to answer all my questions.
I wandered around inside the church for a while before I moseyed outside to find some of the Monks and others hanging a large flag around the entrance to the church. The wind was making the task a challenge for the group but when it was finally up and in place it put a smile on organizer and monk Bhante Sujatha's face as seen above.
I ended up staying three and a half hours to cover the entire event. One of the greatest things about my job is the fact that I get to experience new things every day that I probably wouldn't come across otherwise. Everything about the celebration was interesting.
After they finished inside the church, the processional walked down the street and around the famous Woodstock Square (Groundhog Day was filmed here). The processional of more than a hundred people drew lots of attention as residents watched from their doors and even drew looks from folks at the shops in the square including a large contingent at Starbucks.
I really wish I had an audio recorder with me because this would have lent itself to a great multimedia piece. I came straight from home to the assignment and it never even crossed my mind. I didn't realize until I was there that I wished I had the recorder with me.
This week I shot prep baseball on back-2-back days and was treated to my favorite shooting position, overhead third. The challenge with shooting prep sports is finding a clean background. If you're a frequent reader of this blog you'll know how much of a stickler I am for clean backgrounds. There is no way to better clean up your backgrounds than by going up high above the playing surface. The problem is that very few venues allow the possibility of elevated shooting positions. This week was much different.
At Marian Central Catholic on Monday and Burlington Central on Tuesday I shot from the roof of the third base dugouts. Technically I don't think that either location was an photo position but everyone seemed to be ok with me being there. With the 400mm, and sometimes adding a 1.4x extender, I had great reach to all of the infield positions as well as left field.
Both games we're fun to watch and provided me with some nice action to photograph. Having spent the majority of my younger days on the diamond, I often had a good idea of where the ball was going to be hit. I can take a look at the pitcher, batter, the batter's position in the order, where they're standing in the box and where the catcher is setting up and can get a pretty good idea of where the ball will be hit. As a result I will focus in on a particular player in the field and read their body language as the ball is hit. In both photos one and three I was already focused in on that player and was rewarded with some nice action.
The chance to photograph my first love with great access and clean backgrounds made this a really enjoyable couple of days for me.
I needed a new headshot for my application to the Eddie Adams Workshop and this is what I came up with. It's kind of funny to think that I'm a photographer but I don't have very many photos of myself, especially like this. I figured that with the help of a tripod and some pocket wizards I could knock out a portrait in our studio at the office by myself. It seemed easy enough but I was quickly reminded how it can feel to be on the other side of the camera.
The really tough part of this process was selecting images that I wanted to include in my application. They want to see your "vision" and as much as I know what that is, it's harder than I initially thought to find a set of images that exemplify my vision. I've narrowed it down to ten images, five singles and five portraits. I also have to include a personal statement detailing why I want to go.
The process has been driving me nuts but I'm glad that I finally conjured up the nerve to apply this year. The prestigious workshop, held each fall in Jeffersonville, New York, accepts 100 students and brings in more than 150 of the top editors and photographers in the industry from publications like Time, The New York Times, National Geographic, Associated Press and Sports Illustrated just to name a few.
I won't know if I am accepted or not until July. All I can do is push submit and wait it out. Photography is so subjective that you can never really put expectations on any type of application which is something that I've learned from the internship process. I feel confident in my work and I hope that the judges do as well.
"Tori Stock of Woodstock, a senior at Marian Central, works with the McHenry County Junior Golf Association at Boone Creek Golf Club in McHenry, Ill. Stock will be attending the University of Minnesota next fall on a golf scholarship."
Last month I photographed local standout golfer Tori Stock for McHenry County Magazine. The weather didn't play very nice that day so I had to scrap my plans and come up with something on the spot.
Thank goodness I'm good at moving furniture. Los Angeles freelance photographer Joey Terrill once said "10 percent photography and 90 percent moving furniture." I have to agree with him because the majority of my portraits are right on par (pun intended) with that quote. I moved an entire room full of chairs and tables for photos one and three above. I went so far as to put a light outside the building in the snow, protected of course.
Tori was great to work with and even braved the snow and cold for a few different frames. A golf portrait in the snow isn't something that you see very often so I was glad that I could make the picture.
If you're going to the derby then you need you need the right attire and for these ladies that meant a wide brimmed hat.
I came up with the idea to do this portrait series just yesterday afternoon while going over my assignments. My photo supervisor thought that it could be a fun little assignment to get a picture for our running photo column and I expanded upon that idea to set up a little studio inside the McHenry Township Senior Center and photograph all the ladies with their hats.
The Kentucky Derby is today at 5PM EST so the senior center thought that they would have their own derby festivities as part of Older Americans Month. In addition to getting all dressed up and having lunch, they were treated to an afternoon of computerized thoroughbred racing. It was set up much like a video game but miles above anything that I've seen. The races were projected onto a large screen in the center of the room as the announcer would provide participants with the horses names, odds, and the oddsmaker's notes before the start of each race. At the conclusion of each race the winners received raffle tickets for prizes.
The ladies, and a few gentleman, all enjoyed themselves at the inaugural event.
I set up a white sheet in the corner of the ballroom and blew out the background by a stop and a half with a speedlight on each side at quarter power and I made sure to put a gobo on each light to prevent spill onto my subjects. The main light was another speedlight at around 1/8th power with my beauty dish as the modifier. I also added a gridded speedlight at about half power to light some of their hats. I once again choose the Canon 5D to help capture more detail. All of the images were shot with a 70-200 at around f/4.5, 1/200 at 50 ISO.
Don't miss what is widely known as the fastest two minutes in sports this afternoon on ABC.
