Month: April 2008

That Time Again

We’re coming up on the end of another semester. That means it’s portfolio time. This time I don’t need an unifying theme, but I do need 15 to 20 of my best prints. I’m going through them at this point and have decided on some to go in, but I’m going to need a few more. The cool thing is this semester we had a digital project, and I have plenty of digital photos to choose from this semester.

The cool thing is I’m seeing growth in my photography. The not so cool thing is that I’m having trouble charting my growth… i.e. I’m having trouble seeing what it is about my pictures that shows growth. Hopefully soon I can figure this out.

Here is a sampling of what I’m submitting for the final. First are the digital shots:

The first photo was printed with a chromira process. This process takes the digital image and exposes it to normal photo paper. The print is then processed normally as you would a film print. The others were printed on either Moab Somerset Enhanced Velvet paper or Moab Lasal Premium Luster paper on an Epson 2200 photo printer.

And now for the film prints:

These were both taken on Fuji 160C with a Pentax 645. I was able to complete the first print successfully in the enlarger. The second print, however, had a few dust problems when I put it through. It looked as if there was some dust in the emulsion. I’m thinking with this one I may go ahead and print it on the Epson. I have a feeling that it will really pop out if I print it on the Moab Somerset Enhanced Velvet paper, which gives the photograph the feel of a watercolor painting.

As you can see I have 7 selections so far, so I’m just under halfway there. Then I need to decide on the portfolio format, mat the prints, assemble the portfolio, drink lots of caffeine, etc. Oh yeah, I have 2 other finals I need to study for as well.

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

Frustration…

… comes from many sources. On Monday it was a perfect storm when my computer containing my income tax information developed issues, I contracted a cold, and I was still a couple of prints short for my digital project in Photography II. I filed for an extension, drank a lot of fluids, sweated A LOT, and stayed up until 2 am trying to get 4 suitable prints from my Epson Stylus 925. Don’t get me wrong, the 925 is a good home printer, but not good enough for a college project.

Did I mention I missed a test for my anatomy course? Yep, I sure did. I hope the professor will cut me a break and let me make it up. My computer crash demanded my attention as I was seriously freaking out about my income taxes. There is a chance that I can pass with a ‘C’ while receiving a 0 (zero) on the test, but to do that I’m going to have to kill the final lab exam and the final course exam. Nothing like a little pressure…

At any rate, this isn’t a touchy-feely blog about my emotions, this is about my photography, so let’s get to it. It took a while to go through all the photos from Saturday. As I said, the proportion of keepers to junkers was rather low. Most of the bands used the red lights while they were on stage. This was my baptism by fire that red light is a pain in the ass to shoot. I had read about it, but this was the first time it really affected my photos. I’m not quite sure as to the physics behind it, but I do know it’s not very fun.

As for more keepers, here are a couple that were taken in the challenging red light:

Both photos are of the death metal band Hate Eternal. The person in the top photo is Erik Rutan, who is a living legend within the death metal community. The bottom photo is Jade Simonetto, of whom I know very little except that he is the drummer for Hate Eternal.

Ok, now you know who they are, let’s talk about the photos. Mr. Rutan had a 2 different colors shining on him through his set – red and yellow. This gave him a fiery presence on the stage, but oh boy was it a pain to shoot him through that. In most of the photos the yellow highlights were blown off the histogram and there was no way to recover them. Using Aperture I was able to recover some of the highlights here, but this was 1 of only 2 of Erik Rutan I was able to keep.

In Jade’s case, this one came out exactly as seen, which was really surprising. I’m guessing it had something to do with the fact that he was bathed in red light and only red light, which didn’t confuse my camera sensor. I was particularly proud of this photo since I was able to get a level of detail in the drummer than is usually possible without getting on stage.

At any rate, those were a couple of keepers from the pile of 800. Before I went to the show, I did walk around downtown Houston for a little bit and took some photos. Here is some random eye candy for you:

Downtown Houston from the west bank of Buffalo Bayou.


Cupid displaying his trophy. This is part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Bayou Bend Collection.


A back door to an Asian food distributor in the old Warehouse District of Houston. I like this one particularly for it’s composition.

As always, comments are welcome and encouraged so as to foster my growth as a photographer.

* – By the way, “The Sharp Carousel” has moved. The new blog name is “Mark Alan” and is now in the “Other Cool Blogs” section to the right. If you are not familiar with Mark, he does some very creative and very cool self-portrait work. Check him out, you won’t be sorry.

Argh

Concert photography marks one of my more frustrating endeavors. Sometimes I get it right on and other times (more often) I fail miserably with some shots. I changed tactics with a show I did a couple of weeks ago and set my camera to burst mode.

Before I used to always take my shot in one-shot mode and then wait for my next opportunity. Needless to say with AI Servo mode that it was really easy to lose a shot if the lens was focused on something other than the performer such as the microphone stand or the neck of the guitar. I found in the Since The Flood show that using burst mode would yield me at least one good picture in a given series of shutter actuations since the AI servo focus is constantly adjusting.
That leads me to the frustration of last night. The show was at Warehouse Live in the old warehouse district of downtown Houston, TX. It’s a nice venue and it’s the first time I’ve had a chance to shoot there. I did get some good shots, but here my big issue was lighting. Some of my shots that would have really kicked butt were the worst in terms of lighting. I took a little over 800 pictures last night, but the proportion of good to bad was really low in relation to the Since The Flood show.

I’m still in the process of going through the images. Hopefully soon I’ll have some of them up on my Flickr page. Here is an example of one where my skill with the use of existing lighting resulted in a bad picture:

This is Nothing, vocalist for the band Mushroomhead. This dead-on shot resulted in a level of noise that was completely unacceptable. The problem for me was that he posed for me to take this shot and the moment was gone as he had a show to perform. I tried to lower the noise level in AKVIS Noise Buster and got this result:

The noise level dropped significantly, but this was the best I could do with the noise and still keep the detail of the shot. The blown highlights and color aberrations also would need extensive Photoshop work to make this a serviceable photograph. Needless to say, I was a little disappointed. But the best part is I got a great shot of Nothing earlier in the evening:

At any rate, I do need to get some more of these shots processed. As always, comments are welcome and encouraged so I can grow as a photographer.