TPS: International competition

Artist's reception is tonight. Here are the images from the show.

lessons and new ideas

Lots of things been going on in the last month or so. I finished up the images from the Ironman triathlon project. Well - I finished taking the pictures. I've done the basic editing too, but haven't really looked at them all as a set. Part of the delay has been I've wanted to get a bit of distance from them, but also that I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do with them. Initially I was shooting them with the idea that there would be a book, and that may still happen. Then I've been kicking around the idea of a small gallery show or end of season party and show, but that would probably need some sponsorship to pay for several larger prints. I did get one image accepted in the Texas Photo international competition opening next weekend, which is a thrill, but still not really the focus of the project. I'd also been contemplating putting something together for the SlideLuck PotShow coming up here in November.

Things fell in to place a bit more on Thursday night here, when I was at the Gathering of Photographers meetup in Austin. I hadn't been to this group before and had a great time. There were several very accomplished photographers there and I got some interesting ideas. In particular, I spent a while picking Julia Robinson's brain and seeing some of her multimedia slideshows. She was kind enough to put up with all my stupid questions and point me in what seems to be a good direction. I've always really enjoyed the sort of work put out by mediastorm, and the general mixing of still images along with audio. I'm a bit of a 'This American Life' and Ira Glass junkie as well. One thing I've realised in the last couple of years is that I want to try and tell stories with my photography, rather than just being happy with a series of greatest hits or one off images. I think the multimedia format has a lot of potential for that. Not really interested in video yet and there is a lot of power in looking at a still image, with audio that increases or expands upon the information in the image, without going to moving pictures.

Of course, that now means I need to work out how to put all that together. I've taken the pictures, but I didn't record any audio. I have a small Olympus WS-110 digital recorder that I think will be good enough to pick up the audio I need, but I have to go record it. Which now means I'm having to consider doing interviews, recording background sounds and arranging some instrumental backing music. Then I need to learn how to mix all those bits of audio together and sync it up to the images. The prospect of learning all this new stuff has really lit a candle under me - it's exciting! Reminds me of all the book structure and design that I absorbed for the first SoFoBoMo.

This evening, I was at Piercarlo's gallery show CHAN-CHAN. He did it in conjunction with another artist - a painter - Luis Abreux. Combined, they had paintings and photography hanging together. The images were all related to Cuba in various ways, and there was a live band playing music from the region too. It struck me that this was an even more engrossing multimedia presentation of the work. The band really evoked the feel of the area and helped transport you while looking at the images.

On the way home from that show, I ran into a friend of mine who's a great musician. Woode Wood is a fixture on the local running trail, playing his music and working on his videos. Things are picking up for him and he's putting a band together now. We hung out for a while and I was lucky enough to get my first guitar lesson from him. My fingertips are still sore. I was also able to arrange to license some of his music as the backing score for the slideshow - things are falling into place already! Check out his videos and vote for them on YouTube.

balmorhea

Balmorhea is great state park, out 'near' Big Bend national park. Spring fed by the San Solomon Springs, 72-76F all year, huge, flowing at a rate of 22 to 28 million gallons per day and in the middle of the desert. Just what you need after a hot day. These shots were all taken with the Canon G10, using the underwater housing (WP-DC28). Everything worked, even though I was a bit apprehensive the first time getting into the water with the camera. Easy to use, almost all of the controls (apart from the rear dial) work.

somewhat conflicted

Bought two books this evening:

"Texas BBQ" (Wyatt McSpadden, John Morthland)

"The Engine 2 Diet: The Texas Firefighter's 28-Day Save-Your-Life Plan that Lowers Cholesterol and Burns Away the Pounds" (Rip Esselstyn)

Seems like I'm a bit conflicted...

thanksgiving

I made pie.

that was the sofobomo, that was

That's how the global blog traffic looked for this year's SoFoBoMo. A slow burn up to the start of the fuzzy month, then a crazy flurry of activity and now all but a receding memory. My book is finally put to bed and I still haven't really returned to using my camera. I'm in danger of becoming someone who used to be a photographer and who now owns cameras. I haven't been trying to force it though, focusing instead on other things to keep me busy.

I've wanted to review some of the SoFoBoMo books on the blog but haven't managed to find the time yet. In fact, I'd be happy if I just could look at all of the 59 finished projects. (Who would have thought way back at the start of that graph above that we'd see 59 finished books! - an awesome achievement all around). The simple whimsy of ndalum78's I can count charmed me the first time I saw it and still brings a smile to my face thinking back on it. Such a simple idea, very well executed. I think there's often a tendency to over think these sorts of projects, aiming for a complex message or set of ideas, when a really clear, simple concept can be beautiful if treated well.

Bernie Sumption's Eyes project is another that stands out in my mind from the early finishers. It was an example of great technique and a clever concept, handled in an interesting way, combining the head shots with the eye images to create a unique blended portrait of each subject. There are many more books that arrived later that I haven't yet seen. Maybe it'll rain some day in Texas and I'll have the time to investigate further! I am starting to feel the old familiar tugging to pick up the camera again. My 'other' book project, that SoFoBoMo was the pathfinder for, has started impinging into my consciousness again. I was lucky enough to get a MacBook Pro for work and have been exploring some of the writing tools available exclusively on that platform. I remember reading enviously about tools like Scrivener, when I was trying to outline the book. Now I have access to them and maybe that'll be enough of a jolt to move the project forward. New toys always help! I also think I'm going to be trying to resurrect the Everyday Ironman project in 2008/2009. It didn't happen this year for a variety of reasons, weather, injury and a whole host of other excuses. But the same team is putting together an even bigger contingent for the 2009 Ironman Coeur d'Alene and I'm going to attempt to document it this time around. The race is later in the year, so the weather should be better. Not so many workouts in the dark depths of winter and hopefully I should be a bit more mobile next year and able to keep up!

sharpie

Every year Austin stages the South by Southwest music conference. The place gets invaded by thousands of bands, music reps, journalists and photographers. Sixth street turns into a zoo. Good place for pictures! I never did find out why they'd given themselves sharpie moustaches...

jessa

85mm 1/250s @ f1.8, ISO 1250

This is Jessa, from the Strobist get together in Austin. We found what probably looked like the least appealing end of the corridor that we had been shooting in, for this shot. I think Kirk wanted us to see what you can make, from essentially nothing. There was no interesting light - other than the tungsten light fittings in the hall. No ambient light in the corner we'd picked either. We sat down in the middle of the corridor and I put my canon 580EX flash on the floor, pointing to the wall on my right. Tried a few shots like that. Then we put a large silver reflector on the floor, that you can see in the catchlights in her eyes. The flash was aimed up towards the corner of the wall/ ceiling and fired in TTL mode. I composed the shot to use some of the lighting elements in the background to provide a frame and just fired a few shots. This was my favourite. I had originally planned to take it to black and white, but after doing that, I partially resaturated it to bring it up to this muted, half colour half black and white palette. I've used this technique quite often when I try black and white images. Often I like the feel that you get - a uniquely digital palette, but not overly obvious or too saturated. Subtle colour, turned down but still part of the composition. It seems to work particularly well for high ISO shots so that the noise in the image adds a subtle grain, particularly in the out of focus regions. Holly asked How are you using your flash off camera? I got a Canon ST-E2 infrared flash controller for Christmas, so I've been playing around with that. It means I can use TTL flash triggering, which seems to be a mixed blessing. Easy to get good exposures, but it seems you can't use it to manually trigger the flash at a given, repeatable power output. I've also got pocket wizards, which have a much longer range but no TTL capability. I'm working on learning how to use both more effectively.

amanda, tim & kate

Lensbaby, star aperture ring and some Christmas lights

the westway method

A couple of readers have mentions the ads that have recently appeared on this blog. I'm not getting in to advertising in a big way, but I am helping to sell a product that I was involved in developing, over a period of five years. There's an instructional DVD available now and an e-book coming in the next few weeks. The Westway Method of Photography is a DVD created by a good friend of mine, Randy Kerr. Randy is a very successful wedding and portrait photographer, working at the highest levels in Austin, Texas. I met Randy about 5 years ago through a shared acquaintance and we've hit it off ever since. I have never met anyone with such an innate understanding of light and photography. Nearly everything I've learned about natural lighting for portraiture, I've learned at classes taught by Randy and that I now help him teach. He's also a bit of an unusual character, developing his portrait business in a field in Bastrop, Texas - about 30 miles outside of Austin. Living in a tent and working the land, he carved out a portrait studio, cutting back trees to suit the light in particular seasons, building features to use as backgrounds and planting wildflowers to provide foreground elements throughout the year.

The Westway DVD presents Randy's 10 step approach to photography, describing it in a very down to earth and non-technical way. There's a clear description and demonstration of camera basics along with some rarely documented fundamentals on finding and using natural light for portraiture. The subject matter ranges through landscapes, portraiture and wildflowers, with an ecological bent. The 1 hour DVD also touches on using lighting modifiers and teaching you how to work within the limits of your camera equipment, to get the best from your photography. I have to admit I also make a brief appearance in the DVD, working through the effect of depth of field and aperture on final images. I think this is a great instructional DVD to introduce the fundamentals of photography and light and really presents some hard to find information on natural light portraiture, in an understandable way. It would also make a great Christmas present! You can see an example chapter from the DVD in the video link below, at slightly reduced quality for web display. I particularly like the visual way it teaches how to identify mid-tones in a scene, to help evaluate exposure.

The DVD also recently won a Telly award for an educational product and was very well shot and produced by Bradley Helgerson. If you are interested, you can order the DVD here. There are also reviews of the DVD available from other owners, here.

kate & tim

Another shot from the Big Bend adventure. Kate & Tim were looking for something festive and I happened to have the becoming ubiquitous red nose in my bag, along with a santa hat that we'd planned to use for our own Christmas card pictures. We were in Ernst Tinaja, a long, thin river cut canyon with amazing red-orange walls. The sun was high over head but the light was bouncing around the canyon walls. The last time I was in there I'd noticed that the light was beautiful for portraits and I wanted to try it out on this trip. I'd borrowed Sam's 10D for these shots and was just about familiar enough with the controls to get the shots I wanted. I like this particular one because I'd asked them to balance the nose between them and they just look so happy while playing around with it. The diagonal composition and the gaze works for me, along with the two bright red areas to keep the eye moving - even with the nose so centered in the frame and such a dominant colour - I think the splash of red in the hat offsets it a touch, balanced with the complimentary dark green patch in Tim's top. Similarly his dark hair balances the white trim on the hat - shapes are about the same size and shape, so an interesting colour and tone symmetry around the ball.

big bend

I love Big Bend - such a beautiful, harsh place. So many extremes and different landscapes in one location. Thanksgiving is the busiest time of year, so we tried to get in early. Left from Austin at 5am on the Wednesday and arrived at the ranger station around 1pm to find that almost all the campsites were already reserved. Luckily enough, we'd rented a 4 wheel drive Jeep so could access some of the more out of the way back country sites. We picked Gravel Pit 4, on the West end of the River Road. Not that inspiring of a name but we were told this was one of the better sites. It was down a long, rutted, gravelly and sandy road in a small copse of trees. The roads are fun in the right equipment but I wouldn't like to take a 2 wheel drive car down there - though some manage. On the first day it was over 80F. Hot. Dry. We set up our tents and went for a wander around. We were about 50 yards from the Mexican border - the Rio Grande river was just down a path from our camp site. The sun was setting as we started to make dinner, a clear blue sky overhead with the moon rising, close to full. Lovely.

That first night was windy, with gusts up to 41MPH and about a pound of dust dumped in each tent. I didn't get a lot of sleep as the tent was flapping around so much in the wind. Woke up with a light layer of the desert on top of us all. The temperature had really dropped over night but at least the wind died down. Another beautiful sunrise over the desert.

We had breakfast, broke camp and moved on. That morning we hiked in to Boquillas canyon and listened to Victor, the singing Mexican, serenading us from just over the border on the other side of the Rio Grande river. His tip jar is in the US and he sings from Mexico, sneaking across every now and then to pick up what might have been left for him.

After that we drove the fun and rutted Old Ore road to Ernst Tinaja. This is one of my favourite parts of the park - a narrow canyon with beautiful light and some really tortured rock formations. Saw a couple of rather furry tarantula spiders on the way into the canyon. We had lunch in there then moved on to the hot springs. Along the way, I talked to the guy behind the counter at the Rio Grande campsite store and found out that many tents had broken in the wind, the previous night. Somehow we all got lucky - though four of our group decided enough was enough and headed back home.

That night we camped beneath Nugent Mountain (site NM1)- beautiful sunset, amazing clouds, freezing winds and temps in the 20F range. Did I mention it was 80F the day before ?! Nugent mountain is a really interesting photo op - a dramatic silhouette. It was frigid the next morning. Cups of tea and coffee helped but eventually the sun rose over the Sierra del Carmen range and warmed us up.

We broke camp and drove into the Chisos mountains basin for the big hike of the trip. We'd packed as lightly as possible for an overnight hike. We climbed up the Laguna Meadows trail from the basin ranger station, up onto the south rim of the Chisos range (at around 7,500 feet). Carrying about 2 gallons (16 pounds) of water each on our backs, along with food, tents and lots of warm clothes. We had ended up in the furthest backcountry camp site (NE4) from the starting point and there had been a mountain lion sighting at the camp site just the day before (the ranger was really excited for us all!) The hike out up Laguna Meadows is beautiful - not too step and some great views. Once we were at the top, about 3 miles in, we stopped for a break and took in the view. I produced a red nose and used it to get a set of pictures of all the hardy souls we were hiking with that day.

Up on the rim, the hiking got a lot easier - a 4 mile stroll around the edge to the camp site. The views are breathtaking, over the edge to Mexico and the desert far, far below. We set up camp and were confused by a warm inversion that meant it was about 40F and calm/ comfortable up there at 7000+ feet. Spent probably the most comfortable night of the trip up there, watched an amazing sunset and woke up for an even more breathtaking sunrise. The site is a bit back from the edge and quite sheltered from the wind, but stunning vistas are only a few steps away. Happy and relaxed we broke camp and started our hike down.

Our group split at Emery point - about half of them went for the 2 mile round trip to the summit, while the rest of us headed down. My ankle is still bothering me a bit so I decided to go for the easier option. Sam and I talked about cameras and photography most of the way down - he'd been more crazy and brought a Canon 10D with him so I'd used it a bit through the day. My Panosonic DMC-LX1 proved a much lighter option and did quite well for a point and shoot camera (all the pictures in this post were taken with it). I do like the widescreen aspect ratio that it defaults to. Always wanted a digital panoramic camera and this the closest I can get to an X-pan. On the way down the Pinnacles Trail, about 500 feet from the basin and car park, we entered a cloud bank - a short while later it started raining. Half an hour earlier we were toasting in warm sunlight - not a cloud in the sky. We had watched the cloud pour in to the basin through the Window. Just as we reached the basin valley trail, the rain turned to freezing rain and the temperatures plummeted. About 10 minutes later I had a hard time opening my car door because it was frozen shut. Jumped in the car, turned the heating on and waited for everyone else to get down off the mountain - luckily enough we all eventually did!

Everyone got down from the hillside before it got too serious - we also made it out of the basin, down into the desert, before the road down was closed (I heard later that it was shut for over a day - so we were quite fortunate to get out). After that fun, we decided to head on home. Nobody felt like pitching a tent in the snow for the night! We drove along the road to Marathon in an increasingly fun blizzard, slipping and sliding around on the road. We managed to struggle in to Marathon and snagged the last two hotel rooms in the place. Settled down for the night in front of a roaring fire at the Gage hotel (well worth a visit if you can) and had some great steaks for dinner. Woke up the next morning and the sun was splitting the pavement - warm, beautiful clear skies, no wind. A perfect day in the desert, yet with everything covered in snow!

More snow was forecast but we high-tailed it out on the 'low road' back to Austin. Highway 90 follows the border to Del Rio then cuts back up to San Antonio and the snow disappeared really quickly on that route. Tim was thrilled to get to take us all through the border check-point and thankfully didn't say anything to get us deported. We made good time and got back to Austin in the early evening - exhausted from our crazy trip. I can't wait to go back the next time. Big Bend is a place of such dramatic contrasts. Each of the three times I've been has been really special yet wildly different. Get there if you can.

Big Bend

Just got back from a great trip out to West Texas for the Thanksgiving holiday. We camped in Big Bend National Park and had a great time, high mountains, nights freezing in the desert, snow storms, sand storms. Survived it all and got home this evening. This is a picture of the crew we climbed the Chisos mountains with. Took this about half way up the Laguna Meadows trail, as we hiked up to our campsite on the rim. I'll post more about the trip after some sleep!

mike milligan and the altar boyz

Met up with some friends on Saturday night and went out on Sixth Street in Austin. Took some pictures along the way and were drawn in to B. D. Riley's and listened to some great blues. There's something great about Austin that you can see such amazing music, without any cover, just in any given bar around town. More shots on flickr. I didn't feel particularly self-conscious taking pictures - I think because two of the other people I was with were also shooting the band. I'm less bothered doing it on my own now, but it still helps to have some others around to provide that justification/ validation. I suppose that fades with time. Instead of tipping them for all the pictures I took, I picked up one of their CDs. Check out their music on their myspace page In the comments, Shane asked 'Care to share what lens and ISO you were using?' These were all shot with a Canon 1dMkII, with a 50mm f1.4 lens, all at an aperture of f1.4 and ISO 1600, mostly in aperture priority mode with matrix metering, though a few I switched to manual exposure and spot metered. Focus is the hardest part of shooting like this - the light is low, the auto focus can hunt, the depth of field is very shallow at f1.4, the performers are moving, makes for a fun time. The one below to the left has a bit of motion blur to it - which I like in this case, there's a lot of movement going on, on stage so I don't mind capturing it. There's also a pretty dramatic visual difference between in-focus motion blur and an out of focus shot. I like both styles of blur in different situations. Colour-wise I was shooting in tungsten white balance, for the bar lighting which pushed the lights into the street towards some great blues and green colours from a variety of light sources. Steve asked ' Did you do any noise reduction in processing?' These don't have any noise reduction done to them, other than the default that Lightroom applies. I find I can pretty much get away without using noise reduction, even at ISO 1600 as long as I expose the shot right. If I have to try and boost the exposure I'll always get in to trouble, but when it is exposed correctly, the results are usually pretty good. Resizing for web display helps with that too, but you could easily print these as an 8x10 and not notice any real noise issues. The other thing I like about the 1DII is that the noise that there is, isn't too objectionable - I find it almost like film grain - you can see some of that speckling in the background of the black and white shot below. I do find when I shoot at ISO 3200 that the noise can be a bit more noticeable and there's also more of a colour shift. Often when I shoot at that ISO I'll convert to contrasty black and whites and the noise doesn't seem so out of place. I really hate the soft, plastic look that noise reduction software typically gives so avoid it as much as possible. I'd rather have some grain or texture. The Canon cameras are great for low noise and this style of available light shooting, though I'm getting quite interested in the Nikon D3, because of it's really high ISO performance.

Austin triathlon

Dragged myself out of bed to go and shoot the Austin Triathlon this morning. Didn't get a whole lot of sleep the night before but pushed myself to go and start taking some more photos of the people I train with in T3. This shot of Jane above made it all worthwhile. She spent the whole race grinning happily and I happened to be in the right place at the right time for when she was getting soaked. Ended up having a lot of fun, lying in gutters to get good low angle shots of the bikes, dodging kids with squirt guns who were soaking the athletes and occasionally me. I was trying to go a bit beyond the safe, event style of shooting that usually gets done at these events. I'm not being paid for the photos so took more risks and had a lot less keepers than normal. Though also meant there are a few that worked better. Also found that a camera bag can make for a good impromptu tripod to lean the camera on if you are lying flat out in the road. Getting down really low with a longer lens can really work out well, as in the shot to the right, where the road starts to provide a bit of out of focus foreground. I was lucky with some mist in the air too that fades out the capitol building in the background. I found some great busy, colourful backdrops in south Austin, using the painted store fronts as backgrounds for the images. Panning tends to reduce the contrast a bit and in general mixes the colours up, as you can see in the shot below, so while the background is busy, the slow shutter speed and moving camera blends that background and makes it less confusing and helps the subject pop. I was shooting at about 1/50s at around 100mm focal length, so I have a lot of blurry, failed images. But there are a few that work that gives me hope if I just practice some more!

Was a good day to go and shoot in the end, too. Not too sunny, lots of bright, even light from the clouds. I did decide to leave my flash at home, which I'm not entirely sure was a good idea. There were a few times where it might have been useful, but you do tend to get a lot of reflective clothes that glow in odd ways with triathlon gear and bikes. Also decided to cut some weight and only take a 70-200 lens (with a 1.4x tele). I wish in the end I'd taken the 17-40 along too. A lesson in being too lazy I think. I walked about 5 miles up and down Congress Avenue shooting the bikes then caught the tail end of the run course. Getting a bit further away from the start area meant I had more space to shoot and not so many people to avoid in the backgrounds. The rest of the shots from the day are over on flickr.