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.

everyday ironman

Finished the shooting for the Ironman project at the weekend, with a few post race celebratory tattoo images. Lots of pictures taken. Many great race stories. So many new Ironmen after the race up in Coeur d'Alene last week. A tough day and nearly everyone came through it strong. The others I'm sure will be back to try again some other day. Now I'm left to try and make some sense out of all the pictures. I had an idea for a book of these images. Maybe now it is just a show of some large prints. Hard to tell at the moment.

ironman coeur d'alene 2009

Was lucky enough to get to watch a huge group of people from T3 in Austin take part in and do amazingly well at Ironman CDA, at the weekend. I took a few pictures too. Congratulations to all of them.

t3 practiceman

Every year the T3 training group put on a training event called the practiceman. Gets people used to switching from the bike to running, without the pressure of a race. I used it as a pre-race practice for my own photography too. Was a good way to dial in some things for the race on Monday. As I mentioned yesterday, practice with the camera is what is helping me get better shots. More familiarity with the controls, being able to change settings quickly and with confidence. The week in Big Bend at the start of the month further helped with that. A lot of night photography and learning to find the buttons more by feel than sight further dials in the muscle memory. I've sat watching the TV in a dark room, working the buttons on the camera in the near darkness as well, just to keep building that understanding of the layout. That way, I can change settings without taking the camera away from my eye, if needed, less chimping and looking at the camera, more making the shots you want to make.

I've also been working a bit more with the 580EX flash, on camera. Again there I'm getting more familiar with what it can do and how to adjust things to get the shots I want. Darkening down the background and then opening up the foreground with the fill from the flash. Off camera mostly gives better results, but using the fill on these really bright, sunny days can give the bit of lift that's needed.

making progress

Spent some of yesterday morning shooting at the Capital of Texas Triathlon, in downtown Austin. I've been shooting this race off and on now for 8 years. For the last 5 years, I've used exactly the same equipment. It was interesting to see that I was starting to make some decent pictures, this time around. The first few years I was just happy to get a sharp picture. Then the next year, I was starting to get cleaner compositions, less stuff in the frame that I didn't want there, more sharp frames. This time around I seem to have learned enough to start paying more attention to the light and getting shots that actually start looking like what I wanted to achieve. Part of that is getting much more comfortable with the camera controls. Being able to react and change settings quickly and correctly, with only a few seconds to spare, really helped make the pictures I saw the potential for. I was also doing a better job of getting more interesting angles, shooting down from above, getting low, trying to do something more than just shots from eye level.

Perhaps most effective was looking for interesting light and then exploiting it - finding places where the light was coming between buildings or bouncing around from glass and making shots that worked in those locations. All of this with the same gear I've been lugging around for half a decade. I imagine if I'd been switching cameras more often, or changing lenses, I'd have less familiarity with how they all work, I'd have to look at the controls and think more - be able to react less automatically. When things are changing quickly, that muscle memory really helps get the picture.

computrainer

3 hours on a bike, with a simulation and video recording of the race. That gets you through about half of the course. The computer changes the resistance to match the hills on the real course, except you don't get to coast on the downhills.

a core workout with a twist

It all went '80s retro, for the coach's birthday and just another core workout day.

run recovery

indexhibit

I've been wanting to re-vamp my website for quite a while now, over at mcgregorphoto.com. A while ago, I cobbled together some html that did a reasonable job of showing the pictures I put up. It was automated slightly, to pick up new pictures as I added them, but somehow I never did. This morning I read about Indexhibit and thought I'd take a look. I've tried various Content Management Systems (CMS) in the past, for web hosting. Including the often recommended Gallery Photo Management System. However, they've always been too feature-rich, and hence complex, or just not quite what I was looking for. I wanted something fairly simple, clean and easy to maintain. That includes being able to add new pictures easily. I wanted to be able to organise the images in terms of projects or folios of work. I use flickr for my stream of consciousness images - all the stuff I shoot ends up on flickr. Family images, holiday snaps, more planned stuff, everything. However, flickr is really not good at all for showing sets of finished work. The long-teased flickrfolio might do that, but I got fed up waiting. I managed to resist my natural urge to start with Indexhibit and then spend the next few weeks researching other options, just in case there is something better out there. Instead, for a change, I decided just to try it out and see how it works.

I was very pleasantly surprised how easy Indexhibit was to install. It took me about 10 minutes to get it up and running on my 1and1 hosted site. That includes setting up a MySQL database backend and configuring the Indexhibit install. I haven't done much with it yet, but you can preview the new look. I'll no doubt be playing around with the format and content over the next few weeks but I am impressed by the ease of use and the look and feel so far. At this point I'm really not interested in doing web design, I want to be able to host the images in a clean and simple way. Indexhibit does that very well.

evening spin

From an indoor spin class, this evening. This time of year, much of the classes are done after dark or before sunrise. Not a lot of available light to work with. I'm hopeful that in a few weeks, when the clocks change and there is a bit more daylight, that I'll be able to work that into the shots. For now, I'm enjoying working with the artificial available light and living with and exploiting the softness and grain that comes with that. My radio poppers arrived today, (thanks to TriCoast Photography) and I'm thinking about starting to work in a little bit of strobe to some of these shots. But I still like the softness and blur.

before & after

Triathlon is all about transitions. From the swim, to the bike to the run on race day. From every day life to training rides in the cold. From bed to swimming early in the morning. From work to running in the evening. Training back to normal life again. Back and forth, transition after transition. Swim, bike, run.

evening run

a small hill. a large loop. repeat.

spin

morning swim

January. 5am. 32F. Nice time for a swim.

too cold

Finally started taking pictures for the triathlon training project I feel I've been planning for a couple of years now. Kicked it all off last weekend. I'm excited to get started. Race day is June 21st, 2009. There are 72 people currently training with the group. Lots of excitement and enthusiasm just now.