Rock the Wrench

Members of Envy the Cookbook from left, Jake Gandlmayr, Kurt Singer, Frank Ladish, Taylor Perkins, and Jeff Clayton take a minute to celebrate their win before packing up their equipment  at the Rock the Wrench competition Tuesday night.  The competition was hosted by MU’s student radio station, KCOU.  Interested bands had to apply for a spot in the competition.  Thirteen bands’ bios and clips of their music were put on KCOU’s site.  From votes on these thirteen bands, five were chosen to play in the final competition.  Envy the Cookbook took home the first place trophy along with a $500 gift card to Guitar World.  Envy the Cookbook said after the show that they had practiced a total of four hours in preparation for Rock the Wrench.

ISO: 400    WB: Automatic    f/16 @ 1/160 sec        Date: 11/19/2009

Flash Info: Dyna lights by pocket wizard communication with canon flash for fill

Fill and Balance Outtake

This is the image I really thought about turning in for this assignment.  It just seems like such a good use of the balancing technique.  Because I hit Hyejin with a flash she is well-exposed even though the exposure was set for outside which was much brighter.  I ended up going with the other image though, because it is when Hyejin woke up, and her eye is so striking (probably because she was startled by the weirdo photographing her).  Also with this shot, the flash is hitting her shoulder, not her face, so it could have been a little more successful.

Fill and Balance Select

Journalism student, Hyejin Kim, tries to get in a quick power nap while studying, Monday, November 9 in the Reynolds Journalism Instistute.  Kim said, “I am always so busy studying.  It would be nice to enjoy the nice weather though.”
ISO: 100    WB: Automatic    f/2.2 @ 1/250 sec      Flash Info: ETTL on off camera flash cord

I had a lot of fun with this assignment.  I found two situations I really found fun to work.  I got to practice the techniques while making a picture I would have wanted to make anyway.

In the end, I found it difficult to choose a select because of an unexpected moment I caught.  While looking for situations to do the balancing assignment, I came across this girl sleeping.  It was perfect to me.  I knew exactly what she was going through.  So I started testing out the technique on her and then started waiting on people to walk through the shot outside.  I knew it was what I wanted because I thought it would illustrate perfectly a situation where you need to balance the light.  In the end, I got a picture I am happy with that shows the contrast of the poor girl trying to catch some sleep while students outside walk together on the nice fall day.  However, the flash hit the girl’s shoulder more than her face, so it could be technically stronger.  But I am really happy with the idea I was able to achieve by balancing.

Still, shortly after I shot this I moved into a different position to try and get the coffee cups in the shot.  That is when the girl woke up and I was able to quickly snap the shot.  This shot is more captivating I think, but technique wise it does not do the same thing as the other.  I did manage to hit her well in the face with the flash, but the windows are sort of an afterthought.  Also, it does not say as much to me.  It is captivating I guess, but it  is sort of her reacting to waking up and seeing a camera pointed at her, so I feel a little torn about it.  Better visual, weaker story and use of the balancing technique?  Still, works well as fill though.

Behind the scenes at Spit Fresh Midwest

While the music plays during their radio show, Spit Fresh Midwest, University of Missouri Juniors Macy Pruitt and Zack Tuthill relax by facebooking.  Spit Fresh Midwest runs on the student station, KCOU, every Wednesday evening from 10 p.m. to midnight.  Pruitt and Tuthill play mostly rap and hip hop music during their show.

 

Self-Critique

When I said I hated flash on the last assignment, I had no idea it could get even more difficult.  I do have to say that for this assignment I found a situation where I was happy to have a flash, however.  At the radio station of KCOU, the light was pretty dim.  When setting up for the assignment by taking a picture without flash, the subjects were pretty blurry and they were not even moving around that fast.  I also could not really use my faster lens as it is a 50mm prime, so there was no way to zoom out.  The studio the guys were working in was so small my 50 would have been good on about one shot, then it would have been impossible to do much more.  So I put on my slow old zoom lens and went to work.  The thing I thought was interesting was that even though the light was pretty ugly, it still looked better to me without the filters on the flash.  I was pretty happy with the look of the straight bounced flash on auto white balance.  Maybe that is just a sign of unsophisticated taste?  I mean, the green gel on the fluorescent setting did look ok too, although it seemed to flatten out the colors.  Also, the room happened to be very blue.  The subjects were also in blue clothing.  So when I took shots without the gels, it looked a little more balanced to me.  With the gel on, I thought the skin tone looked pretty good, but the room just looked really dull.  When looking at the room, I noticed that everything was blue but it did not stand out as much as it did when looking at the fluorescent corrected images I shot.  So, in the end, while I understand the value of knowing how to use flash, I do not quite understand the value of color correcting gels.  I liked my images jut fine in the auto white balance setting.  It was sort of like driving a Ferrari to church when I could have been cruising.

Painting with Light

©Mallory Benedict, Alex Browning, Won Suk Choi and Katie Wood

Haunting houses is just an after-school job for Hallsville High School student Katrina Echelmeyer who works at Fear Fest in Columbia, MO. Echelmeyer began working as an actor at Fear Fest when her sister, a make-up artist for the haunted house, suggested she get involved. Fear Fest owner, Greg Allen, admits Echelmeyer is one of his favorite haunts in the attraction saying, “That one gets me every time.” Fear Fest employs a total of 65 actors and is Mid-Missouri’s largest haunted attraction with four components including a haunted corn maze, two houses, and an insane asylum.

I am proud to say that a crop is the ONLY thing that has been done to this photograph.  This photo is from a project I shot with three of my advanced techniques classmates last week.  The assignment was to use created light (opposed to available light) to make a long exposure photograph.  So we headed out to Fear Fest to have some fun.  This photo was created by popping Katrina, the model, with an off camera flash from below and then popping a strobe light through the holes in the wall.  We kept the shutter open the entire time (a total of 9 seconds).  So, for the technique to work out it had to be completely black in the room where we did it.  This final image was actually the least fufilling of the assignment.  In some of our other pictures we were able to make the models look like ghosts and even hallucinations.  To see the other final images we liked you can go to my classmates’ blogs below.

Alexandra Browning

Mallory Benedict

Won Suk Choi

Single Flash Assignment

Adam Boster shows off his flossing tool at the Renaissance Festival at the Boone County Fair Grounds north of Columbia, MO, Sunday, September 18, 2009. Boster growled, "Have ya'self a turkey leg then come see me and I will pick yer teeth out for ya." Boster is actually in the process of purchasing land near Columbia in order to build a more permanent location for the Renaissance Festival which has been growing steadily in numbers every year.

Direct Flash Self-Critique

This assignment was so incredibly frustrating.  I hate flash! I have been taking pictures for years and have managed to get really good at shooting without a flash.  However, I know I cannot get away without using flash forever, so I am glad I was forced outside my comfort zone…I guess.

Actually, with my select, I am not sure if it even counts as direct flash since it is in the daylight.  It does overpower the daylight though, at least on Mr. Boster’s face.  I did not bracket this particular image, but I did move the flash around to avoid the dark shadows the sword cast back on the subject.  When I finally got back and looked at this shot thinking it was the one I wanted to use, I was mortified to discover that I had left my own shadow very distinctly on the subject.  Luckily, my shadow was low enough I could turn this long shot into a wide portrait.  I also had another image I liked but chose this one because even with the hard shadow on Boster’s forehead, I think it is still much stronger and the shadow is even less distracting than the shadow of his sword falling on his chest in the other image.  And even with the ugly, hard shadows and the daylight theme, I think the image is still much stronger than any of the other images I got from my other situation, which was a bonfire.  At the bonfire, I used direct flash because there was really no other option, and while it maybe looks a little better than a point and shoot’s flash, they are so ugly I got a headache from looking at them.  So, I don’t think this image is amazingly strong technically, but I still like it the best of everything I got.  I think Boster looks really scary and dramatic and I think the flash helped accomplish this.

At Centro Latino in Columbia, MO young students find all sorts of ways to occupy their time from board games to field trips to the park. Centro Latino offers after-school programming Monday through Thursday evenings during the school year.

Bounce Flash Self-Critique

This assignment was a little less frustrating…but not much.  I tried three different situations and found some decent shots in all of them.  At this point, I think I would be confident going into any situation with a flash if I thought I could successfully bounce it.  Still, I found it was limiting on how far you could be from the subjects, and not always accurate with hitting the subjects.  There was one other image I debated over using of a girl sitting on the floor making a funny face.  It is a slanted shot, so maybe it would have been a bad idea anyway.  Still, I loved her expression and the repetition of all these feet around her.  I choose this one over that though, because the histogram was just stronger on this one.  Somehow, I think the flash on the runner-up hit just a little in front of the subject.  I think this is just something I will have to practice to get good at.

As far as my actual select, I like the light.  I think it is even and appropriate.  This was the easiest situation I found to try bouncing the flash in.  The ceiling was low and white and it seemed to work really well for me.  However, the images did look darker on my computer than they did on my camera screen, so I think I will have to pay close attention to that and start relying more on my histogram than my view screen.

“Fake Blood, Guts and Gore” i.e.Multimedia Critique

The project that particularly stood out to me was “Fake Blood, Guts and Gore” from the New York Times’ website.  This project includes photos  and audio from a New York haunted house attraction with voiceovers from the critic who did the story.  I think it is a really creative and engaging way to do a write-up.  Seeing the images and hearing all the sounds from the performers and from behind the scenes is very effective and so much more exciting than a written review.

Source: New York Times

As far as usability goes, the project is put on a clean grey background.  There is a play button and a scroll bar.  When the project is playing, the play button becomes a pause button.  The audience can also scroll over the bar to determine which image to jump to.  It is pretty straightforward in a good way.  There is not, however, a direct link back to New York Times’ homepage, so that is the only thing I might criticize.  Of course users can hit the back button, but having a direct link is also nice.

As far as design goes, the layout really emphasizes the images.  The background is very simple.  There is little text and what is included is small.  The design is very professional as it is the same standard background used for all of the New York Times’ multimedia projects.  In this case it is a little contradictory because the project and photos are so bizarre, but it is not a major distraction.  The color scheme is dark grey with white and light gray writing, which again help to emphasize the images.  The layout is pretty standard, but it works well.

For this project, the audio is extremely effective.  There are not any graphics, but the audio is matched well with the images.  At one point a crazy woman in a hospital gown pops up on the screen and the audio cuts to a creepy girly laugh.  At another point, someone talks about the kitchen and the images from that room come up.  It all works really well together to support the overall effect.  Additionally, brief captions are included under the scroll bar that provide details such as the names of the actors and the locations of the photos.

In the end, the only thing I did not particularly care for was the voiceover and the critic title page.  The title page and audio that goes with it do not really go with the rest of the project.  I think there may have been a better way to handle this.  Also, I think I just do not like voiceovers in general.  If you go through the trouble of getting audio, then I want to hear the people from the story, not the reporter.  I found the reporter’s voice distracting.  I would take it out if I were to redo it.  It seems that the answers are given in a way this may have been too difficult to accomplish, but I would have tried.  During the POYi judging, all of the judges were turned off by voiceovers too.  Let the subjects tell the story.

Studio Metal Assignment

An estimated 45,000 Americans die every year because of inadequate access to health care coverage. Six out of ten bankruptcies are also linked to looming health care costs. 80% of the individuals who claimed health care costs as a reason for filing bankruptcy actually had health insurance. Realities like these have left millions of Americans feeling locked down when in need of medical care.

As far as content goes for this assignment, I cannot think of anything I would have rather done.  Following a minor cancer scare this summer, I got a dose of what it is like to fear being ill for the sake of being broke, not sick.  This experience inspired me to use this assignment to express my own feelings about the current state of American health care.   In the end, I think I combined all of the elements well to achieve the feeling of helplessness I was going for.

As far as technique goes, I think I was definitely in more control of the lighting this go than I was with the classmate assignment.  I knew I wanted a moody feeling and I made the conscious choice to use a large softbox because of that.  Still, I think I was quite sloppy despite my improvements.  I was very distracted by the look of the image and the comfort level of my poor roommate who was kind enough be wrapped in chains in a hot studio for nearly an hour and a half.

My partner was helpful in keeping me somewhat focused on the light.  Still, I was so obsessed with getting a good composition that I sort of let the light fall to the wayside.  I did bracket this time and actually base my shoot off the meter.  I even tried gobboing to decrees the reflection on the metal padlock.  Unfortunately, the image with the best reflection on the padlock was not the picture with the best composition, so in the end I compromised.

I also shot using the daylight white balance this time, which I think actually threw me off.  I could not figure out why the light looked so bluish white, and later I remembered that I shot the last project in automatic white balance.  I know we should use the daylight setting, but I wanted the image to look moody, so had I remembered this fact when shooting, I think I would have tried the shot with different white balances to see what happened.

Finally, when going back through my film, I realized I really like some of the images where I was farther away from my subject.  Sadly, during the shoot I did not think those looked good so I stuck with the tighter crop most of the time and never really got a strong, wider shot.

Overall though, I am pretty happy with my final select.         

Classmate Portrait

Single Light with Reflector

High Key Image using four lights. Beauty dish up high on the right, softbox on floor to the left and two lights hitting white background form both sides.

I am pretty happy with how this assignment turned out.  I started with high-key lighting.  I used a flash meter to get a reading of what my aperture should be set at for my sync speed.  The meter said f/19, which I used for the first shots.  Then I moved my camera back to try and narrow the angles.  At that point I opened my aperture up to f/16 because it seemed a little dark.  Then I decided to ditch the tripod.  At that point I left the aperture at f/16 and just tried to get the shot I wanted.  Overall, I am happy with how my high key images turned out.  I wanted something lighthearted to go with the tie-dye.  The idea we had talked about was Preston standing at attention in a military stance to get this sort of strange juxtaposition of ideas.  I thought high key would also go with this idea as the topic is so serious but the picture is not.  In the end the picture I choose as my select for this shot has nothing to do with the military and Preston is not exactly for or against the military anyway.  However, I choose the picture I did because there is this lighter side to Preston I had never really appreciated before working with him, and I think it comes out in this shot.  I also wanted to go with a full body shot so the viewers could see his boxers.  Without seeing the boxers you just do not get the full effect.

The other select I choose was actually sort of an accident.  I had just put a reflector near the floor to hit Preston’s legs and bike, and he thought I was just testing the light really quickly so he was not doing anything special for the camera.  However, when going through my shoot, I could not justify using any of the other images especially along side the boxer select I choose.  It just really captures Preston’s general persona.  It is the way he has always come off to me, sort of serious.  I choose to do these shots with one soft box up overhead so we could get Preston in a low-key setting.  I think this shot works best because it is a more serious moment for him.  I got some cool pictures of Preston doing tricks on his bike but I thought this one was really well lit and that the light made the most sense with this expression.  I also felt it complemented the tie-dye select well.  Both are full-body but one is much lighter than the other.  Preston seems to have a very serious side and a goofy side as well, so I think these portraits together capture Preston’s personality.  The only thing that really bothered me about the photo I choose of Preston on his bike is that I cut the bike out of the shot.  I debated long and hard about using it because of this flaw.  In the end the flaw bothers me, but not enough to not use the picture, as I really like the light and Preston’s candid expression.

Overall, as I already said, I am pretty happy with my work for this assignment.  I was not quite as happy with my close-ups however, so that will be something I have to work on in future.

Message in the Light (Advanced Techniques Post)

© Michael Collopy

This portrait of Margaret Thatcher, the first female prime minister of Britain, reveals so much about her.  In this photo the photographer, Michael Collopy, has used short lighting to make Thatcher apppear almost like a sculpted bust.  I think this is perfect for Thatcher, who as a world leader should be compared to major world leaders who do have busts of them made.

Also, many consider short lighting to be more flattering than broad lighting.  It is possible Collopy could have achieved the same effect by placing the light on the other side of the camera (hitting the ear we see), but by placing the light on the other side, he has manged to retain a more feminine look for Thatcher.  She is both woman and world leader in this photograph.