Light it Up

Theres nothing I enjoy more than taking pictures, climbing things, and getting dirty all at the same time. I shot fencing last night in the Buell Armory, and the rafters in the ceiling have seriously not been cleaned for at least 20 years. I came down from the ceiling with at least a inch of amazing nastyness on my hands. I seriously felt like a coal miner. But I had a blast shooting this. I had so much fun shooting it I’ve had a hard time editing it down, mostly because I feel like I have a million almosts. Let me know what you think.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, thanks Ed for letting me use your strobes, thanks Brad for letting me use your wide lens (that I will hopefully one day purchase one of my own…) even though you needed it for class. And thanks Jim for being my light and ladder holding slave.

Flop…

It happens. You work on a story and it falls through. It happened to the story Jill and I had been working on for MLK day. I had been waiting until we ran it to post the photos, but now that we’re not running the story, I see no problem with posting them now.

Eddie Moore is a guy we found on Martin Luther King Blvd. after a door to door knocking search. He talked a lot about marching with Martin Luther King Jr. in peace marches, and he used to pick cotton in Alabama. He talked a lot about what it was like to be a black man in the south during that time period.

His friends even call him the mayor of MLK Blvd. Sadly now he’s unemployed, so he just sits on his porch most of the day.

He sits outside even when its cold because he said he doesn’t like being trapped in by four walls. He says he claustrophobic.

 

Theres only so many photos you can take for three days on a porch before you start racking your brain desperatly. He talked about the separation between whites and blacks, which is what I was trying to communicate with this photo using the black sihouettes  and the white beam. Not sure if its successful, but hopefully If I keep working on putting larger ideas in pictures I’ll eventually come up with something amazing.

 

 

It was a bummer that the story fell through, but it was a definite learning experience. Oh well, next year Jill’s already planning on finding a legit MLK activist, so we’ll get it next year.

 

Preparation

Last night I went to Frankfort to shoot the State of the Commonwealth Address. Nothing too out of the ordinary took place, no one fell off their platform. I tried to look for out of the ordinary things to shoot, in addition to Beshear giving his eloquent speech on why Kentucky is cutting its funding. Thats really all I caught of what he was saying, my brain was off in visual land, noting the color or suits, who’s name plate said what, and where his wife was sitting.

I thought this ladys face was interesting, she must be amazing at writing without looking, She took minutes of the address and managed to watch Beshear with this intensity the entire time.

Security Guards outside the entrance to the House of Representatives Chamber, where the address was given.

Deserted Capitol building after the event was over. Its honestly kind of a creepy place at night when everyone is gone.

 

Political events are often boring visually, but as Jim pointed out in a recent blog on UKPJ about Bhutto’s sudden assasination, you never know what will happen at an event. My preconceived photo notions of what will happen at an event are 90% of the time wrong. Temptation to not shoot preconceived boring events is usually beat out by fear in my stomach that the one thing I do not attend will be a spontaneous land-mark event which I will regret not attending for the rest of my life. If that makes sense. You never know what will take place before your eyes, before your lens. Think about that next time you decide to leave your camera at home. I know everytime I do, I regret it.

And although last night was relatively uneventful, I hope that the more I shoot political events and other things, the more prepared I will be for situations in the future. And next time I wont get lost in the capitol building while trying to find the media room to FTP photos… haha.

Exciting!

Gymnastics is offically one of the coolest sports to shoot, the only problem is, Ed and I had no idea what an ideal good gymnastic shot is. So we both experimented with some things, fantasized about setting up remotes, and watched the UK gym cats do things that would make me sore for at least a month and quite possibly put me in a full body cast.

This is the beam coach I believe, I couldn’t really ask her right then, so I need to do some research. But she was timing and making sure sure the girls were warming up correctly and that their routine was correct.

Im not sure if this shot works or not, I was trying to work with all the lines and shapes the uneven bars have to offer me, let me know.

This is the head coach, who is in this picture coaching one of the girls during her uneven bar warm up.

Like Ed said in his blog there is a lot that goes on around this chalk bowl, I need to work it more next time.

I really wish i had back focused this picture. I kept waiting and waiting for some air/ ground people separation, but I think id like it better if the girl in the back were in focus.

I’m seriously excited about the next gymnastics meet. No wonder they call it excite night.

Just another rainy thursday.

Kentucky weather… sigh….