My progression as a photographer

Well for my last blog post as a high school student I decided to talk about my career as a photographer in this program. I remember the first day of boot camp when I got yelled at for not bringing my memory card...oops! That was just the beginning. Over the last two years, I've shot countless sporting events and stayed up way past my bed time shooting for TOP or whatever else. But I wouldn't change any moment. I've definitely realized that I am an event photographer...mostly sports. I like capturing moments in time and people's emotions. I've recently come to the conclusion that I am not a creative/artsy photographer. I just can't see objects the way others can. I give a huge shout out to those who worked on still life. Even though we didn't place, those images were fantastic and they put so much effort into them. As you can see by my last few posts, still life is not my thing. Anyway, I've also been thinking a lot about my skills/talents as a photographer. I'm obviously not the best photographer in the class. I've only won one award and that was my junior year for ATPI. I'm not the best, but I've tried to shoot as much I could for the publications staff. Anyway, I hope to continue in college even though I don't own a camera. Hopefully Claire will let me borrow hers :) I also want to look into the newspaper, yearbook or the magazine at Rhodes. Photography has been my safe haven these last two years and I'm certainly gonna miss it.

Morgan Walker

So today, well actually it was May 31st, the class got a very pleasant surprise. Morgan Walker came to talk to us! She talked for like all of second period was it was really fun to listen to all her stories and experiences. She talked about first going to college and getting a job as a photographer. I think this really helped the few that are leaving for college and want to pursue photography as a career. Even though I do not want to do photography as a career, it was still good to listen to her talk about because, if gear is available, I would like to still shoot events and such in college. She also talked about her internship experiences which was very interesting because she had a lot of cool stories about the work she did. Even though it was kinda sad, I liked hearing about the murder/fire scene she had to shoot because I've always wanted to hear first hand how people interact with others who are going through a time like that. After she talked about her and everything she has done, she looked at some of our TOP pictures. Although, she didn't comment on my pictures personally, I really like getting her opinion on certain pictures. I hope the juniors were listening because I think some of her comments could help them next year when choosing pictures for the portfolios. Overall, I think Morgan's visit was good for the class. Her stories were very interesting and she definitely gave some insight into the world of photography outside of high school for those who are looking into it.

This was kinda fun

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So after I gave up on the jar picture, I googled still life pictures to try to get some inspiration. I saw a picture kinda like the ones above so I decided to recreate it. So I put a book up against a wall and covered everything with printer paper to get a white background. I sat up the forks and balanced the egg on them (which was probably the hardest part) and then just played around. In the first picture I wanted to see how it would look when I lit it from the side. It looked kinda cool but my favorite pictures were when I lit it from above or behind the egg. Which is the bottom picture. I really like the lighting on the egg in this one because you can see the detail of the egg and the outline from where I cracked it. I took a lot of different pictures just playing around with how I lit it which was fun. I tried it from the front, sides, and just all around. Its definitely not a good picture or award-winning worthy but it was good practicing ways to light the egg.

I was sick this day :/

Still Life Fail

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Okay, so I took camera gear home this weekend so I could take some pictures for my blog and I wanted to attempt some still life and bring out my creative side. We I started looking around my house for some cool objects and I thought this could be neat. I forgot to pack a flash so I tried painting with light with a flashlight I had at home. I wanted to light the inside and I just hoped it would look really cool because I didn't really know what else to do. So, I held the flashlight above the opening of the jar and just circled it a few times to light it. This was the best picture I took but I don't like it at all. Its just awkward. I definitely need some help in still life. I just can't imagine pictures like other people can. 

We're so morbid

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S/O to Matt Prieskorn for posing in this picture even though it was past his bedtime. 

So, Claire, Rush, and I went to Caroline's house the Sunday night before all these pictures had to be done. We wanted to take a picture of the creeper (Rushing) terrorizing someone on the staircase. We didn't exactly know what we were gonna do going into it but we made it work. So we started (at like 9 I might add) by dressing up rushing like a man..which was hilarious. We raided Caroline's brother's closets and found the perfect clothing..though the angle we decided to use didn't even show her clothes. Anyway, we started to set this picture up and was Matt for the set up. Caroline was taking the picture while straddling her staircase and Claire was holding the flash that lit the victim. We had some issues getting rushing's shadow just right. We had a flash on a light stand behind her and we tried many different lengths behind her until we found the right once.. which was rushing on like the third step and the light stand as far back as we could it from her. So we thought we had everything figured out so we called Matt in there to take the picture. However, we started having issues with all the flashes going off at the same time. Claire was underneath Rush lighting Matt with a flash and I was right behind Caroline  with a flash used a trigger so Claire's flash and the one behind Rush would go off because we were working with master and slave because there were no syncs. However, after like 15 or 20 different tries all the lights went off and we got this picture. YAY! 

Bloody Hands

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So after we took the picture in the staircase it was like 10:30 and all four of us were extremely exhausted. We wanted to take a picture of rush creeping on some victim through the screen door or something like that. BUT we were so incredibly tired that we decided to take a picture of the phantom washing his hands with "blood" all in the sink. So I stood on Caroline's stool while Claire continually poured chocolate syrup into the sink. Caroline pointed a flash from the right side to light the sink. This only took like 10 minutes because we thought this was pretty good. The thing we focused on a lot is that the faucet wasn't super awkward and in this picture it was actually smooth and cool looking..well sorta. Another thing we kinda struggled with was that the sink was sometimes washed out. But with the flash to the side and my angle we made it look not so bad. This picture is kinda awkward but it was all we could do.