K9 Kings at Campbell

J.D. Platt and his K9 Kings arrived in the Triangle last Friday for a Halloween Halftime show at Campbell University. Despite getting ready for the thirteenth annual Halloween party, we snuck out to Buies Creek to catch the show. When J.D. told me he could round up a Media Pass for me I grabbed the cameras, a handful of lenses and piled them into a bag and we were off. Shooting flying dogs is hard. I'll be the first to say that what I have here doesn't convey how fun the show actually is. But for a first time effort? I'll take it.

Goodbye St. John and iPhonetography

Goodbye IslandCruz BayWe left St. John yesterday. Back to the grind of the real world. The good news is that I've got a 147 frames to edit through, so I can sort of relive things for a little while. I snapped these two shots with the iPhone on the ferry and had posted them to my Flickr account, Twitter and Facebook before we set foot on St. Thomas. (There's still some issues with the Wordpress iPhone app that need to be worked out a bit.)

I've gotten some questions about how I've processed some of these. So here's the scoop:

A few weeks ago, I apparently drank some of the Chase Jarvis Kool-Aid. The flavor being the Best Camera concept. The Reader's Digest version of that concept is that the best camera is the one that you have with you. For Jarvis that came to be the iPhone's built-in camera.

If I don't have my Canon 5DMk2 with me, I have the G9. In fact, around town it's almost always in my bag. It's easily the best point and shoot I've had. Don't get me wrong, it still has some weak points. Chiefly the shutter lag. If it had a shutter response that was more akin to the 5D or any of my old film cameras I'd have no complaints with the camera.

Still, there's a few times, when the G9 is just out of reach or it's still in the bag in the office. But, I'm never without my iPhone. And the camera is decent if not spectacular. I think it has the same issues that most small sensor digital cameras have and that's chiefly contrast. But for a 2MB camera phone it works. (Especially if you remember that "shutter" doesn't release until you remove your finger from the "button.") Being part of my "always with me" iPhone certainly has it qualify as the Best Camera on more than one occasion.

This is where software enters the picture. Like I said, the iPhone camera has it's issues and can use a little help. I think software like Best Camera and Adobe's Photoshop.com is much like the Lomography folks shooting with Lomos, Dianas and  Holgas. For the record: There's a taped up Holga gathering dusk in the equipment locker behind me.

Where was I? Right. The same way those analog equivalents embraced the inexpensively, plastic-lensed cameras and the random color shifts, light leaks and whatever else happened through processing, I see the tweaking of the soft, flat images off the iPhone as a related idea. And there's a certain irony to using all this technology to render images that remind me of family pictures taken with a 110mm camera.

The difference being that it's much quicker to get these images out—to share them. Before, with film, you had to make an effort. You had to really work to get an image out. Film or slides needed to be processed, then printed—or scanned. Then you could get to sharing them. The process itself encouraged editing. Required it.

With digital? It's on the photographer to really think about the editing process. Instead of simply uploading the contents of a card.

Welcome to St. John

Welcome to St. JohnAfter a very long day we made it to St. John just as the sun set behind us. Shot this with iPhone and tweaked it with Ps.com's mobile app. I've definitely started drinking the Chase Jarvis Kool-Aid. Of course, I took some with the G9 too but without a laptop this is the only way to post for this trip.

Expression Tunnel

I spend a lot of time thinking and working on graphic design. It's how I pay the bills. But I've tried to refrain from including it here—a site I've tried to keep focused on photograph. However, I've had a category for design on this site since launching. I'm thinking it needs to get used every once and while. Occasionally they collide. Like now. I'm working on a cover for boundary 2. These covers are great to work on from a design perspective: challenging.

For this next issue, American Poetry After 1975, I found myself looking for graffiti, largely for textures to build a cover from. In Raleigh, the most accessible (and reliable) graffiti is the Free Expression Tunnel on NCSU's campus.

Now, the chore of editing these and finding a way to make them work as duotones. On a cover.

(Oh. And I'll probably loosen up a bit on posting design related stuff here. At least until the Sky2x site is launched. Which, is actually in production. Shocking.)

Rebuilding Together

This past Saturday I covered a project for Rebuilding Together of the Triangle. The homeowner's daughter had allergies that the carpet upstairs was aggravating. The plan was to pull the carpet, replace with flooring and paint the entire upstairs. The day started at 7:30 and didn't end (for my part) until 3:30. It was a longish day, but rewarding to see so many people come out (especially from Choice Hotels) and make so much progress.

Bazan Featured in Lens

Really happy to see Ernesto Bazan featured in Lens. I was lucky enough to take  a workshop with Ernesto a few years ago in Mexico. From the interview:

Mr. Bazan is a man who embraces what some might consider mystical. In the early 1990s, he went to Cuba and wound up spending 14 years there. He married a Cuban woman and became a father to twins. And ultimately, he published “Cuba,” a big, stunning book of photographs capturing that island’s moods, mysteries and contradictions as few ever have.

Read the rest at the Times.

Photo © Ernesto Bazan.

2009 FashionSPARK Preview

Managed to catch part of the show for this year's fashionSPARK. One year I'll get there early enough for prime runway real estate, but this year I settled for sniping from the sidelines. A few shots from the set (that I still need to finish editing). Tomorrow I'm shooting a project for Rebuilding Together and scouting some locations for a cover. A busy weekend after a busy week.

Wyoming: Part 3

15 Hours

That's about how long it takes, including photo stops and lunch, to work your way through Grand Teton and then loop around Yellowstone, clockwise. We were up at 4:30. No coffee until we hit Signal Mountain around 7:00. Actually, make that exactly 7:00. We arrived as the store clerk did. But the morning hours are worth it, being out before the day's gotten too old, you get better light (unless you're lucky and storm rolls in) and a better shot at seeing critters.

And the early legwork did pay off for those shots at Jenny Lake. They're included in the gallery below which is what the 15 hours on the road netted. It was a good trip. Saw a lot, but it still felt a bit like a rushed greatest hits tour.

Maybe go back one day and spend a bit more time in Yellowstone.

09 March 2013 Edit: With the site move, all of the shots from this trip are right here.