The Rot Riders

These three folks took a class, grassroots environmentalism where the whole class is focused around a big project that is environmentally conscious. Their idea was to start a compost pickup route in which people would not have to travel further then their porch to take care of compost, they built a huge trailer and use that to bike around to pick up compost every week. One really interesting point is the fact that their class is over now, they are no longer doing it for the grade but to keep providing the service to the 30+ people on their route. What I think really makes the photo is the enthusiasm, the energy of wearing capes and running around picking up compost during their free time on a ridiculously large bike trailer, I couldn't ask for better subject matter.

Pumpkin problems

For this story we went out to the old pumpkin patch on account of the large amount of rain the past growing season causing troubles with crops. In this case, it was the baby pumpkins plants that produced next to nothing this year. When we were driving through a field of grass and all of a sudden Bob told me that here we were. I didn't even realize the very tiny patches of mostly unmowed grass that were hiding the very small pumpkin plants. I went down and snapped a photo of the first one I saw with him in the background. The lighting was perfect, around 6pm and it had a nice golden characteristic. Also the pumpkin plant in the foreground with Bob looking forlornly at it. Fortunately for the patch most of their revenue is generated from events hosted, so even though Bob managed to find other ways around the bad crop, I'm sure some other farmers were not so fortunate.

This was probably the most fun I had setting up for a photo, nothing better then wielding crowbars at night and taking photos of it to confuse passing police cruisers. Obviously this is a posed photo, we didn't actually stumble upon a guy sneaking into someone's house with a crowbar, but we staged this photo for illustration purposes. We had an direct flash (no diffusion) to the camera left to help give it a kind of spotlight feeling. I went inside and started to come out of the window making sure my crowbar was visible and Mayank snapped the photo. We purposely put a lot of neutral space in the photo because I knew that we would be putting text in the photo. I thought it worked out really well for the story and I always enjoy the chance to do something different with photos.

Tennis

I like close sports photos, tennis is nice because you can get right up next to them when they're playing.

Disc golf

The minute I heard that we were going to run a feature story on disc golf I was excited. Not only is disc golf in my opinion one of the best things since pockets but it's also incredibly photogenic. Since I spend a good amount of time on the course already I should bring my camera out and try and get some good photos for the story. In the photo is my friend Peter getting his disc on the Rotary Club Disc Golf Course in Kirksville, MO. Fantastic course, it just so happens that the ground was covered in a carpet of tiny purple flowers. This was taken late april on a perfect spring evening. We ended up just running a brief on the story and it didn't need a photo, but this is one of my favorites just because it was such a nice day!

So a few years ago I went to the Ronald Reagan dinner before the primary election. Fred Thomson and Ron Paul were both presidential candidates that were goin to speak at this diner. I was really excited to shoot some high profile political figures and have a chance to meet them which I did after the speeches. I like both these photos, I am personally a fan of RP and in this photo I like to think that he's makes good sense. He's just a reasonable dude. And for Fred, I remember his presence very well, the crowd went nuts for him.

Basketball

So sports are really nice, just try and get the best action shot you can. I've noticed that a lot of professional publications go for the "scramble" shot when looking for sports photos. You seldom get the smooth slam dunk photos on the front page, what I see more of is players tumbling over themselves with the ball just out of reach. I guess this is a combination of both, one of our more acrobatic players trying to layup over a guy. I don't know basketball rules but I feel like this has to be foul or something.

Sax quartet

So this was not out on assignment for the paper but actually these photos are about 3 years old, right at the beginning of my days at the Index. Though they were taken for a friend they're a similar style as I would take as if I was out on assingment, the man with the soprano saxophone is actually my high school band teacher and I ran into him at Forest Park in St. Louis playing for a crowd in the middle of the park, they sounded fantastic. But what makes these photos strong in my opinion is the lighting, the focus of photos and the variety of angles. When I'm shooting for a publication, I try and keep in mind to get several perspectives and angles. Have subjects looking left, right and frame, get closeups and wide shots. The strong focus from the photos comes from the way they're composed, they're meant to have a natural flow of them. One thing I see new photographers do a lot to see a lot of cool stuff so they stand back and take a snap shot. But in doing so the try and capture the whole scene evenly. This first picture is a good picture no doubt, but it's a very flat picture without much depth to it.



The lighting is good for sure, but each subject is right there in front of me all standing next to each other. These guys can play a mean sax but they're not one for crazy stage presence, you need to use the lens that will allow you to get up close to the players and help give some more interesting perspectives to this scene. Make sure there is a dominant element to your photos, in the photo above you can see a band, but what not much more. You see everything at once and that's it. Below I have posted a few more photos that have used a telephoto for, the Nikon 70-200 2.8 on a D50. Shooting at 2.8 what this lens lets me do is get a nice shallow depth of field that helps to isolate subjects in the photo.







I really like this last photo because it add more to the set, rather then just having pictures of the musicicians with the additional of the young couple, now you have a whole new element to the photo. It gives you a better sense of the surroundings and wider view of the park.

The Heavy

So this was a feature story on professor of Criminal Justice Marty Jayne. So when I hear his job title and then his name the first thing that pops into my mind is law and order. Then when I finally met I saw that he had a cop feeling about him, so I told him to look smug, but not mean, and that's what I got. I really like the lighting and the lines all leading to his head. I used a flash bounced off the ceiling, I put a telephoto setting on the flash that helped keep the light on just him and making sure not to light up the walls around him too much. It's hard to make the light in a hallway look balanced just because they're so long. I also liked this photo because usually for a story like this, we get a professor working at their desk or doing something that would be considered "candid." This is due I think to the fear that if we pose anything we are in direct violation of some law of journalism, but there are some journalistic photos that do require photographer interaction. As long as the photographer is not trying to pose a reality, this is different then posing someone for a portrait. Instead of getting Marty teaching a class or working at his computer, I went for a strong portrait that gave a law enforcement feeling to give more relevance to the story.

Flood

I showed up late, and my photos were not nearly as dramatic. But I really liked this bench, how it was uprooted and just plastered in leaves from the running water, I thought it helped give a sense of the huge amount of water that must have passed through.

Weekend Spread

This week we decided to run a full page photo spread over the games that happened over the past weekend. The real motivation behind this spread was that we had dropped a full page ad and needed to fill some space fast. I knew I had a good soccer photo that we were not using and then I threw some of the better volleyball photos below it. I liked the soccer photo because I was able to get in nice and tight, that photo is barely cropped at all, generally in soccer the players are all so far away you can't get in close enough but this time the action was right in front and I was able to grab it. The volleyball photos turned out well too with a variety of shots. Volleyball is by far the hardest when it comes to shooting because it's so fast and really hard to predict who is going to hit the next shot, pershing being a dark cave doesn't help with capturing action either. What was really special about this for me was it was the first time I had designed anything as far as page layout goes, I was really happy how it turned out.

Golfer

Mens golf only plays at home once this semester, so I knew I had to get some good shots. I really enjoyed the photo that made the front page of sports on the 17th, but here is another shot I thought stood out. Because I don't feel like bothering anybody for golf carts I ride my bike around the golf course on the cart path, it works just as well and is actually less disturbing (noise wise) compared to the carts. I would follow a player for a few holes and try and get a variety of shots and then move on. What's nice about golf is it's pretty easy to figure out where the action is going to happen so I am able to set up for nice compositions. I feel this photos relays a sense of anticipation from the golfer as he waits to see where his ball finally comes to a stop and I feel the blurred ground on the bottom of the frame helps add interest and direct your attention to the ball approaching the pin.

Observatory

For this assignment it was to cover the open house at the observatory. The Star Gazing club sponsors these evenings where anybody can show up and look through the telescope, I had been to these before and really enjoyed it. The thing was now I had a camera and I had to get pictures, but let's just say you get the best star gazing when it's really dark outside but that's not quite ideal for the camera. What I ended up doing for this was waiting until the end of the evening when everybody was about to head out and asked them to stick around for a few minutes so I could get pictures. I knew I was going to have use a flash and I knew it would blind everybody to stars for a few minutes. I set the camera for a long exposure so it would catch all the cool red light that light up the observatory (red light does not kill you night vision) but I was also able to light up one of the guys with a rear curtain sync. That means on a 2 or 3 second exposure, the flash pops right at the last millisecond before the shutter closes. The shot ended up turning out pretty well even though the moon looks a bit like the sun.