Monsoon Season

As hurrican Gustav approaches New Orleans after devistating Cuba, I enjoy light to medium rain showers every day here in Flagstaff. The locals call August the "Monsoon season," and it is easy to see why. Today it rained all day except for the hour and 20 minutes I was out biking. Absolutely wonderful for me because I love rain. The kids from Oregon are a little less pleased.

Yesterday it rained quite a bit. During a particularly heavy bout I grabbed my camera, hat, and a plastic cover and rushed out the door. Just outside my dorm I found a pretty little flower weathering the storm right next to a quickly forming pond.

I like shooting in the rain :-)

More later :-)

-Matt

The Blues

First, a picture.

shot on my walk around campus the other day. I actually had to bring down the saturation on this one in Aperture.

Business: I am officially one of 11 or 12 (I am not really sure) staff photographers for The Lumberjack, which is NAU's weekly paper. I met up with the photo editor yesterday and after he looked through my stuff online, he decided he might as well hire me. (it actually pays: $10 per picture printed).

The setup for this paper is pretty different from what I am used to. Photogs sign up for stories online, our editor approves our choices, we shoot and upload from anywhere on campus to the server. We write our own captions (something i did not do at FHS) in the photo comment field in Photoshop for our "final" 4-6 good pictures.

I am fairly excited, and also kind of nervous. I shot a women's volleyball game last night just to try it out. The Jack already had 2 or 3 photographers there, so I did not need to come up with anything good, which is a relief 'cause I got nothin'. Maybe 2 or 3 good ones out of 100, and even those few did not deserve to be published. 

I guess it is time to get back into the game.

More later,

-Matt

Picture of the Day

Another of the shots from my recent walk around campus. I have been trying to get a good reflection picture for a long time. This shot does not quite meet my standards, but it is close.

I am bored with posting the tech detail for each picture, simply because it does not really matter if you knew the exact settings, date and time of day that I took the picture, if you try to recreate it you will get something completely different. Trying to recreate pictures by the famous guys (not that I count myself among them) will not make you a good photographer. It is in trying to out-do them that you will find yourself creating fantastic photographs.

-Matt

Cheap Prints!

Ken Rockwell is pointing people at Adorama's photo labs: 11x14 inch prints for $1.99

I just ordered 7 prints for my dorm room, a little decoration for my extremely barren walls.

I'm still searching for a model. I have found a few possibilites but I haven't actually done the shoot yet, so we shall see.

-Matt

The buzz: new nikon, new canon... who cares?

Honestly, I used to drool over every camera that came out from either Nikon or Canon.

These days, after reading the stuff that David DuChemin comes out with, I care less and less about the camera, and more and more about the pictures.

Which explains why I laughed out loud at the video Chase Jarvis made while he and his staff tested the D90 before it came out.

Nikon's goal: Sell cameras.

Nikon's method: Get a professional to use the camera and make amazing photographs.

The effect: A bunch of amateurs see the video that Jarvis made and think "Oh wow! This camera is so advanced that if I buy it, I will be able to make pictures like him!"

In truth, I am pretty sure if someone handed Mr. Jarvis a disposable camera covered in mud, he could still make amazing pictures with it.

Likewise, if a bunch of rich and untalented amateurs get ahold of the D90, they will still take a bunch of crappy pictures.

The video is an almost-well-disguised but still unabashed promo for Nikon. The D90 is likely a great camera, but it still takes a photographer to know how to use it.

On a totally unrelated note, I went out around campus yesterday with a new photographer friend and shot a few pictures (76).

I got around 11 good ones, so they will be the pictures coming up throughout this week.

Desktop background anyone?

The R-strap for $1.50

After seeing the BlackRapid R-Strap I decided I needed to revise my own strap system. But, not having $50 to spend on a strap, I resolved to make something similar for less than $10.00.

I busted down to my local hardware store in Boulder and bought an eye-bolt for $1.35. Then, using a duller-than-average hack saw, I (with the help of my father) cut off about half of the bolt, such that it buried right to the hilt into the camera body. I then searched through my strap inventory (I have a habit of collecting straps), and happened upon the straps that came with my M-Rock camera holster. After taking a pair of wirecutters to the wimpy plastic clips and attaching a couple home-depot carabiners in their places, I was good to go!

a very basic strap for $1.50

(Pictures taken with the iSight camera on my Mac)

Maybe eventually I'll break down and buy one from BlackRapid, 'cause those have pockets for cell phones and such...

-Matt

Black and white

Another image off my most recent roll of film. It was a really good roll for me, more than half of the pictures were bearable, almost none had exposure failures, mainly composition.

I could definitely justify shooting more film if I could keep up this kind of success rate. Images shot in Digital and then converted to black and white just don't have the same feel.

N80 35mm camera, tamron 28-105 1:3.5-5.6 lens.

pushed contrast a little bit in Aperture after having the film developed and put on a CD for me at the local Walgreens. Next time I'm going to go out and see if they will raise the scanning resolution, these images were only about 1mb each.

Either that or I'll find a way to get into the labs here at NAU and use their beautiful neg-scanners.

Later!

-Matt