It is good to stretch yourself...

It seems as though I have been shooting a lot of portraits lately... which, honestly, is a great great thing. I love stretching my comfort level with various equipment.

My heart lies with natural, ambient light...

...but I could get used to this flash thing.


I think the select was this one:


My friend Philip needed a portrait for the book jacket of his almost-out photojournalism book on his time he spent in Haiti.

I'm a fan of the cinematographic crop.

I did football portraits the other day, too...

100-something of this:


Also, the incoming Student Association... (I still call it SGA. Is there a difference without the "government" part?) Very simple, semi-corporate photo... minus the corporate duds.



I enjoy the challenge of making all the lighting different. Different light-shaping, different poses, interacting with different people in different ways.

Maybe its because I'm just not good enough to duplicate a set yet... things are able to be random and still look like I know what I'm doing.

Hence the "Fledgling Photographer" continues...

:)

Stay tuned,
-Noah D.

Everyone has a need...

Everyone has a need.

Someone may need to pay his or her rent. Some man may need a red necktie. Some college student may need an internship or job after graduation.

What if it was a 17 year-old kid on a baseball team in a tiny town in central Arkansas? What would he need?


Would he and his team need new shoes and uniforms because the ones they had didn't match?




Would they need new baseballs because the old ones were held together with duct tape?


What if his father had just died after a long bout with cancer?

If it happened to you, would you still have a self-less enough attitude to think of your teammates first and say what WE need instead of 'I'?


Will Staggs, a pitcher for the Pangburn Tiger's high school varsity baseball team...


...did just this.

Yep, he's a real person.


Since his dad got sick, his mother took care of his dad... at a pretty substantial cost in today's time: her job. Last season he had to work to provide for the family. This season his mother made him play baseball instead of working because he loved it so much... and it would be his last season to play.


People should learn from those who tackle great adversity. People who overcome great pain and sorrow in their personal lives but live for the big picture.


Its quite an honorable thing...


...so here are a few photos.

Let them tell the story.




















Announcers in Arkansas start a little earlier than the rest of the country.


And a friend of mine was writing the article for the paper that these photos were ordered for.




Sometimes I really enjoy working in Arkansas. Sure you gotta take a thousand menial group photos to get to the jobs like this, but its so worth the wait.


And plus, you never know what you're going to see in Arkansas:



Stay tuned, my friends.
-Noah D.

A three minute shoot for a busy man...

For almost the past month I have been working on a project.

Each spring, my University hosts a contest between the social clubs (read: fraternities/sororities or Greek organizations). They are given a general theme and they have to come up with a song and dance number using real, pop music with their own lyrics.

Well, I'm simplifying it quite a bit, but its a pretty big deal to all the members of the clubs. Seriously.

These guys and girls are given the better half of a semester to work on their 10 minutes or so of allotted time to be performed 3 times. How hardcore? Like, hours of practicing multiple times a week for months.

On top of that is the main cast of four song and dance performers and their back-up extras. So... its a big deal here.

Anyways, I got the job of photographing for the program. I'll have some tearsheets of the program closer to the actual performance (which I think is still almost a month away), but...

The director/producer's name is Dr. Steve Frye. I tell you: he's a super busy but super cool guy. To rescue him from having to use a 5-year-old PR photo, I set up a quickie in the recital hall. Literally... 3 minutes quickie.

This is the outcome:


Very basic setup.


The ambient light was reading around 1/15th @ f/5.6 @ ISO400 and I wanted to kill it, so I spun it up to about 1/100th.

I knew I wanted the shot to be tight, but I also wanted to make the light fall-off fast enough to make it look like a spotlight (director/producer... spotlight... auditorium seats... get it?). So I choked up on the umbrellas a bit (especially the main light to my right) and zoomed the heads to their farthest and got things tight.

The first few shots, Dr. Frye was sitting back very relaxed, but looked a little uncomfortable. And the composition just didn't work very well. It could have been anywhere because his head was too far above the level of the seats and the light fall-off was too great.

All he had to do was lean forward and the photo worked. The lights stayed as they were (main: 1/4 - fill: 1/16) and his hands low balanced the composition nicely.


Well, that's that. I enjoy quick shoots like this. Things that aren't extraordinarily taxing on the mind and body but have good photo outcomes and satisfied clients. Smiles around.

Stay tuned,
-Noah D.

No more basketball... I think...

Not too much to say about photos of the last home basketball game.


I mean, how profound could I really get.


I mean, I guess I could talk about the luck I had catching flashes. But there's nothing really excessively deep about that...


Just really really lucky.

I used the ceiling-mounted strobes for the girl's game...


...but the regular mounted flash for the men's.

But its kinda fun to get creative when the flashy basketball shots and demon red-eyes get a little old.


Trying to tell the story of a basketball game... less basketball... more atmosphere...




Oh, and did I mention this was the first major shoot where I was able to use the newest addition to the family: the venerable AF Nikkor 17-55/2.8. It is a beast.

It was great to get up and close with the crowd.


It was a rowdy crowd.


A photogenic crowd.


And it was fun to have such a range. I didn't change a lens the entire night. And for a little side-job I had to shoot our radio announcers.


I'm kinda sad to see basketball end for the season. I may be shooting the Gulf South Conference finals on Saturday if our guys win tomorrow night. We'll see...

But that remains to be seen.

Care to stay tuned?
-Noah D.

Recognizable faces to everyone...

I love my job.

I kinda wanted to name this post "Yet another moment brought to you by my absurd job..." but that kind sounded a bit more pretentious than I intended... and it wouldn't fit in the box.

So, I photographed a banquet with Governor Mike Huckabee.


Yeah, as far as presidents or one-time presidential hopefuls go, he was my first in a photographing sort of way.

Half of the 500 or so photos were beforehand where all the few hundred guests were mingling in the lobby of my college's American Heritage Center. Some of the high-rollers were invited to a private reception with Gov.Huckabee upstairs where my boss was shooting grip-and-grins.


The night was dedicated to fund raising for the elementary/high school that is attached to the college. The lobby was full of artwork done by the students and the high school choir sang for all attending.


What an amazing cross-section of "getting-into-it-ness"... top left is probably my favorite. Top right is like, "Nope. Not happening."

There were a quite a few cameras there tonight.


And I had a thought:
as many DSLR's in the world that there are these days, I'm afraid the quality difference between pro-shooters and everyone else is going to narrow. But there's something quite comforting in all of this media convergence that everyone is buzzing about these days. The best are always going to float to the top through all the rest of the mediocre crap out there.

They always have. They always will.

The difference used to be Leica M's and Nikon F's and Canon A's vs. all the little point and shoot Olympus and Fuji's out there that couldn't make images because of the poor quality of equipment. Now, the difference is not equipment quality (even tiny camera phone shots are making news) but the difference will be mere talent and access. Sure, the everyday digi-cam toter can luck out and happen to be somewhere at the right time - remember the photos from the Hudson River . But the average digi-cam toter will never have the access that a pro-shooter has.

Yeah, it may sound a bit condescending, but not everybody can be down on the sideline or on AirForceOne or walking ON the red carpet. Never fret my photo-journalism friends, when it comes to access, the best will be the only ones up close.



But anyways, on to dinner...


It was pretty good. Just the usual catered Aramark food; however, the desert was quite sexy. The program called it a Caramel Apple White Chocolate Trifle. All I know it was a big champagne glass of creamy goodness.

Huckabee was introduced with the usual pomp and circumstance afforded a former presidential runner and state governor.


But he spoke well and was quite personable. And it didn't seem like one of the "speaking tour" type speeches that often come to things like this. He was in his home state with people who had known him for years before he was ever a presidential hopeful.


Right before he left, he pledged $1000 to the school from his own pocket. But, he said they could only keep it if 20 others in the audience matched it.

They made $21,000 in less than a minute. It was quite absurd.


So, this was another moment brought to you by my completely absurd job. Who really cares who it was? I just love doing it.

Anyways. Another thing on Tuesday. Another speaker. And a commercial/studio shoot starts on Tuesday, too. Hmm...

You'll see. Stay tuned,
~Noah D.