Alma Mater ... All My Matter

Was back home in Ames this last weekend on the ISU Campus ... one of my favorite places to photograph. Howe Hall, College of Design were all targets.


Engineering: Howe Hall


College of Design: Atrium of the King Pavilion



I was really taken with the new King Pavilion at the College of Design. The spaces there are loosely defined by screens separating the class spaces and in the center was an atrium for lecture, presentation and discussion that was literally nothing more that a smooth concrete floor with a shit-load of chairs on wheels. A class can take any form that it wants. Move and flow with presenters, mix, formalize, and morph into a completely different character with the next set of students ... it's great!





College of Design: Atrium chair changing color

Song in Autumn

This is most definitely autumn. And despite the cliche, there is music to be found in the trees. My mom has a small maple tree in her backyard that gets hit with some awesome light early in the morning. Here's a product of that complete with two eighth notes right off the page of Nature's newest symphony.

If you don't see the notes, click on the image which will take you to Flickr, wave your magic cursor (that's mouse talk for pointer) and see the embedded note.

Hello! Anybody!?!

Something I ran across a couple of weeks ago has been stewing my grey-matter quite a bit. It's a project, a gift, an inspiration, a great idea. Jeremy Cowart, a professional photographer working out of Nashville conceived of a project called "Help-Portrait." It's for all photographers and I've been thinking a great deal about participating ... check it out:



Have any of you heard about this, thought about this? Are you sitting on the fence, like me? Pass the word and let's start making some connections. Let me know!

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Stop This Immediately

Dear Fellow Photographers,

Please don't do this anymore. "What do you mean," you ask? You know exactly what I mean. Don't take pictures of models in this pose. Don't! Just don't. It's not attractive. It's not comely. It's not sophisticated. It's not classy, chic or elegant and it's absent of any intended attitude or refinement. It doesn't do anything for the model and shouldn't be in your portfolio or the model's for that matter. It scares me that Flickr is loaded with this pose. Where did it come from? Who started it all? Do I know them? Is there legal action we could take?

Models, if you find yourself doing this pose, stop! Photographers, if you see models posing like this, don't click the shutter. If you get one by mistake, I forgive you but, get rid of it. Photographers, if you're making your models pose in this pose, stop and models refuse!


Thank you
Committee to Get Rid of This Pose


Disclaimer: The opinion expressed in this post is not about the technical qualities of image production including lighting, exposure, or post processing. It is not meant to challenge the integrity of any photographer's art or craft or model's talent and abilities. It has only to do with the unfortunate use of the following described pose: hand on knee, hand on hip, shoulder forward, contorted (nobody stands like that!). Should you have a counter-opinion you may express it in a comment or feel free to keep it to yourself. This post is offered as is and implies no binding obligation to follow its advice. It's intention represents nothing more than promoting the concept of ending the making of images of said pose and models posing in said pose.

A special and sincere thank you to the photographers whose images illustrated the pose perfectly.

Portrait Night

Well ... it was Portrait Night the other night. I'm not sure what the inspiration was; probably the combination of wanting to try a little different technique and being tired of sitting around and waiting.

Our house has been in flux a little lately. Lots of stuff going on and the traditional spaces just aren't available for doing a portrait shoot. So, I grabbed all my stuff, draped my old backdrop over the fence in the backyard and set up.

I had gotten a small, square soft-box (20" x 20") for a hot shoe flash a while ago and haven't had much of a chance to use it. I've also seen Joe McNally use a strobe below the subject and bounce it up off a gold reflector ... adding some warmth and softening the light.

Paul


That's what I did - my setup consisted of an SB800 shot into the soft-box positioned camera left, 45 off subject but feathered forward slightly. I have a 42" lite disc with a gold side that I laid down in front of my imaginary subject and bounced an SB600 into the gold reflector and presumably into the face of my ... ahem ... model. Now ... who's gonna be the model?

You know you live in a good neighborhood when you can go across the street and solicit a body for portraits 'cuz they're not doing anything but waiting for their pizza to arrive. Duke and Paul came over. They're actually neighbors, too, sharing a driveway and both are great subjects. Paul's a web guy and Duke's into repos.

Duke


This was about 9:00pm so we were just seeing the last rays of sunlight. I didn't expect any ambient light for the shots so eliminated it with the exposure settings. I set up the camera thusly: ISO 100, Manual Mode, 1/250 @ f/9, WB = Flash. BTW, I'm using my trusty 18-70mm DX EIEIO.

Then I chimped in the flash power settings (SB800 @ 1/8 power & SB600 @ 1/16 power). Actually, before the boys came over my wife helped me get the initial setup and Karlyn actually sat for a shot.



Although, not quite as enthusiastically as I might have hoped. Still got a nice shot, though.

I really liked working with the soft-box; completely different light control versus the shoot-through umbrella. Not necessarily better; umbrellas definitely have a great place in my photographic arsenal but, different. Controlling the direction and spill is what's great about the soft-box.

The reflector on the ground below the subject is a really nice effect that adds some needed warmth without looking "filter-ish" and "post-processy." It added some welcome light up underneath Duke's cap and opened up his face and eyes. Nice touch. Thanks for the idea, Joe!