Photography

Resolutions for 2011: Health and Photography

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I realize there’s a certain level of futility to making New Year’s resolutions. It has probably been between five and ten years that I’ve continually resolved on December 31 to lose weight and get in shape the following year. Lest this year be an exception, I’ve resolved the same yet again.

There may be an advantage this year, however. I have the time to make it work. I’m working for myself, so although I’m still very busy, I make my own hours and decide how to spend my time. Even though the weather is unwelcoming to outdoor exercise, I will be starting a routine that will get me outside an active, running and walking. At the end of seven weeks, the plan dictates I will be ready to complete a 5K. That is my goal.

I’ll be tracking my progress using the RunKeeper Pro application on my phone. You may see my updates on social media linked to the application. I’ve already begun eating healthier, with more fruits and vegetables and less red meat (despite being treated to a dinner at The Melting Pot to celebrate my independence recently).

Another plan for the new year is to keep my apartment in better shape for entertaining company. I’m in the process of looking for a cleaning service, so if you have any recommendations, let me know.

In a few weeks, I’ll be starting a new photography class at the Arts Council of Princeton. Through this class and my goal to have two photography shoots a month, I will be working on building a portfolio of work. The shoots will most likely be like some of the others I’ve done, walking around Princeton or local parks. I won’t be advertising myself as a photographer, but I do plan on book a few paying gigs through friends for portraiture or event photography. If you’re interested, let me know!

I happened to find a great deal on a used Canon EOS 1D Mark III so my equipment is now more professional than I am — but I’m getting there.

New Year’s resolutions often receive a lot of criticism: Why wait until January 1? Why bother setting goals that almost no one ever meets and most people forget within 30 days? I think it’s always good to set aside time to self-evaluate, determine how you want to be a better person, and take some steps in that direction — even if you don’t make it all the way to your goal. Life is a process.

Thanksgiving in Temecula, California

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A few nights ago, I returned from visiting my family in California for Thanksgiving. I had a great time spending time with my brother and sister-in-law earlier in the week; one of the highlights was hiking at Echo Mountain outside Pasadena. For Thanksgiving, my brother departed for his in-laws’ home in Texas, and I stayed in California to visit Bill’s parents’ house in Temecula.

Along the way to a great Thanksgiving meal, we took some time to drive around Lake Skinner outside Temecula. There wasn’t too much to see; camping and fishing are the area’s favorite activities, and there weren’t many people around due to the holiday (and the chilly weather).

You can view a few of the better photos after the jump or view the set on Flickr containing more from Lake Skinner (and a nearby farm) as well as the hiking photos from earlier in the week. For these landscape photographs, a graduated neutral density filter would have helped in order to keep more detail in both the sky and the water. The problem with buying filters is that my variety of lenses have a variety of filter thread sizes, so the process of getting the right filters can be complicated and expensive.

With Canon’s professional lenses, I understand most lenses have the same filter thread size of Φ77mm, so was I upgrade lenses, I’ll develop a full set of filters.

I’m now back in New Jersey, ready to get back to work.

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Hiking at Echo Mountain, California

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Almost every Thanksgiving, I visit my family in California. I was able to spend a few days with my brother and sister-in-law, and we packed those days with a number of activities. We spent a few hours hiking the Sam Merrill Trail to Echo Mountain. It was a tough hike for me — a reminder that I could use more exercise.

The weather was beautiful, however, and the views were amazing. I brought a small contingent of my photography equipment with me on the hike, including my Canon Digital Rebel XTi and two lenses: the 17-85mm and 70-300mm. I used only the shorter zoom, leaving the longer telephoto in my backpack for the entire duration of the hike.

My brother brought his new iPhone. The phone contains an amazing little camera that automatically combines three exposures to create an HDR image. The result is quite interesting, and someone could have a lot of fun with that feature.

I added the three best photos to Flickr, but I’ll include all three here as well, after the jump.

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Nothing Beats Medium Format

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The photographs I’ve posted so far have all been taken with a Canon Rebel XTi, a 10.1 megapixel digital camera several years old. It’s small for a digital SLR, so it’s easy to carry around, particularly when I limit myself to just a few lenses. But nothing beats shooting with a medium format camera, like my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II. It’s a huge camera and inconvenient to transport, especially while hiking on the Delaware & Raritan Canal State Park trails, but the image quality is fantastic.

These photographs were developed by a local lab, who also scanned the negatives. I have since purchased my own scanner (an Epson Perfection V700), so I’ll be doing my own scans less expensively in the future. These photographs were taken on the campus of Princeton University and on trails that follow the canal near campus.

I love the quality of the image I can get with medium format. I’ll of course need to keep practicing my photography skills to make the best use of this, but there is nothing better than taking the time to create an image with a camera that generates a highly-detailed negative. I suppose if there’s anything better than medium format, which puts 35mm and digital cameras with smaller sensors to shame, it would be large format.

Continue reading this post for some photographs or take a look at my Flickr collection dedicated to medium format photography.

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TheGoodLife at City Streets

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Earlier this year, my first attempts at concert photography produced a lot of garbage. City Streets Cafe in East Windsor (New Jersey) is a bar and restaurant that has become the home for Bryan Douglas’s band, TheGoodLife. The band performs covers of today’s hot hip hop and pop music. I suggest seeing the band this coming Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, at City Streets in celebration of their first anniversary. I’m going to try to make the show, but I’ll be flying back from Los Angeles earlier that day and may not make it in time.

Getting quality photographs is a struggle at this venue. Like most bars, it’s dark, and with the band’s colorful and hyperactive lighting set-up, you never know what color you’re going to get. In the future, I’ll need to look out for stray spotlights.

Particularly with this shoot, it’s evident that the photographer’s job is not done once the memory card is full and the lens cap is placed back on the lens. My first attempts at post-processing shots from City Streets did not result in normal-looking final products. You can see some of the earlier attempts in the Flickr set linked below.

My post-processing skills have continued to improve though I’m still working on developing (get it?) the best methods.

View some of the selected photographs after the jump.

For the full set — not the full full set, because that would be about 1,200 photographs over three nights — take a look at the best 81 shots in this set on Flickr.

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Portraiture Class

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A few weeks ago, I completed a class at the Arts Council of Princeton on portraiture, conducted by Peter C. Cook. Most of our class time was spent talking about portraiture, looking at photographs created by famous and non-so-famous individuals, and critiquing each other’s work.

We did, however, spend two sessions working with a model and one session in the darkroom developing our own black and white photography. This was my first opportunity to work with a model and my first time in a darkroom in the last twenty years. The last time I developed my own work was when I took a short session on black and white photography at summer camp as a kid.

I hope the model, Rebecca, doesn’t mind that I’m posting a few of my better shots (after the jump). My XTi produced the less appealing of all the photographs, so I won’t include them here. The best photographs came from my medium format Holga with black and white film and my Mamiya RZ67 Pro II with color negative film.

For the full collection, view the set on Flickr.

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Central Jersey Walk for PKD

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In early October, I supported my friends Stacey Trzesinski McClain and Randi Trzesinski with their efforts with the PKD (Polycystic Kidney Disease) Foundation. Stacey organized the Central Jersey Walk for PKD as she does every year, and I brought my camera along.

I prefer shooting outdoors if the weather is nice, so this was a good change from the indoor concerts. It was a little chilly that day in Mercer County Park, but it was a successful event with good participation. Walking undoubtedly kept the participants warm. As you can see from the photographs, the walk is a family event. Teams walked together at this event as a culmination of fundraising to support the organization.

My XTi was on call for the event, and I used a variety of lenses (28mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4, 85mm f/1.8, 10-22mm, 17-85mm). See some of the results after the jump.

Most of the better photographs are being displayed on the PKD Foundation’s Flickr page.

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Jason Derulo at Rider University

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On October 22, I photographed the Jason Derulo concert (with special guests Super Mash Bros.) at Rider University, hired by Reid Sound. The intent was to take photographs of the event that capture Reid Sound’s motto: “The room comes alive.”

Here are a few of the shots (after the jump). I apologize in advance for the intrusive watermark.

My biggest problem with these concerts is the constantly changing lighting. Reid Sound produces a superb lighting show, particularly at this concert, but the ever-changing color casts make it difficult to come up with images that are exposed correctly, have contrast, or look like they came from Earth. In addition to the tough lighting, the concert took place in a gymnasium, not the friendliest type of room for photography, but probably slightly better than a bar.

The tools I put in use were my Canon XTi, a monopod which was helpful to raise the camera above the audience for some overhead shots using the timer, 50mm f/1.4, 28mm f/1.8, 100mm f/2.8L, and 10-22mm. I met a few students photographing the show for the university, possibly a newspaper, but I never got around to finding out where I could see their photos.

Wide open with high ISO was the name of the game. A firmware hack allowed me to push the XTi beyond ISO 1600 in some cases.

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