28. September 2008 by Max.

Katie had a portrait assignment for her color photography class. Of course you immediately try to think of interesting people. Maybe they have deep wrinkles. Possibly someone that wears extravagant clothing. Instead, Katie found a biker.

Her model rides a Harley. It was only fitting to shoot it outside a local Harley dealership against their colored fence.

With her trusty AE-1 and a few rolls of Kodak UltraColor, she got to work.

You know me though. I had to shoot too!

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22. September 2008 by Max.

Kaite, my girlfriend of nearly two years, is a great photographer. This is nothing terribly new. I have been amazed with her images as a new photographer since the very beginning. She seemed to nail every exposure and have unique compositions. She took this phenomenal picture as part of an assignment for her photo 1 class. It was on one of the first rolls of film that ever passed through her camera.

Well, she has impressed me again. I pressured her into taking a photojournalism class. I have always told her that I am happy to help but I will not come up with her ideas, do any of the hands on work, or tell her when the final product is right.  That has been my rule since day one.

She was really worried about her photojournalism class. When it came to doing a multimedia project, she was worried that it would be too overwhelming. I reassured her that is was just another way of telling a story.

She found an international culture and faith festival in Illinois. She went with the intent of covering it as a multimedia project.

We both went to the festival. I kept telling her to gather more audio; shoot more pictures. She got really angry with me at points but I wanted her to have more content than she needed. You can always cut but you can’t add what is not there.

After a few hours of working through Premiere Pro, she came out with a nice piece.

So again, I send a kudos to Katie. You made a nice project! I told you that audio isn’t hard!

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17. September 2008 by Max.

I went out on a photo adventure day today with my friend John Yeast. After a bit of cruising around St. Louis with the police scanner on and finding nothing, we headed north-east towards Alton, IL.

Our plan once we got to Alton was to drive up the river road to Grafton. With the strong rain we had on Sunday, it seemed likely that Grafton would have some flooding.

Once we figured out a back way in to Grafton due to the river road being closed, we got some nice images.

This is my third flood this year. ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!

We wanted to shoot some sports today and the only local event we could find was a Meramec mens soccer game. This game had absolutely no action. Ok. Very little action. I hardly felt compelled to press my shutter button. There were a few nice moments.

The last shot isn’t too spectacular but I am including it because it was the only score during the entire game. That isn’t too unusual for soccer but it was the only thing close to a goal kick. I guess you could argue that this moment was the peak of the action.

While the day may not have yielded anything any photos that will land the cover of Sports Illustrated or the New York Times front page, I wasn’t left empty handed.

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13. September 2008 by Max.

When you have a long day of shooting, you hope for good weather. The one thing you don’t want to hear is:

“Windy with rain diminishing to a few showers late. High 73F. ENE winds shifting to NW at 20 to 30 mph. Chance of rain 80%. Rainfall may reach one inch. Locally heavier rainfall possible.”

That’s what the weather channel has planned for tomorrow. The brief blurb says 80% chance of heavy rain/wind. This is of course hurricane/tropical storm Ike now that it has made its way on land.

Great.

I am shooting the St. Charles Marathon tomorrow. Marathons go on, rain or shine. That means photographers work, rain or shine. I am shooting with the Action Sports Images team out of Kansas City. We are all digging up our wateproof shoes, finding rain protection for our gear and getting ready for a long and wet day.

Since I have to be up around 5:30 am, I decided to pack my bag tonight. Luckily I am shooting for specific shots and don’t need to bring a slew of gear.

Included is:

• Crumpler 7 Million dollar home (a waterproof bag of course)
• Canon 1d Mark II in a plastic rain cover
• 3 spare batteries
• monopod
• memory cards in a hakuba case inside of a ziplock
• sunglasses (which I pray that I need)
• Camelbak Blowfish (when you are standing around shooting for 4-5 hours, you want water!)
• A variety of energy bars.
• Rain jacket (the white thing in the bag)

Not pictured are my energy drinks, waterproof boots, microfiber shirt, light weight pants…etc.

The marathon starts at 8am. If it is raining hard all morning and very windy, it could get cold very fast. Last year, I stocked up on chemical hand warmer packs. I might bring a few just in case.

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11. September 2008 by Max.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I thought it said something in there about the press.

Apparently Mr. Kanye West and his cohorts haven’t read the Bill of Rights. Actually, they haven’t even started reading it!

Mr. West decided to start his Sept. 11 by scuffling with photographers at LAX this morning. He and his body guard grabbed cameras from photographers and smashed them into the ground. The photographers were shouting for police the entire time.

The advantage the paparazzi media has is that they travel in herds. While one photographer is being assaulted there is always another one to catch it on video. Luckily, this case was no different.

 Kanye’s rampage

The videographer talked about what happened once the cameras were off. After the police arrived and separated the involved parties, apparently one of the officers asked to see the video. As the videographer was about to show him, Kanye charged him demanding for his tape.

 The videographer speaks out

This really irks me because of next clip. Clearly Kanye and his crew do not understand the first amendment. It may not be a bad idea to make all celebrities and entertainers to take a first amendment law class.

 Don’t tape me or I’ll sue

 I guess this should have been expected. He expresses his hatred for the paparazzi in his song, “Flashing Lights.”

“I get a call, like where are you deezy
I tried to hit you with the o wokie
Till I got flashed by the paparazzi
Dang these n****** got me
I hate these n****** more than nazis”

I don’t understand why Kanye (and other celebs for that matter) don’t want the paparazzi around. It’s free publicity. They all want their face on the cover of every newspaper and magazine. Don’t you have to have your picture taken to have it printed somewhere?

Kanye has nearly no expectation of privacy. He is a public figure. He is in the spotlight by choice. If he doesn’t want the attention, he should get out of the industry and stop assaulting photographers.

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11. September 2008 by Max.

Yes. It is two in the morning. The perfect time to continue the throwback series!!

The summer after I graduated high school, I took a trip with five other recent graduates, a former teacher and his wife. We debated on where we wanted to go but we decided on Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. We were there for two weeks.

This was my first time out of the country. Here I was, 17 years old and ignorant to the world.

I don’t know how many rolls of film I shot. All I know is that I have contact sheets for film that I cannot find! NOT GOOD! Luckily, I also have a lot of digital images from the trip.

I entered one of my images into the Smithsonian Magazine photo contest the the following winter.

Days before the final day of notice, I received an email. At first, I thought it was a “we regret to inform you” letter. As I kept reading, I found out that my image was selected as an honorable mention. It was in the top 150 entries out of over 35,000 images entered from around the world. That was pretty cool.

Now that I have had some time to go through some of the negatives, I have found some of my favorite images from the trip. Like this one!

While my trip to Thailand was great, it was only a trip. When I was living in Shanghai for five months, it gave me a tremendous opportunity to make beautiful images.

One of my favorite images from China was shot in Longsheng. To get to this city from Shanghai, my friend Gavin and I took a train for 29 hours southwest. From there, we got on a boat for another six hours. After the boat dropped us off, we had to take buses and trucks for another few hours up the mountain. When we got to the base of the town, we had to hike for another few hours up the mountain on a narrow path. It wouldn’t have been bad at all other than the fact that it was midnight when we were climbing this path.

When we got to the village, after we taught a few Chinese people how to play the card game Uno, we hit the sack. We were getting up at 5am to see the sunrise come over the mountain side. There was only one problem. It rained all morning. The fog was so dense that we couldn’t see 20 feet in front of us. After waiting for five hours, the fog cleared for a brief moment and a mountain appeared out of the clouds in the background and I snapped my shutter. This is what I got.

While I was going back through some of my film, I found a black and white image that I shot at the same location.

Most of my time in China was spent in Shanghai. I went to many different temples and pavilions. So many that I can’t identify which one is which. I believe this next image was in Shanghai somewhere. It was shot on a lucky roll of infrared film. This roll went through the x-ray machine in Beijing and appears to have no ill effects.

More to come…

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2. September 2008 by Max.

In the last few weeks, I have once again discovered that I have a massive archive of negatives. Since I had some time on my hands, I decided to start scanning some film.

This is a unique opportunity for me. I am able to show everyone never before seen images that I shot all around the world. I don’t even remember seeing some of these images! It is very cool.

Since it is my birthday today, I decided to start off with an image I shot at my 17th birthday party. The legendary “Scary Cake.”

The story goes that my mom had made me a chocolate cake. When I removed the candles, this face was left in it. Before anyone touched the cake, knife or any of the surroundings, I snapped a frame.

I was shooting chromes on my dads Pentax ME SUPER for my photo 2 class my senior year of high school. We were doing Polaroid transfers and emulsion lifts. The final product is hanging framed in my moms kitchen.

On a less horrifying note, I also found the negatives from the first roll I ever shot for a class assignment. One part of the assignment was to photograph an old chair. I took a chair and set it next to a mostly glass door. The next thing I knew, I had a pretty cool picture of a chair.

That just goes to show you that any subject CAN be photogenic.

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