pho⋅tog⋅ra⋅phy: n

Wright Wedding - #2 for a friend

2009-07-01T16:29:00.000-07:00

Angela and Gianfranco ("G") got married back in October of 2008. They're our best friends, and we're sad that we had to leave them in Indiana for North Carolina. They're coming to visit though!

This was the 2nd wedding I had ever done, but it was more of a "I'm a guest but I'll bring my camera" kind of thing. Their official photographer was nice enough to let me follow her around, and even set up a few of my own shots! After having direct contact with many professional photographers, there is definitely a small (but growing) portion of those who have an unfortunately elitist attitude about other people with digital SLRs. But it was wonderful to be exposed to a photographer who was open and willing to let me (get in her way and) set up a few shots. She even took those for her own portfolio, too, which was quite flattering to me.

Having been through a wedding myself now, it's interesting to see how little of the wedding the husband is actually responsible for. The picture below, however, was the groom's idea - pumpkin flower pots! He was particularly proud of these, and asked me specifically to snap a few shots. So I did!

Congratulations to the happy couple!

Redbull Superbikes

2009-06-27T19:37:00.000-07:00

With yet another stroke of luck, I had another photographic opportunity at my fingertips. During the summer of 2008, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway played host to the Redbull Superbike Challenge. As always, these races have test runs before the day of the official race, so the riders can get a feel for the track and tweak their bikes to get the most out of the race. These practice runs were open and free to the public, and also allowed us to get right up on the track.

This event was a great chance to practice my panning skills (or lack thereof, since I had never had anything previously on which to practice). The benefit of panning allows the subject to have a nice sense of motion because the background is directionally blurred. These were hard for me to get, and even though I was on a tripod, my understanding of the camera had still be only elementary. But I did the best I could, and out of the 500 shots or so that I took (I subscribed to the "spray and pray" technique at the time...), these were some of the best.

DCI Finals

2009-06-26T19:35:00.000-07:00

Drum Corp International, founded in 1972, is a non-profit organization that provides a competitive means for youth to express their musicality and creativity while working with a team of diverse individuals, ages 13-21. During the summer, the DCI competitions begin, pitting a large number of corps based all around the country against one another. Some think, "marching band? nerdy." HARDLY. If one were ever fortunate enough to attend of these competitions, it would soon be realized that these kids are in AMAZING shape to do what they do. These shots were taken from the lot in Bloomington, my alma mater. They were going to hold the finals in Indianapolis, but Lucas Oil Stadium was a bit behind schedule, so instead they held it at Memorial Stadium at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Just to give you an idea of the discipline and physical fitness required for this type of event, we'll look at it from two different perspectives; the drummers, and the brass corps. I can't speak for the color guard, as I don't know much about it. These kids practice all summer long, every day, for up to 10 hours a day, outside on the field, constantly running through sections of the show.

Brass corps: tone, pitch, timbre, and overall warmth comes from extreme control of shape/tightness of the lips on the mouthpiece, as well as extreme breath control. Now imagine maintaining this control of the instrument while marching around a football field at 164 beats/minute, all while watching the drum major conduct to keep time, listening for the overall balance of the ensemble, and marching into elaborate, moving formations, keeping the bell of the horn facing at 45-degrees towards the stands, and making adjustments as necessary, after having memorized likely 20+ pages of some of the hardest music. These performances are also often changed and tweaked throughout each season to elicit maximum crowd response. And everyone is under the age of 22.

From the drum ensemble perspective, imagine this: carrying around a 30 lb+ drum, matching technique for synchronicity with the other members of the line, matching stick heights, special effects, etc. again all while marching at 164 bpm around a field in set/moving formations. This I can only somewhat relate to, as I myself was a snare drummer for several years in the Indiana University Marching Hundred, one of the NCAA Big Ten collegiate marching bands. However, our formations and repertoire were not NEARLY as advanced as those in DCI. These kids are truly amazing at what they do, and if you ever have a chance to catch a DCI show, I highly recommend it. Very HIGHLY. For those of you who live in Indiana and surrounding states, the Finals will be held at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for at least the next 10 years if I'm not mistaken...

To learn more, go here.

Sutter Wedding - First Ever!

2009-06-26T18:39:00.000-07:00

So I decided to try my hand at wedding photography. I was pretty lucky, in that my brother booked this wedding, and asked me to be a second shooter. This was a less traditional wedding...small, intimate, and "less stress" than many other weddings. But was I less stressed about this? Good God no.

The more I thought about it (and this may already be obvious to many), the photographic documentation of this day is the first photo album for this new family. And if it sucks...well, they'll remember that forever, and THAT will be essentially their memory of their wedding. Crappy photos. So...holy crap, was I nervous. I was essentially the 2nd shooter, taking photos of a lot of the details of the wedding; flowers, table settings, and also different angles of primary events.

After taking and processing this picture below for display (even though it may not be that good), I realized that I really enjoy the transformation of the bride from a "regular person." The details of makeup, hair, dress, shoes, etc. was something I often find myself documenting.

The ring picture below is still, to date, one of my favorite ring pictures I've ever taken.

I love it when a venue has balconies from which to get higher angled shots. Coupled with shots from the primary shooter, these combinations really add a photojournalistic feel to the album as a whole.

Meet Trisha!

2009-06-17T16:40:00.000-07:00

Another try at this whole modeling thing. My buddy Paul actually set this shoot up for the both of us, as Trish is one of his friends. She's a professional salon artist, hence her hair was outstanding. At this point in my evolving photography, I had just purchased a 42" silver/gold reflector. We shot early in the morning at the IMA Gardens in Indianapolis. It is an incredible (and very VERY popular) place to shoot. I think for the few hours we were there, we saw about 4 senior shoots, 5 engagement shoots, and a wedding shoot happening. Insane.

A big learning point from this shoot was manipulating light and how it changes the photo. The reflector definitely helped fill in a lot of shadows, and gave a lot of life and energy to the photos. Not to mention the sun was a GREAT hairlight. Paul was a great help, and I also assisted him with his shots as well. All in all, Trish was a joy to shoot, and she really enjoyed the photos we produced for her. And of course, this was another one of those "for the hell of it" shoots.

Caveat: In previous posts, I called myself a photographer I think. I don't really like that term for myself at this point, as I'm more of just a "GWC," or "guy with camera." I just take photos...

Textures/Speculars

2009-06-17T12:50:00.000-07:00

I'm intrigued by specular highlights. I'm not sure why this is, but when done well, I'm drawn to them like a moth to a flame. I'm not really sure what the point of this little session was, other than to test out a new lens I had recently obtained, the 50mm/f1.4. This was my first "fast prime" ever, and even though I haven't realized its utility until only recently, this lens wowed me nonetheless. It's bokeh is amazing, and stopped down, this lens gets quite sharp.

These shots were taken at the Greenwood Park Mall in Greenwood, Indiana, and about 30 minutes in, a "security guard" not much older than what looked like the age of 15 stopped us and told us it was illegal for us to take pictures at this venue. There's a big rift between law enforcement/security services and photographers, in that it is actually NOT illegal to take pictures of public places. At all. There are lawyers who specialize in this field, and have won many a litigation. There are horror stories of policemen confiscating memory cards and camera equipment, and even going so far as to arrest citizens simply walking around taking photographs of architecture, buildings, etc. all in public places. One photographer was even taken to the ground when he refused to give up his nearly $7,000 camera/lens combo, and then arrested for "resisting law enforcement." Don't get me wrong, I very much appreciate what law enforcement implements and does for the general public, but sometimes it can go way too far. Of course, just by the very nature of the interaction, it's always just better to bite your tongue, be polite, and comply, simply to avoid any further problems, regardless of the fact that (in general) law enforcement and security have no right to tell us to stop photographing publicly accessible areas.

ANYWAY, sorry about that little tangent. Just something that has always bothered me....

Another modeling shoot...my wife

2009-06-16T20:44:00.000-07:00

Another attempt from me at modeling, this time with my most willing and beautiful model...my wife. Of course, when I first obtained my camera, she no longer saw my face, but rather my face with a camera attached to it. I would not put it down, and always had it pointing at her, adjusting settings, seeing how that would affect the picture, and do it again. Things that normally took her an hour to do suddenly tripled because I would constantly interrupt her with, "hey honey, look at me. Don't move. Ok." Wash, rinse, repeat.

Lucky for me, she was (for the most part) very patient with my learning my new toy. Pretty soon, these impromptu "hold still" photosessions turned into "hey let's go to the park and do a short photoshoot" and "hey let's set up a makeshift studio and do a short photoshoot." These few (of thousands) were some of the better results from these impromptu sessions. A few with natural light, and a few with a 2-speedlight setup with Elinchrom triggers.

These next few were attempts at half-profile headshots. I had seen this done many times before, and had always loved the way the photo gave a mild sense of tension and mystery, as the subject's face was half obscured, either by shadow or by the frame of the photo.

It's ELECTRIC!

2009-06-16T20:13:00.000-07:00

So back in June of 2008, we had a pretty large system of storms run through Indianapolis while I was still living there. From my apartment window, I had a nice view of the western sky, and this is what I saw. You could feel the electricity in the air, that sort of tense stillness that makes your skin tingle. As the clouds rolled in, I saw in the distance a multitude of cloud to ground, and ground to cloud return strikes. Apparently having nothing better to do, I ventured out into our open parking lot with a metal tripod and an electrified piece of photographic hardware. Maybe I shouldn't have become a doctor...

Luck must have been on my side that evening, as there was so much electricity in the air and virtually NO RAIN, that, other than the occasional thought of being the 1 in 700,000 people struck by lightning that year, this would be a great thing to add to the portfolio. These were the best of the best...

This last one was the one that sent me inside. Not because of immediacy of danger as the storm drew near, but more so because I crapped my pants and was no longer comfortable standing in plain view of the public.

Meet Angela

2009-06-14T20:30:00.000-07:00

So I decided to try my hand at what at the time I called "model photography." This is Angela, a good friend and classmate of mine who was gracious enough to let me and another good friend (and classmate) Paul photograph her. And boy was it weird asking someone, "hey, can we photograph you just for the hell of it?" I can't even remember how it all came up. We were all on a radiology rotation together, and Paul and I started talking about photography (he's been shooting for years, film first, now digital, and now augmenting with hard-to-find rangefinders). I, on the other hand, was just getting into it. I think Angela overheard us, and one of us just sort of blurted out (half-jokingly, half-serious), "can we photograph you?" THAT felt strange.

She was a joy to work with, and was extremely patient with the both of us. This was definitely the first time for me photographing someone this way, and probably the third or fourth for Paul. And as far as I know, Angela's first time being photographed just for the fun of it. I had also just purchased the Elinchrom Skyport off-camera triggering system for my speedlight, and was just learning how to use it at the time. Incidentally, none of the "keepers" from this session utilized the off-camera lighting, since I was so new to it, and subsequently overexposed EVERYTHING I used it with. For the most part, all of the keepers from this session were sheer luck...

Angela was great to work with, and had a ton of energy. She has this infectious kind of laugh that, when it comes out, you can't help but start laughing yourself. THAT really helped a lot in terms of helping me relax and just think about shooting. Even though I know Angela pretty well, things change once you get behind that camera and photograph someone merely for the sake of photographing them. I had no idea how to pose people, I had no idea what to say when she was doing well, or what to say when she didn't do what I wanted her to do.

My buddy Paul, getting the shot. Sidenote - a lot of vision now, where I want to go with my photography, what interests me, concepts, etc. have very much been influenced by this guy. His style of photography has always been something I've wanted to incorporate into my own. So Paul, if you're reading this, you're an inspiration to the type of photographer I would like to become. Thank you.

This last shot was my first enlightenment with backlighting. Granted, the backlight was a huge floodlight used to light the Indiana War Memorial, but as I was processing the shots, I noticed how the rim of light created when a subject is backlit really helps it stand out from the background, and gave the photo a lot more depth. I loved it. So what did I do? I went out and bought another speedlight. This can't end well...

Fireworks

2009-06-12T22:37:00.000-07:00

Fourth of July, 2008. With the riverwalk in downtown Indianapolis, the setting was ripe for a festival. And what a festival it was! It's always nice to see families with children and pets out and about, enjoying the weather, hearing the beats of distant live music and singing.

By this time, I had had my camera for around 3 months. I was just getting interested into long-exposure photography, had just purchased my first real tripod, and decided that what better venue to experiment with long-exposure photography than during a fireworks display? We had such a prime spot too. Center of a bridge over the river, pointing straight at the building from where they shot the pyrotechnics.

Grand Finale

Aftermath

Blake vs Jun

2009-06-12T07:41:00.001-07:00

In the summer of 2008, Indianapolis held a championship tennis tournament, in which James Blake participated. My brother and I had just gotten into photography at this point (probably about 2-3 months in), and we had both just purchased Canon's workhorse lens, the 70-200/2.8L IS. We were able to score some passes from a friend of my brother's, as he has always been huge into tennis. With these passes, we were able to "sneak" into the AP photographers' box courtside, and snap away. Being the GWC ("guys with cameras"), in hindsight (and especially for those photographers there whose livelyhood depends on getting the right shot), I feel bad about being there essentially illegally. But it was all a learning experience, and always for the better.

A few pics of me my brother snapped while we were in the box. Interesting sidebar: for a lot of photographers, there's an obsession with taking pictures of other photographers taking pictures. I don't know why this is, but I also have this strange obsession...

Anyway, I was able to get at least a few good shots of James Blake and his opponent, Woong-Sun Jun, and 22 year-old South Korean. They had an amazing match. Not to mention I was excited as balls to be photographing a pro sporting event. Being a newb though, I still had a lot of problems with my exposures and such. The sun was blaring in my face, messing with my camera's meter, the players were running around the court at full speed, and to top it all off, I had only had my camera for a few months. Maybe I should have purchased a starter dSLR to wear down the shutter before going prosumer...?

Blake's "what the f#%$ kind of call was that?" face.

Winner = Blake.

First try at indoor rock climbing

2009-06-10T18:54:00.000-07:00

I was introduced to rock climbing when I was a first year medical student. Because of the seemingly endless number of exams constantly on the horizon (cram for Pharmacology, take pharm test, rest day, cram for anatomy test 3 days later, etc), it was customary for the students of my class to find as many distractions as possible. Incidentally, I think the total number of hobbies our class as a whole enjoyed doubled in our first year of medical school...

Anyway, I remember the first time I went rock climbing was with my brother. He essentially dragged me kicking and screaming, and in hindsight, I'm not even really sure I was so reluctant to try it. I remember the first climber I saw was climbing on the ceiling, ballooning around on these huge holds, 40 ft off the deck. I was amazed...one, at the fact that he was on the ceiling, but two, because I saw the 40-degree overhanging wall he had to climb to get there.

I had also just obtained my first dedicated speedlight, Canon's 580 EX II. I was just learning how to use it, and good God was it complicated. Photographers are always obsessing about light...how much is there, what is the source, how big is the source, what color is it, etc. etc. I had no idea what I was doing. :)

The photo below is my buddy Josh climbing on the ceiling that I was gawking at the first time I had ever been climbing at this indoor climbing gym. To get to the position I was at to get these shots, I ascended a rope using an ascension device and an aider. Now, I'm a pretty mediocre climber by climbing standards, but ascending that single static rope 40 ft straight up may have been harder than any climb I had tried before. Not to mention I was lugging my camera gear up with me, and of course my fear of heights and dropping expensive equipment 40 ft to the deck tightened my sphincter a few notches.

And this is the 40-degree "prow" that Josh had to climb FIRST to get to the ceiling portion. What a beast!

The style of climbing that I'm very very interested in is bouldering. This is where the climber climbs without a rope relatively low to the ground (<15 ft?). Many proponents of this style of climbing claim that it distills rock climbing into just a few moves, and allows the climber to concentrate on pure, hard moves. The reasons I like it are two-fold: 1) I have no endurance for sport climbing, and 2) I don't have the patience for sport climbing. I'm very much an "immediate results" kind of guy, hence bouldering really appealed to me in that sense.

For some TRULY AMAZING rock climbing photography, check out these guys:

Boone Speed
Damon Corso
Andrew Burr
Andy Mann

Breaking her in...

2009-06-04T22:35:00.000-07:00

After a few weeks of reading on the best forum on the internet (literally hundreds of thousands of years of collective photography knowledge), I took my camera out to the first place that many newbie camera owners do...the zoo. I had also just recently purchased a 70-200/f4.0L IS, and wanted to take that for a spin...and good GOD was that lens sharp. I've since returned that lens and moved to the faster 2.8L IS for low light and sports photography, though.

I just re-read the first paragraph of this blog, and I realized this is all shop talk...sorry!

BUT anyway, I took my new 30D and lens to the zoo, and along with my brother who had just gotten his XTi, we just shot like mad, learning the settings, how to manipulate them, and seeing how the same picture could turn out a hundred different ways with different combinations of settings. I was hooked... :)

There's this interesting phenomenon that occurs whenever a newbie photographer (or even the most seasoned pro) purchases a new camera...the first picture to be presented is almost always waterfowl of some kind, typically a duck or goose. I hate geese. They poop too much, they poop EVERYWHERE, and they're ornery. Ducks? Much cuter. Much nicer. So what did I shoot? A duck. "Go shoot a duck," as they would say.

One of the first pictures I had ever taken with a digital SLR. And what a wonderful feeling that was...the snap/click/buzz of the shutter curtains opening and closing, and the immediate feedback on the back LCD of the capture. So we ran around the zoo with the camera around my neck, snapping pictures of anything and everything we could find (how Asian are we?).

This picture was actually a mistake, but turned out to be interesting to me, so I decided to keep it. It's of a mother and baby elephant, but when I first glanced at it, it looked like a man kneeling down on his knees with his hands on the ground. Weird...

Lucky for me, the butterfly exhibit was in full swing, and I was able to get a shot of a newly emerged butterfly.

This guy was being shy...

I had such a great time that my then-fiancee and I went back again to take more pictures and look at the animals. :)

Welcome!

2009-06-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

Hey there, and welcome to my blog! I'm very new at all of this blogging nonsense, so please bear with me. This blog is really nothing more than a look into my life and the things that interest me, whether they be about medicine, photography, rock climbing, etc. I just recently graduated from medical school at Indiana University (YIKES), and will be moving to Wilmington, NC for a surgical residency program. My older brother (on the left) was a big influence in my decision to pursue surgery as a career, and I have him to thank for the initial interest in the field.

That's me in the middle. I'm a bit older now... :)

Photography has always been a big part of my family. Ever since I was a child, I remember my father (middle) always having a camera pointed at either my face or my mother's. I can even remember walking into the bathroom that my dad converted to a makeshift darkroom whenever he would get into his photography spurts. Needless to say, our family history is photographically well-documented, and it's only getting better. I had always held an interest in photography, and between my 3rd and 4th years of medical school, we had about 2 weeks off. My now wife can tell you that my threshold for developing symptoms of cabin fever is quite low, and after a few days of doing nothing, I had to do something. My other older brother (on the right) had recently purchased his first dSLR as well, a Canon xTI. He's been quite busy with photography, and his skills have evolved quickly and immensely. He now shoots with the new Canon 5DmkII, and his business is BOOMING. After years of using a point and shoot, the picture quality and shutter responsiveness of a digital SLR was...astounding to me. That was the final push for me into buying my first dSLR, a Canon 30D (which I still own and love).

*/plug* You can visit my website to check out more of my galleries. */end plug*

This blog will be a bit "back-blogged" if you will, starting from the first real pictures I took with my new dSLR until now. My little photographic endeavors will also be intermingled with random thoughts of mine, should anything interesting happen to me on any given day. So I guess this is more of a photographic AND personal blog, mixed in with a little tech-y stuff.

ENJOY!