Sushi

"My weaknesses have always been food and men - in that order."- Dolly Parton

This is the last picture I shot for my object lighting class. I wanted to do another food shoot, but with something prepared instead of fresh food, which is what I had done before. I had a lot of fun with this shoot, and the sushi was absolutely delicious!

Outdoor Portrait

"A photograph is memory in the raw." ~Carrie Latet

You might remember Clayton from another post I did. I had the pleasure of working with him again for my portrait portfolio. I wanted to do just a casual, outdoor portrait of him at his house.

This was shot with a D300, 80-200mm lens, at ISO 400, at 1/80 and f/4.

Fresh Food

"It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato." -Lewis Grizzard

This is another picture I shot for my Biocommunications Object Lighting portfolio. I have become really interested in photographing food. For some reason, in a design sense, food really speaks to me. I'm really looking forward to shooting food more often, and want to start trying more studio setups to look like a kitchen or dinner table. I also want to shoot some simple prepared food.



This is a picture of my setup. The fork and tomato are between the two white boards. I held the fork up vertically with a large studio clamp. I originally wanted a white background (hence the white backdrop,but found that I liked it better on the black background because it made both the metal and the color of the tomato pop.

I used a Nikon D300, 60mm macro lens, at ISO 200, 1/50 sec., and f/29.

Leaves

"Caress the detail, the divine detail."-Vladimir Nabokov

While walking down the sidewalk at my apartment and looking at all of the leaves, I had the idea to backlight them on a light table and shoot them with a macro lens to pick up all the fine details and capture the brilliance and variations in the color. I originally wanted to shoot it as a "pleasure" shot, for my own entertainment, but decided it might be a good idea to use it for my object lighting portfolio. Let me which one you like the best!



The leaves are one of the only things I like about autumn (I'm more of a spring/summer type person). There's nothing like watching the wind pick up a cloud of brightly colored leaves.

All leaves shot with a D300, 60 mm macro lens, and hot lights at ISO 200.
Leaf #1: f/4.5 @ 1/100 sec.
Leaf #2: f/7.1 @ 1/15 sec.
Leaf #3: f/7.1 @ 1/125 sec.

Caudill's Cabin Hike

"If the day and the night are such that you greet them with with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, more elastic, more starry, more immortal--that is your success." -Henry David Thoreau

This past weekend for my birthday, I decided I wanted to get outdoors to celebrate instead of having a big party. My friend and I hiked the 9.8 miles up to Caudill's Cabin. This is one of the 16 stream crossings in the hike. The last light had reached the valley, and we still had a LONG way to hike.

Some of My History

"The goal is not to change your subjects, but for the subject to change the photographer."

I have yet to post any of film from the past 3.5 years of working with it. Here are some of my favorite photographs from first year and high school.


This was taken with a Canon AE-1 Program and a 50 mm lens on 35 mm black and white film. It was shot from the top of a parking deck after a wedding in downtown Greensboro.

This is a picture of my martial arts instructor, Dave, teaching one of the adult classes. I did a documentary project on him for my first year high school photography class. I used the Canon AE-1 and a 50 mm lens with 35 mm black and white film.




I took this picture of my friend, Ben, during my first year of high school photography. Once again using the Canon AE-1, a 50 mm lens, and black and white 35 mm film.


I plan on posting more of my old work every once in a while, and hopefully breaking out some more film in the near future to get some new darkroom work up.

Chocolate!!!

"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."-Charles M. Schulz

This is what I shot for the Chocolate Assignment. Had a lot of fun with this shoot. Partly because I love chocolate, and I found some I am not allergic to to work with, and partly because I just love shooting food. Let me know what you think!

This is my setup. I used one speedotron flash with a softbox, one fill card, and one black card. I shot it with a D300 at ISO 200, f/10, 1/30 sec., and a 60mm macro lens.

Want Some Lemonade?

"If life throws you a lemon - make lemonade."-Joan Collins

At the end of the semester, we must turn in a portfolio for the Biocommunications Object Lighting class. One of the requirements is that we include items with certain specifications. One of the images must be glass. While perusing the shelves of a store looking for a mug for my pharmaceutical shoot, I found this pitcher and was inspired to do a clean, simple, high key shot of lemonade.

I used a Nikon D3s, 70-200 mm lens, I shot it at 1/125 and f/11, ISO 200. I lit it using 2 Speedotron flashes and a fill card.

Water

Our last assignment in Biocommunications Object Lighting was to illustrate water. I wanted to show water's interaction with the human body. The above image is what I came up with. I shot it with a D300 and a 60.0 mm macro lens at 1/200" and f/5, 200 ISO.

It was the first time I'd ever used a macro lens, and really enjoyed it and plan on using it more in the future.

More Panoramas!

Here are two more panos that I messed up on (single stacked instead of double stacked 360 degrees). However, I still thought they were pretty neat.


They were both taken on the Reynolda House property in Winston-Salem.

Full view, please!

More Panoramics!

This is the panoramic that I am turning in for the assignment in Digital Imaging. I took this last weekend in Sparta, NC. Michael and I took a trip to shoot and made it an all day trip with the dogs, complete with wading in streams.



This is the second one I shot in Sparta. It was behind a church, shot from the parking lot.

More to come!

60mm Macro Lens

Today I shot my water assignment, and got to get checked out on the 60mm macro lens for the first time. This picture was a fun snapshot I took after the shoot for the actual assignment. Thanks to fellow classmate, Paul Budde for being my model. Make sure to check out Paul's blog for a similar image that he took while we were playing around with that lens, as well as his other work! (Links to his and all my classmates' blogs are on the right hand side if you scroll down.)

Fall Is (Definitely) Here

While shooting panoramas the other day at Reynolda Gardens I shot this picture inside the branches of this giant tree. Meaning, the tree was big, but between where the branches had leaves and the trunk, there was a giant walkway. This is my favorite part of the Reynolda House property, and when I am there, I always have to snap a picture of the backlit leaves.

Pharmaceutical #2

For my second pharmaceutical shot, I stayed with the same medicine, but showed how it benefits a patient. I also got some more experience with location shooting, which proved to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated, due to some technical difficulties. Despite this, I was relatively pleased with the way it turned out. Thanks to fellow student, and good friend, Michael Hughes for modeling for me!

Colorado

This is a panoramic I took when Michael and I had just entered the Colorado state line. A massive, beautiful storm was there to greet us. We pulled off on an exit in a rural area and I took this panoramic while hanging out of the sunroof on the side of the road. It was by far the best trip and as a whole, one of the best experiences of my life.

I know the blog image is very small, bear with me and (please please please) click on it to view it in a larger version.

Pharmaceutical #1

The Biocommunications students have a pharmaceutical shoot due this week. We have to turn in two images showing different moods or views with the two different pictures. I tried to stick with one medicine, and chose Valerian Root. Valerian Root has been used for the treatment of sleep disorders, as well as anxiety.

I decided to portray the natural aspect, as well as the calming aspect, while showing one of the ways that Valerian Root can be taken (as tea).


For fun, I also took a closeup shot of the tea itself.


This is me doing an earlier shot of the same setup. Thanks to Lindsay Hutchinson for the setup shot!

New Portrait

I am very excited to have a new portrait of myself! Thanks to fellow classmate, Ian Briscoe, for helping me out with it! We used 2 lights, one with a big reflector on it to light the background, and one with a large softbox on a small lightstand to light me.

We shot with a D300, and a 300mm lens (yes, he was practically on the other side of the studio), at 1/200 and f/5.6, ISO 100.

Hanging Rock (again...)

This past week my friend Michael and I took a day trip to Hanging Rock with the dogs. He worked on a practice panoramic, and I took some photos just for fun. This was one of the shots I took from a tiny crawl space on one of the ledges. The trip was fun and relaxing, with school in full swing, sometimes it is good to get away and shoot just for the joy of it.

Portrait Practice

This week for our Bio-communications portrait class in our weekly partner assignments, we had to demonstrate 5 different lighting patterns. I lucked out, and got Chris Kennedy as a partner. This lighting pattern is split lighting, and I used 750 hot lights. On the shadow side, I used a scrim and moved the light far away for just a little bit of fill light. A big thanks to Chris for being a wonderful teammate and model!

D90, 18.00-55.00 mm lens, f/5.6, 1/200, ISO 1600

Clayton and Titan

This is my friend, Clayton on his parent's property.  Clayton's family owns a llama, named Titan. Titan is kind of skittish, but will eat food out of your hand sometimes. Clay told me once that Titan got out and started eating grass around the neighborhood. They got a call from a couple houses down asking if they had lost a llama! Hahahaaa! I can't imagine looking out the window to find a llama grazing on my lawn! 

This is Titan. Eating some food in his field!

Logs

Michael, his brother, and I went out to his brother's friend's house to go shooting. For the second time in my life someone convinced me to shoot a gun. The gun we shot was a Glock 9 mm, so that was a different experience from using a hunting rifle. WOW! But the land was a huge, and the two houses were really nice. This shot was taken on the patio area outside, near the fire pit. 

I also used the video on my D90 for the first time on this trip. While I am not nearly good enough at shooting to post a video (it took me almost 2 minutes to shoot one clip the first one) I am hoping to post a video up soon. The video quality is okay. Better then on point and shoot cameras, but also not as good as regular video cameras. I also thought the way you have to prefocus was sort of annoying, but that also might be user error. I am still experimenting with it! So hopefully I will have SOME kind of video up soon enough!

Granddaddy's Birthday/Farm Time Part 3

This picture was an experiment. I had read in a landscape special in one of the photography magazines a technique where you use a slower shutter speed to blur colorful flowers. This was just an experiment, but I thought that the results were pretty interesting. I want to try it next time with a bigger view of a landscape with flowers in the foreground, and next time try to use MORE flowers.

This is one of the older tractors on the farm. I thought it had a lot of character. Especially with the crooked metal in the front!

Granddaddy's Birthday/Farm Time Part 2

Grandaddy's Birthday/Farm Time Part 1

I went to my grandparent's farm on May 8th to visit my grandaddy for his birthday cookout. Towards the end of the party, Michael and I went photo safaring around the farm. These are blades on a piece of machinery.

This is a backlit leaf on some crop.

This is my granddaddy! Opening his birthday presents! It was really nice to be able to hang out with my family, especially now that I have moved to go to school. Leaving has made me value the time I get to spend with them that much more. 

Portfolio Showing

May 7th- We had our first year photography student portfolio showing for the spring semester today. This is a picture towards the end of the showing. Of 1/4 of the second year studio, where the showing was held.

This is me with my entire portfolio. (The two on the far left are Cara's though) My dad is in the red shirt looking at the display!

Thanks to either David Ray or Michael Hughes for taking this picture! Not sure which person took this!

All Night Portfolio Printing

This was from the night Michael, Ian, and I pulled an all nighter to get our portfolios done! This is my dog, Winston, sitting snuggly in the steps watching us drying our paper and vaccuming up the water that had spilled all in the basement on about 3 hours of sleep each! I thought the Ilford paper was a nice touch for the goal of the night.

Solar Powered Fountain

After a hectic morning of classes, our first final exam, and a short portrait critique, a few friends and I sat down to chat on the sidewalk and, in one case catch a last portfolio shot. This is a fountain outside of our health and science building that is directly powered by solar radiation. It's a pretty cool contraption (until the sky clouds over).

Days in the Studio

Portfolio week has officially begun! From sun up to sun down our entire first year class will be processing film, developing pictures, mounting final projects, looking over contact sheets, cramming for our final exams, and trying not to go to sleep in the small dark spaces we will be in!
I shot this picture tonight right after finishing two of my portfolio images! This is the wall of processing chemicals! Hopefully I will be done with everything early this week so I can go on some REAL photo safaris!

Board Games

I traveled to my friend Ian's house to do some schoolwork today, and had the pleasure of meeting two guys from his church. After eating dinner they got out this board game I had never seen before and they invited me to join. It was awesome! Even better than Monopoly, and we were definitely getting competitive. The picture above is a shot of the board midgame!

These were my pieces!


And this is a closer view of a single hexagon on the board.

Michael

Michael and I had just gotten home from a movie. I snapped this 30 second exposure of him as we were taking the dogs out!