Endings

It's the end of summer and near the end of my tenure at the Camera. What a better time to cover a fair? Fairs are always a tricky situation to shoot. Sometimes there are easy photos to be made and at times there seems to be so much going on yet nothing really interesting to photograph. Lots of times the photos just all look the same despite being from different times of year and locations.

So today my challenge was to shoot something that I've seen five times in a different way. Not too sure I succeeded, but still feel like I made a couple fun frames.

Well, tomorrow it's the Showdown. CU versus CSU. I've got high expectations for myself tomorrow. I'll share what I come up with after.

More from the DNC

It's been a wild ride the last couple days. Here's a few more frames from the DNC.

Too busy to post individual pix so here's a link to a slideshow of the better images.

Fall Sports and Feature Hunting

It's that time of year when the evenings are crisp and there's a pig flying. Well, part of a pig anyway. It's fall and prep football is here. As is CU women's soccer. The problem with the game tonight was that the team I was covering didn't have a full roster. They only hand-wrote the starting offense and defense on a sheet for me to shoot a photo of. Spacing it out about five minutes later, I started banging off frames in this spectacular golden hour light.



The real problem arose when I had three photos that I wanted to turn in and had no way of identifying the players from the local team. Thus I was forced to turn in what are essentially trading card photos. Just a photo of one of the guys on the team in a simple frame and possibly bland moment. So the others will slowly die on the cutting room floor of my mind. And as a result you get to look at a couple other frames from the past 26 and one half hours.

Enjoy

The Re-Shoot

So I was asked to give it another go on the CU football preview cover photo. I was none too happy about having to re-do the assignment after all the hurdles and difficulty of the first shot. But I swallowed my pride and tried to do what I could with the situation.

This is the new version:

This is the original version:

And just for added fun I tried this today:

So there they are. Which do you like the best? Disregard all my whining and bitching about the situation and tell me which photo is the best one to use on the cover of a special section for the 2008 season.

Primary waiting games

I covered the Colorado 2nd Congressional District primary race for the Democratic ticket tonight. My candidate to cover was Jared Polis. I lost track of the number of times that we were told he would be coming down from his hotel room to speak to the crowd. First it was 20 minutes, then it was 30 minutes, then another 30 minutes, then after more results were posted, then at 10 p.m., then finally when one of his closest opponents conceded he appeared. My deadline was 10:30 p.m. His arrival was 10:21. Final file sent at 10:34.

So here's a random smattering of frames from the evening of waiting around and running around.

Previsualizing is key

After a meeting with the Sports department about shooting a unique photo for the CU Preview section front a couple days ago, the reporter Kyle Ringo and I discussed an idea of having two guys ready to kill an offensive lineman. The original idea was to do full-bleed across the section front. (Not sure if it's going to happen now because of a strip ad on the bottom of the page now.) After thinking it over for a day or two I decided that it would have to be three lights minimum I've got in the trunk to do. In some respects I wish I had two more lights, but what do you do with limited resources? You adapt and make due with what you have.

Thankfully had a D3 to use full-frame with a 14mm and the Live View feature as the camera was inside another helmet. I could barely see the composition. Being given barely five minutes to shoot with the guys due to a mix up during media day for the Buffs didn't help matters much. George Hypolite had to get to a conditioning session. Luckily I was 30 minutes early and was able to get things sorted out as early as I did. While the sports information team scrambled, I moved a bunch of furniture and darkened a room as much as possible. Then guessed on where to set up the lights so all I would need to do is have the two guys get into position and adjust as fast as possible.

Strobist: Two SBs @ 1/2 power @ 50mm into umbrellas tilted upside down into the faces with a SB on a cord on the floor (accidentally) into the helmet of the camera. I didn't call slop, so it doesn't count.

Luckily it worked out fairly well, considering I fired off seven shots of this version and quickly had to work in a different pose as backup. Sports wanted a vertical just in case the original idea wasn't going to work on the front.

I'm satisfied with the result, but the only thing I'm running into is that a lot of my portraits are starting to look the same. I really need to work on some new tricks for my bag o' tricks. And quick, considering there's not much time left in my tenure. A wee bit more time to work with a subject might help as well.

UPDATE: My managing editor really dislikes this photo and has essentially demanded a re-shoot of the photo. "The face mask and angle make the giant football players look small." After a heated discussion I'm pretty much deflated over the whole deal. On to the next thing...

Are you ready for some football?

The University of Colorado started camp today, so that means shooting football nearly everyday for the next three weeks leading up to the Rocky Mountain Showdown. Which I'm really looking forward to, as it will be my swan song with the Camera.

More soon.

Long video, longer production night

Put together an interview video for our Colorado football camp preview last night. Lets just say I had a few issues during the export and wound up working until 4am to get it posted to go with the story. The paper has stopped using Brightcove for our video player and moved to the Scripps player that is built-in with our content management system. I'm not completely sold on it. There are a few things I like about it. It's easier to get videos into stories on the web and people can rate or comment on the productions. But one major hang up is the embed feature. This is as big as it gets, despite trying to hack the code. So click on the funky expand button on the bottom right corner. But not before you get some popcorn and a drink, this one is a bit long.

Just in case you hadn't been outside

IT'S HOT OUT!!

Can it snow now, please? I'm ready for ski season now, thanks.