Jul 21 2009
I sometimes get the feeling that life is speeding me by. We're halfway through the summer already, and it's certainly not about to slow down.
So photographing the 2009 Vintage Grand Prix suited me. Every car passing by is only in frame for a matter of seconds. But, unlike life, if you miss a car, it'll come back around on the next lap.
I decided to play a lot with motion blur during the race I photographed. A photograph of a car without any blur makes the car look like it's sitting still. As cars curved around Serpentine Drive, I would drag my shutter at around 1/30 of second while panning with the cars to create the desired effect.
This is a picture you couldn't have taken with a digital camera a few years ago. New technology has led to the ability to drop to very low ISO values. Years ago, it would have been too bright outside to get a shutter speed low enough to create this kind of motion blur.
Jul 15 2009
While a lot of my time is spent creating art for assigned stories, on a slow news day, sometimes a newspaper photographer will just meander aimlessly until they find something worth photographing. We call it feature hunting.
I couldn't even say how many times I've gotten a phone call from a photo editor saying, "Can you go find a feature?" This past Sunday, it was an e-mail, rather than a phone call. I'll try to be creative with my features, because it's a bad thing when they start to become repetitive. Feature photos at fountains (Pittsburgh's PPG Place and Point State Park are notorious for this) are easy because there are always people there doing interesting things.
I saw several children running through the fountain at the SouthSide Works after grabbing a bite to eat on my shift Sunday, and decided to see if I could make a picture. I ended up liking this frame because of the girl's expression and the way the fountain's spout create a graphic scene in the background. Of the three hundred photos I shot at the fountain, this is the only one I even considered turning in.
Jul 14 2009
As soon as I walk into a room the first thing I'll notice is the atmosphere. How is the light? Are there big windows? What colors are in the room? Some rooms are immediately disappointing -- boring tile ceilings and fluorescent lights make coming away with a good photograph much harder.
I was pleasantly surprised when I entered Schoolhouse Yoga in Shadyside for an assignment on yoga for children. The room had bright and vibrant paint on the walls, and there were giant windows around the room (some photographers find strong window light to be distracting in an image. I've always loved it).
On top of that, yoga is naturally photogenic. The long pauses between movement give a photographer plenty of time to think about and compose a photograph. It isn't like football, where sometimes you just push down the shutter, take 20 frames and hope that you got it. You can take the time to do it right.
Jul 08 2009
Tonight, Pittsburgh natives Anti-Flag took the main stage at the Pittsburgh stop for the Vans Warped Tour. Concert photography is always a hurried affair, in that most artists will only allow you to photograph the first three songs of their set. It's a frantic period, with every photographer in front of the stage knows that they have to get their shot quickly.
It doesn't help either when crowd surfers are being tossed toward the front. Tonight, one came down right on top of me. I saw it coming, though, and braced myself so as to not fall.