Silence

Well, I don't know about everyone else, but I'm back in Rochacha, preparing to move this weekend and get caught up for school on Monday. While I was out west, I took the opportunity to drive out to the Grand Canyon for the day, as I hadn't been there in 14 years or so. It's a cliche, but I'm going to say it anyway: it takes your breath away to be in the presence of something so beautiful. I ditched my mom and brother at some point because they were cold (it was only in the 30's!) and went out walking along the rim. As the sun started to go down, twilight fell and the silence of the place was incredible. No tourists chattering, no birds calling, just the sound of the night and cold wind touching down on the rocks.

This is something everyone probably realizes the first time they go camping, or just spending some time away from the city. It's another cliche feeling, but sometimes it really is good to just turn the volume to OFF, clear out the static and garbage and just tune into what you're seeing. Even this is a very superficial way of interacting with nature, but it seems to me that it's healthy to, every so often, put yourself in the presence of something much greater. Because it's interesting the way the conversation falls to murmurs, then whispers, and then something bordering on telepathy, the way that movements are carefully measured, and making a sound, even breathing, feels irreverent.

The point is that we all need to find ways to center ourselves, take care of ourselves so that we can keep making pretty pictures. :]

Observing people in a courtroom

Hey guys!
The past two days I have observed a local hearing of a science teacher from my middle school. He is suing the school board for wrongful termination after being investigated for pushing religion in his science classes. I had this teacher and let me just say he was not wrongfully terminated. But this post isn't about that, but about my observations of human behavior in the courtroom. Sadly I could not bring Mr. Nikon to the hearing, so I will have to describe what I saw. The defendant, the superintendent, showed evidence of chronic doodling. I could see the doodles through the folded over page of his legal pad. The prosecuting attorney had great affection for winking. Winking at his client, winking at the audience, winking at no one in particular. He also had the countenance of a pug dog and showed symptoms of extreme boredom. His stared placidly at the ceiling, crinkled mint wrappers, and got up to stretch obnoxiously. The defense attorney had smiling eyes. Whenever he asked the teacher questions, our humble salt-of-the-earth educator seemed baffled by large words and correct grammar. The attorney had to reword questions time and time again. Excuse my bias. While the defense attorney attempted to be cordial with the teacher, his eyes were clearly laughing. Really all I am trying to say is even though I was without my camera, I can't get away from my observational nature. It follows me everywhere. Do you guys notice that happening to you too? All of the time. Details, details, details.

another note on flash color

Are any of you guys having trouble with the flash not looking right with your ambient light?

ie. when you use it, some things are white and others are orange/green or vice versa.

I ask because I saw some pictures were being put up with black and white conversions. Either way, check out this article: Lighting 101: Using Gels...

Huge post warning

Ok, so I was lazy, and I still am on this break. However I have found the time to read the book"The Hot Shoe Diaries" by Joe McNally . It is a really in depth and great look at using speedlites to do almost any sort of situation from one light up to I believe 47 in one photograph. Really really great walk throughs on why and how light is falling and mixing. He is fun to read and keeps everything pretty easy to understand. I'd HIGHLY suggest you guys pick it up, and if you use Nikon I'd say it's a necessity as he explains the Nikon i-TTL/CLS system heavily along the way. Also I would say as we have before, check out strobist.com It is a great site by a photojournalist/freelance photographer from Maryland. It is basically the web version of that book, having a lot of walk throughs and what he calls bootcamp, which are basically a series of exercises to get more comfortable with your flash and the ideas behind lighting.

I also want to throw out a thought I had over break. I have a terrible habit of spending money, and in turn have probably bought and/or heavily shopped for every piece of photographic equipment over the past 5 years. If you guys want any sort of advice before buying anything photographic feel free to ask me. especially when it comes to Nikon lenses or lighting equipment or of course cameras. I'd assume you guys won't have this issue but you never know.

I haven't been photographing much, which is terrible but whatever, I'm vegging out and wishing school would start already. Here's some prize winning photographs I have made though...

I've been working a lot with interval timers on my camera (set the camera to take a picture every xx seconds). From a set of eating lunch.

I did Playgirl on break

hot metal studio

A girl that I went to high school just asked me to be a fan of "hot metal photography" on facebook, I believe the that photographers are her older sister and brother in-law. Although the name for some reason really annoys me, I had fun looking through their work. I really enjoy the smile booth photos from the weddings they go to, because it seems like it would be really fun to shoot! I think it's also cool to see the photos with the photographers in them so you can see the equipment they are using. Check it out

http://hotmetalstudio.com/

Break

I find this break to be not only busy but confusing. There is so much to think about in terms of school and life that it takes away from photographing. Throughout this project I've found family to just be a repetitive project that only I would understand. Moments and faces are appearing throughout my pictures that people are not going to get because they weren't there, therefore detatching them from my photographs. For that reason I hate what I've shot so far...atleast in one respect. In another i feel that this project is one that will bring you back to the best of home, to the things you love about being home. In a sense, home away from home on paper. Right now, I just find myself at a mental block with this project because I hate what i'm doing. I'm ready to move forward with projects and expand this one is just driving me nuts....

One thing I've discovered this break while photographing my family is that my animals and food are a consistant theme. Important aspects to the lives of the Leeman family. So here is our demon cat.

Home

Home has been one of the best places lately. I guess it's just nice being completely comfortable.
I really should be photographing more while I'm on break, but I keep getting caught up in...well, everything else, hah.
I've been seeing a lot of friends, driving around, watching movies, and the typical whatnot. And despite the fact that I caught a fever/head-cold the other day, home has been so, so nice.
While reading previous posts on here, I tried coming up with at least one specific artist who has inspired me lately. Of course, I couldn't think of any. Although it hasn't exactly inspired my photography, I've been listening to a lot of Bach lately (specifically Bach - Cello Suite No. 1 and 2 played by Mischa Maisky). It's been nice being able to clear my head. I guess the music has helped that too. Annnyway, I don't want to rant on for any longer (sorry if your eyes are already bugging out).
I hope everyone's enjoying break.
-Caitlin :)

Old Family Photos

This is me on santa's lap when I was about four. It was really cute to see all the photos and how at first I wouldn't sit on santa's lap, there is one where I would only give him a kiss.
This is one of my mother when she was about four as well.

Crazy Horse Place

Following someone around in their day to day activities turned out to be a good way to shoot the family assignment.

I went to my sister's barn and found myself surrounded with horses.  This one was my fav.

An indoor riding area that had a cool industrial look to it.  

Photography and Craft

Hey guys! I thought I would share some of my recent work with you. Since of I have been home my father (glassblower, the piece above is one of his lingerie bowls) has enlisted me to photograph some of his work. He has operated many years without a website but has decided to get on the Internet bandwagon. Little Pa has only his Nikon point n' shoot and Adobe Photoshop 2.0 (blurgh), so having me home has proven advantageous to his endeavour. This little project has really made me see how much I have learned during my short time at RIT, compared to when I first started out. But all of that aside, this has made me think about the way art genres are interlaced. My father is a craftsman, but for his website he needs the help of graphic designers and photographers. No matter what our medium is, artists always come upon projects that require collaboration with other fields. In my opinion, that's pretty wild!

An Interesting Photographer

I found out about this photographer Sir Simon Marsden, his photos tend to be a bit dark and slightly macabre. Thought I would tell you guys about him.

http://www.simonmarsden.co.uk/

Playing with flash....and 2 feet of snow.

It was really cold out and I was watching my cousins so we decided to go outside play in the snow and get them tired so they would fall asleep.

This is John and his snow boots.
Will throwing snow in the air.

-Elizabeth

Terribly Lazy

I've been doing nothing at all the whole break and it has felt great. I think I've went to Best Buy twice a day since being home shopping with family and watched all the Star Wars movies about 9 times each.

Regardless of all that, I hope everyone is having a great break. I hope everyone got goodies they wanted for Christmas, Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate. I know I did. (photo attached of the first shot with it)

found something!

i found this website that will probably help us when we get into the studio. you use it to make diagrams of your different lighting situations and you can also save them.

http://www.lightingdiagrams.com/Creator

Another Cell Phone Post

My mom gave me a new cell phone as an early Christmas present- it's this new LG chocolate touch thing. I had this ancient flip phone before and I'm finding that I really enjoy taking and looking at pictures on this new little thing-- like several of you have said, I find it to be a useful tool in documenting little moments in everyday life. Aside from it just enabling me to catch things I might miss if I don't have my DSLR on me, it's just a good way to keep me shooting and looking at things all the time.

I heard someone describe this constant picture-taking as compulsive behavior recently, something I hadn't thought of before. But this is how my conversations with my mom and friends are going lately:

Mom: why are you taking a picture of that?
Me: because I am a photographer.
Mom: why do you have to do it so much? I feel like you're not listening to me.
Me: because I like to take pictures.
Mom: why are you always in such a bad mood?
Me: I'm not, I just wish you would stop asking this question.

Fabulous Las Vegas

Winter in the desert.

While I'm here I'm going back to a couple of the high schools I went to in Vegas and photographing them.
The Bellagio Gardens
I've spent many hours at this bus stop. I used to take this bus a few times every week to the other side of town for my orchestra and photography classes. It took me about 2.5 hours one way.

Bus Station

Here are some of my boring photos I took whilst waiting for my bus. I was creepily documenting the interaction with the ticket seller and the ticket purchasers...

Addicted to Camera Phones II - Tracking my Life

After watching the video that Seren posted yesterday, I began to think about the statement Chase Jarvis started with: "quite literally, the best camera is the one that's with you." I've had my iPhone for about a year and a half now, and using its camera, I've shot just under 1,000 pictures. The part that amazes me the most, is that through this process, each photograph is tagged with GPS data, pinpointing where the photograph was taken. So what does this mean? For over a year, I have somewhat of a visual receipt of my life - photographs that can be traced to exact moments and places in time and space, documenting not only what I saw, but where and when I saw it. I then began to wonder what patterns could develop if all of my spontaneous photography was tracked - where did I shoot most? when did I shoot most? These are questions that I can't quite answer yet. I think the answer lies ahead, as the body of work grows. To show some images today, I chose to take the photographs from my iPhone and pair them with their locations on a map, and time. Hopefully this format can provide an extended context for the pictures:

Addicted to camera phones

Found this video on the Apple website.... and it was kinda interesting:)

Break!

Have a good break everyone.

-matt

Juggling

My little brother, Max, joined juggling club this year and is now very randomly good at juggling a bunch of different things. I set him up in the living room with all the lights off and a strobe light on him. It took a lot of tries, because apparently juggling becomes more difficult when you have a strobe light flashing in your face, but I finally got one that I liked. I think it turned out pretty eerie.

Shooting Climbing

This is a task that I have still yet to tackle...please give me feedback. I think this is the closest I've gotten so far in shooting indoor climbing. And oh yeah...i almost died climbing scaffolding to get to the top of the wall to shoot these.

In Response To Robert's "Boring" Photos...

Personally, I think the most mundane and most "boring" pictures as you call it are the ones that resonate most. A "boring" photograph is the one you fall most in love with because it's simply the most relatable. It's not hard to think about, it's not some big concept. It's just life. And life is beautiful.

I try to find something beautiful in my life everyday, not only as inspiration but to keep me sane.

I find that the following website is a tremendous source of inspiration for me, and is the epitome of the boring photos, but is a collection of the most beautiful work I've seen. New artists are featured every week with lots of return artists creating wonderful work I think everyone can appreciate.

The quote at the bottom says it all, "Look and look and look, and then look again, because nothing replaces looking"

http://triangletriangle.com/