On another note...

This is Tim. or Venus. Depending on when you catch him. He is a 19 year old student at Western, and if you haven't guessed, a drag queen. I had talked to him last time I went over to the drag show about possibly doing a story and he said yes. I went over to his house today just to talk about it a bit more and make a few frames to feel it out. I am hoping to make this a long term project, he seems to be ok with me invading his life so we shall see how it goes.

He was working out his costumes and routines for his show tommorrow in his room. He lives by school in his moms house (who helps him make costumes) and his boyfriend.

I do's and I hopes

More excitement from the wedding last weekend. I must say that this is the first wedding that I am really proud of. I am just praying that they feel the same.

I realized after I had worked on a bunch of photos that I was making them all Black and White because I tend to like B/W stuff better, but I figured they might not like that so much so I went back and turned some back to color.



Obviously not at the wedding. This was over at Froggies after I had been working on the wedding stuff for quite awhile, so I went over there to hang out with Kelly, Dempsey, Ben and crew.

The wonderful world of weddings

I had the chance to shoot Christen and Justin's wedding this Saturday. I didn't realize it but weddings run a bit differently down here. Maybe it is just our family, but I am used to the all day event. Not here, I got there at 2 and left at 4. That was Ceremony and reception and I wasn't cutting out early. The service was short with about 50-75 guests and the reception was in the basement of the church where they just had some appetizers. Their DJ was a 10 year old cousin with a boom box and a Dodge Ram as their limo.
It was a good time, they were nice people and I wasn't deathly terrified before shooting it and actually got some sleep.

This was the church it was at. Very cozy I think is how a real estate agent would describe it.

Here is Justin, the groom. He didn't like to smile to much. This was about all he could muster up, not sure if that is a good sign.

I got this wedding through my boss at Shutterbug when the bride, Christen, called her up freaking out because the guy they had to shoot it over booked their wedding and got paid for the other one already. She was really nice, kinda frazzled, it being her wedding day and all, but afterward seemed to chill out a bit.


I have been looking at a lot of photographs shot into the light and really like the look. I have never really tried it, on purpose, because I always hated to have a completely white sky and I just have always shot with the light and not against it, but I thought I would try some and I actually like them a lot.


We had already done one portrait session right after the ceremony and I knew none of them were any good so when they sat down to eat I went looking around for some detail shots of the church and stuff and right as I was about to go back into the reception I saw this light and background and thought, "Thats it." So after they finished we went out side and shot some more and thank god we did becasue these are WAY better than the other ones.

This is try number 2. He shot himself in the face the first time. oops.

Whats a good picture?

What makes a good picture? I am still trying to figure that out but this is what ran across my mind when I found this photo: Technically good- ya. Is there a moment- ya. Composed well- sure. Focused- ok. All those things are important to creating a good photograph, but when I found this photo from two years ago it made me stop and laugh- out loud. Its a photo that brings out an emotion, this one happens to be funny, but a photo that makes someone connect with and feel what you felt taking the photo is what I think truly makes a good photo.

Rappelling

I was walking around campus yesterday and I saw these guys rappelling off the parking garage so I stopped by. It was the ROTC on campus and they only had a few kids left, so I stopped by again today and they were there again. So these are from today and I couldn't figure out which one I liked better so I put them together.

Western's very own campus shooting

Well if you guys haven't heard, there was a shooting on campus today (Wednesday). It was on the other side of campus from where I was so I wasn't near it at all. Ben was down around it and said he saw cops going one way, then heard the sirens go off and decided to walk the other way. Good choice.
The whole campus went on lock down and I was stuck on top of the hill during all the good stuff so I just shot some of the reaction in the building. Nobody really knew what was happening so we were all a little nervous. Even now I'm still not positive what happened but from what I can gather it seems to be a gang fight and two people got shot and four or five are in custody. Double check that but that's what seems to have happened.

Of Camera's and Colors

Hi guys! This is just some goofy business from around campus today. I borrowed a Canon 5d and a 35mm f1.4 lens from the yearbook and got a chance to mess around with it. Its a sweet camera and amazing lens, one I wish Nikon would put out so I could buy it. This is just a statue that I pass everyday on top of they hill and there was a cool sky behind it. Enjoy!

Small Town...Big School

I had to go downtown to pay a bill today and on the way back I heard someone belting out some songs from the square, so naturally i went to check it out. It was this guy, singin' his heart out for change. "I usually stay out here until I get enough for a room. That's only happened twice." "I can only do it as long as my voice holds up." Now he is out there everyday, just about all day. He had a good backstory too that I wont bore you with, but just know it was good.
So I'm like, "Sweet, I just found myself a story." Go into PJ class that night and tell my teacher after class. I finish my story and the kid behind me says, "O you mean James? Ya I was going to do him too, hes pretty cool right."
"Ya," I say as I am screaming, "DAMN IT!" inside. O well, comes with the territory I guess. Small town, big or just well known photo school, this is bound to happen a lot.
Well here he is

Circle of life

This one is going up the Ferris wheel from when we went looking for Jordan's apartment. Its old but I found it going through stuff to enter for another contest. Its nothing special but home seems like a great place to be right now and this makes me want to be there.

More from the Eddie Adams Workshop

Here are some more shots from the workshop last weekend.

These where while we were setting up to take the group photo.


I took these on Saturday while I had a break in shooting my story. The way her schedule worked out I was shooting her from 6:30 am to around 11 then again from 5 pm to 9ish. Unfortunately that was totally outside the scheduled shooting time for the workshop which was from 12 to 7. So between my shoots I had some down time. I knew if I laid down I would never get up so I walked around town and looked for some cool photos and found this kid, Chance Ross, standing outside his mothers dance studio.

Back from Eddie Adams!

Got back from the workshop today about an hour before I had to be at work. What an experience. I learned so much and met so many people it was really cool. My team leader and producer were Melissa Lyttle and Josh Ritchie. Both of them were really cool and gave our team some great assignments for the weekend.
I got to do the multimedia piece for our group. So for my story which was a 61 year old woman who lives alone with her 3 dogs and goes hunting with them, I had to shoot the photos and also collect some audio while I was shooting to put with the photos later on. I worked with Meredith Birkett from MSNBC.com on the piece which was really cool because she is one of the best in her field in the whole audio game thing. You guys can see it here.
Ours is called "For the love of Dogs" and should be the last one.

One other thing that made the workshop awesome was that a really good friend of mine from when I worked at the Naperville Sun was there. This is Kate Szrom jumping on the trampoline outside the barn. She actually is the one who told me to apply to this workshop and is a big reason that I was there. So it was great to see her there too.

These are some photos from my story that didn't make it into the multimedia show.




The barn backs up to a big hill/mountain that was in the middle of its fall color change. The whole area was full of crazy reds, oranges and yellows. It was also one of the most fun drives that I have ever made. We drove through the hills and were surrounded by views like this. All the roads where hilly and curvey so it felt like a race track. Sweetness.

Off to NY

Here are two more photos from the debate the other day. This is the girl from Wheaton, she actually knows my friend Matt, which I found kinda funny.
Anyway, I will be off to New York in a few hours to go to the Eddie Adams Workshop in Jeffersonville. Philip Andrews and I will be driving there from Western. He is a senior this year and really good so hopefully I will learn lots. Its about a 14 hour drive from Bowling Green but we will be stopping in Columbus, OH to see/crash at Bobby's house. Should be a good time. We will be back either tuesday night or Wednsday depending on how we feel.

Debate team

Here are two from the debate competition that I shot last week. One of the heavy hitters from western is a girl from wheaton. Small world right. She actually knows my friend Matt and went to school with him. She had her husband and two month old baby there too. Those are to come...

Campus Life

This shot is from a shootout we did in class yesterday. Funny story though leading up to it: I walked out of the house to go to class, got halfway up the hill then realized I didn't have my camera with me. I carry it everywhere and the one class I needed it for i forgot it.
So I went back down, grabbed the camera then went to class. Thank god i did go back because i walked into class and the teacher said we were going to be doing a shootout on "patterns."
So the whole class had to go out and shoot patterns on campus for an hour then come back and show what they got. It was fun, I thought we had to have people in it, guess not, some people came back with like a brick wall. owell. This girl is actually the girlfriend of another Photo student.

This is on top of the hill looking out over Bowling Green at like 6:00 in the morning. It is from when I shot the construction thing awhile ago.

Change is good

Back from the trip in one piece, that one piece hurts everywhere, but it is one piece. We left Friday with all intentions of checking out a new place that we had never climbed at in Tennessee just northwest of Chattanooga.
Well we got there, barely, the "road" to the boulders was quite a doosey. After we thought we found what was the parking spot we got out and started looking for rocks to climb. About two hours of hiking up and down hills on what we thought were trails we still hadn't found anything worth climbing. We finally stopped and Tim said, "This sucks, I say we just go to Horsepens." and I totally agreed.

This is what we did at Pot Point, which was the spot by Chattenooga. Looked at the guide book and GPS... a lot.


Horsepens 40 is about 50 miles northeast of Birmingham, Alabama. It is probably one of my favorite spots to climb because there is so much climbing so close to each other. Normally you go to a climbing spot and spend most of the day around one boulder. Horsepens is a boulder field with tons of climbing right on top of each other. Plus you camp right next to the boulders.
This is Lookout point. Right under it is a great problem called Redneck, really hard, really fun, did it once and never plan on doing it again. It ripped my hands open.

Here is Tim climbing after we got to Horsepens. It was only about 2 hours from Chattenooga so we got there around six and climbed all night.


Wow did we suck. We both kinda fell outta climbing a little bit. Me with this photo thing and Tim had to go and build a house. We had gone about the same time last year and stuff we did easily then took us lots of falling this time. We still had a great time as we usually do.

And this is when you know it is time to leave. It was the end of day 2 and since I have lost all my calouses my fingers were wearing pretty thin. We had been working this one problem we found for a good hour and on the last try when I finally got it I left my mark in blood. My ring finger finally blew through and started to bleed. Tim sent this problem in the next two tries and we both were hurting pretty bad so dinner and sleep it was.

FEAR NOT!

As if anyone that reads this doesn't know already, I am going to Chattanooga to go climb with my friend Tim...


I swear we do actually climb on these trips.

So you might not see anything new till Sunday night or Monday. But feel free to keep looking at whats on here! Leave me comments!
Here is something new to end with. Nothing exciting. I went to work to get some photos printed so I could put some new stuff in my portfolio for the workshop next weekend and on the way back I saw this car. The color red seems to be playing a big part in a lot of my photos recently. Not sure why.