What did I just get myself into? On July 1, I started taking one photo a day on film. I will continue taking a photo a day until June 30, 2017. My goal is to tell the story of life in Reno over the course of 365 days. But, maybe I’ll only end up telling the story of where I’ve been and… Read more →
So I broke the first rule (that I totally just made up), and shot in JPEG for the Octane Fest Monster Truck Spring Nationals in Fallon, Nev. June 13. What happened because of that? I lost my ability to color correct these images to a perfect white balance, because JPEG just doesn’t allow for that. So what did I learn? Science.
Notice the color shift? Photo by Mike Higdon
This GIF is the most obvious if you look carefully. The color cast rotates between violet and green. This comes from inexpensive fluorescent bleacher lighting and American AC electricity. Power to the light comes in alternative waves (a sine wave) and on one side of the wave you get green and the other side you get violet. With a high-speed shutter such that can capture this monster truck’s high-speed spin, you will also catch that sine wave because it takes 1/60th of a second to shift from one to the other. If I had shot at 1/60th shutter speed it would’ve been white but then the truck would be a blurry mess. And in JPEG, you can’t really fix the color as well (it was way worse than what you see here). Source.
I spend so much time in a digital world, particularly in my job at Swift Communications managing technology, that sometimes it feels good to step into another world. For the first Reno Illuminati Ball, I brought my Minolta X-570 film camera to Reno Provisions to shoot the event, for myself, on black and white film.
I wanted to capture the candid, up-close shots of people’s faces or in this case, their masked faces. I particularly love the shots of people breaking out of character to check their smartphones. It kind of proves the point I was trying to make by bringing an analog camera. The best irony is that I attended an event hosted by Reno Instagrammies and used the slowest form of photography possible. It took three weeks to receive the developed prints.
The event environment and camera presented some interesting challenges. I knew the event would be incredibly dark and the costumes colorful. Nonetheless, I chose the black and white film for two reasons, both practical and accidental. Practically, I wanted to eliminate the distraction of color and focus on faces. Accidentally, Gordon’s Photo Store only had 3200 ISO film in black and white and not color.
Another challenge came from the camera and flash combo. The camera has an internal light meter, just like modern DSLRs, and allows you to set the film up to 3200 ISO. However, the flash meter only meters up to 1000 ISO. This meant the two devices wouldn’t communicate with each other very well. Nonetheless, I shot wide open on a 50mm f/1.7 lens, set the flash to auto distance, pointed it at the ceiling and hoped for the best.
I really enjoyed what I got. The scans, unfortunately, are pretty low res and add a lot more grain to the digital images than what appears on the nice, creamy prints.
What I learned about the United States while visiting Iceland for Christmas in 2014 A layer of salt burned through two layers of mink oil, staining the right toe of my leather boots. The stain looks like the Aurora Borealis. For the first seven days of my 2014 Christmas vacation, I loved my fur-lined boots with new hardened soles. In the… Read more →
I enjoy portraits and editorial photography the most. The ultimate expression of my photography is when I get to combine the two into editorial portraits. In these examples, I’ve presented some simple portraits, a fashion shoot and candid editorial shots, one of which includes Weird Al Yankovic. I like to frame tightly whenever possible, to bring the subject forward and… Read more →
Back in Ought 8, I interned at the Indianapolis Star newspaper in Indianapolis. In the basement of the building, a dead spaced existed. It used to hold their printing press, which were often built into the foundation during original construction of a newspaper. But several years prior, they ripped it out and sold it for parts because it couldn’t handle the… Read more →
While creating this new version of my website, I started looking through old photoshoots. The last nude set I did was in 2012 and it was interesting to see my selection and editing then vs. what I would do now. In 2012, I picked the most sexualized photos in the shoot even though the model’s intent was not to create… Read more →
Children make the most expressions because they haven’t learned to filter their emotions yet. And often, they really just can’t, so every feeling they have, comes out immediately and changes quickly. Spending time at parties with other people’s children gives me a chance to take pictures of them while they spin around in the yard and fall on the ground.… Read more →