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Archive for July, 2009

MN Fringe Festival – Day 1

July 31, 2009

So I found out about the MN Fringe Festival from one of my Twitter friends posting that the Fringe Fest needed volunteer photographers. I though that it would be a fun project to be involved in so I though I’d volunteer. So far everything has been pretty well organized for a festival, especially one that is happening at so many different locations around the Twin Cities. I wasn’t sure what type of access or where we would be shooting from for the various shows so I though I’d bring an assortment of different lenses to my first day of shooting. For my first day I was going to be shooting 4 different shows, all on the U of MN’s Rarig Thrust Theater. All 10 shows I’m shooting for the festival are at this theater except one that is in the parking lot of the Bedlam Theater. That one will be a challenge in a whole new way I’m sure.

After I picked up my photographers festival shirt and my photo pass, I headed over to the theater to figure some of the logistics out and scout the stage for different places to shoot from. When I got there it looked like I could possibly shoot from the music pit which was off to stage left, an alleyway leading away from the stage out in front of the stage, although it looked as if it might be being used by some of the cast as an entrance or exit from stage, right in front sitting below the first seats, or in the aisles and along the back of the seating area. Thankfully I brought my 70-200mm lens and the final shooting option seemed the best as I could move all along the back of the theater and shoot from various angles and with that lens still be close enough to the action.

While the light on stage was relatively bright I still shot at between 1000 and 1600 iso and was still able to get very usable files. The toughest part was all of the different hot spots on people, trying not to blow one thing out and have the others be in dark shadows. I also shot all the performances at F2.8 just to give me the most light and allow for the quickest shutter speeds as with a longer lens you need faster speeds so your images don’t become a blurry mess.

Below are a few shots from each show from Thursday Nights Opening Night performances at the U of MN Rarig Thrust Theater.

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Polaroids

July 29, 2009

I gotta say, I love shooting with Polaroid cameras. While I’m not using Polaroid film for my peel-apart cameras, I still am using it for my integral film cameras. Integral film is what most people know, it zips out of the camera and starts to develop right before your eyes. Peel-apart is just that, you let it develop and then peel the finished image from the backing that contained the developing chemicals. For those I use Fuji FP-100c film and I must say it works great, such great colors. I was originally turned onto that type of film in college while making emulsion transfers from some slides that I had taken. It was so much fun I looked for a way I could do it without an expensive slide copying machine. Well that’s when I found peel apart film for things like the Holga and the older Polaroid cameras, as I couldn’t afford a Polaroid back for my EOS 3. So I was hooked, I saw things that just begged to be taken with this type of film. I’ve now acquired 2 cameras that shoot that type of film, a Polaroid 330 and a Color Pack II, of which I’ve had 2 because of some handling mishaps. Yup I dropped it on it’s corner and it shattered into little pieces. Thankfully they are cheap to replace, at the moment. So with that I just thought I’d post some of my more recent photos taken with either the Colorpack II or the 330.

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Nature Valley Grand Prix

July 23, 2009

A little while ago here in Minnesota, Nature Valley puts on a 5 day bike race around Minnesota. B and I volunteered to house a couple of racers because, A.) we had the room, as they really only wanted floor space, or a bed/couch if you had it, and B.) we like bikes, bike racing, and C.) we thought it would be fun. Well it turned out great, both of the racers we had were super nice so things at our house went great. While we couldn’t get to all the races B and I managed to get to a couple of really good ones. The Uptown Criterium as well as the Stillwater Criterium. Both proved to be great races.

For the images that I took I used mainly my Sigma 70-200mm or my Sigma 17-35mm with my Canon 40D. With the 17mm you feel up close and personal with the riders as they go by and at some points I even moved back a little bit as they kept inching their bodies over the curb as they leaned in to make their turns and I didn’t want to be the person that took anybody down during the race because that would have been bad. All in all it was a great time and I’m pretty sure we’ll volunteer again next year to be hosts if we can and if one of our friends doesn’t decide to head out for the race and need a place to sleep.

Nature Valley Grand Prix

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Time Lapse

July 20, 2009

So as of late I have been working on screen printing some of my images and decided to take one of my peel apart Polaroids and make it into an 11×14.5 inch print using 8 colors. I also worked on a print of my friend Jimmy jumping the hip at the old bmx/skate warehouse in Rochester, NY. I’ve been trying to expand my photography and what I can do with my photography and I thought this would be an interesting way to work with my images. It will allow me to manipulate the images in any way and color that I wanted to and the process would be a challenge as well as offering me a finished product that I was able to create and not just print out of a printer.

These are the two finished pieces.

I’ve added a video of me screen printing the final color of a 4 color piece that I was working on. It just shows the setup in my garage and some of the printing process. The video is really time lapse photography that I did with my Canon 40D. I set up the camera in the corner of the garage with a Canon 15mm fisheye and had the remote trigger take and image every 30 seconds for as long as it took me to get things ready, printed and finished. The video is comprised of 67 different images with the frame rate for the video at 3 frames per second. I like how time lapse can show you the process of something and I started playing around with it this past winter here in Minneapolis. Two other time lapse photography videos I made this winter are below.

I’m also thinking of adding traditional video to the site so that you can get a different look at how I set things up for my shoots. We’ll see if I can get around to shooting and editing.

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Strongbox Cover

July 8, 2009

So a little while ago I was contacted by Dan, one of the editors of Strongbox Magazine, an online magazine, to shoot a photo essay of my choosing. He said that I could pick really anything under the sun to shoot and that the only guideline that I had was that he needed the images and text, if I even wanted to use text, by a certain date.

Well let me tell you this project was more that a bit daunting. I needed to come up with a concept, shoot edit and submit in about a month and a half. I came up with idea after idea but none of them seemed to work or be something that I could pull off in the allloted amount of time. One of my ideas, was to document one of my road trips to the Badlands, but after getting home and looking at all my images I didn’t think that those images were right for the magazine and for my essay.

What i eventually came up with was the idea of long night exposures of my new city of Minneapolis. I took my camera, one lens, and my tripod and went out at around midnight on a couple of occasions to see what I could come up with. When I came home that first night I knew that this was it, I had a bunch of great images, and so I came up with other places around Minneapolis that I wanted to go at night to get some shots.

All the images that I took were long exposures, as in each exposure was at least 2 minutes long. So when you go out at midnight and don’t want to end up back at home at 4 am cuz you need some sleep you have to, A: work quick but smart and B: Know where you want to go and shoot. If you want to see the entire article please check it out at StrongboxMagazine.com

All images in the Article were Taken with:

Canon 40D
Sigma 17-35mm
Canon Remote Trigger (not wireless)
Silk Tripod

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4th Of July in Minneapolis

July 8, 2009

So it was the 4th of July the other day and what does that mean, it means fireworks. I love fireworks, that loud bang, the brilliant colors lighting up the sky. It’s something about fireworks that I just hate to miss them. Previous to living in MPLS, I was in DC and they have one of the best 4th of July displays I’ve seen but they didn’t have them on New Years Eve so B and I would drive to Baltimore, just to watch their fireworks.

So not to miss a chance for fireworks B and I headed down to the banks of the Mississippi to what Minneapolis had to offer. I of course brought my camera, tripod, an assortment of lenses(Canon 15mm, Sigma 17-35, Sigma 24-70mm, Sigma 70-200mm), remote shutter release and my chair. We found a good spot along the river, as I heard that being on the Stone Arch Bridge, a little closer, made shooting a bit more difficult as per all the bodies. I knew that I wanted to shoot some pretty wide stuff because I like getting people and buildings and such in my photos of fireworks for a bit of perspective.

So I set my camera up on manual, F8, 100 ISO, and Bulb so that I could get the clearest images and could keep my shutter open as long as I needed. Unfortunately I didn’t get me remote shutter release set up properly beforehand so I decided to scrap that and just keep my finger on the shutter. As for my times, I was just guesstimating. Hold it open, a few big bursts, not wanting to blow out the fireworks, and the release. Rinse and repeat. While you won’t always get it right if you keep checking your camera display you should start figuring out what is and isn’t working. I don’t think I looked through my viewfinder once after I composed my first shot. just shutter, wait for a few bursts, and release. I barely looked at the camera, more watched the fireworks.

When all was said and done that night I took 125 images in the +-20 Min show that evening. Oh and I didn’t change lenses once. While all of the images were not great, I did get some keepers. And below are some of the images that I liked from that evening. Oh and make sure to look for the gnome!

Images taken with:
Canon 40D
Canon 15mm Fisheye

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