Long exposure to rock ‘n roll

A good friend of mine recently got married and booked another friend’s rock band to play at the reception at a local saloon here in Portland. Because it has typical dive bar lighting, I figured I would play around with flash and long exposure while Advisory rocked. It’s always been a favorite technique of mine, especially when you include double or triple exposures by adding extra flash bursts like in the photo above. Exposures of around a second seem to work the best, because if you allow the shutter to stay open longer than that you run the risk of ambient light overwhelming the image as the lens soaks up the scene.

The Final Four and Portland prep basketball

Quick post for today. I’m not really a follower of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, but I can’t help notice the Final Four is upon us once again. That quickly reminded me of a couple of games from 2010 when current Kentucky star Terrance Jones still was a prep terror at Portland’s Jefferson High School. Because of Jones’ NBA caliber skills, even then, I was able to get some really fun sports photography actions shots at the 2010 OSAA state championship tournament at the University of Oregon’s MacArthur Court.

Jones is dominant now in Lexington, but at Jefferson the gap between him and the competition simply was laughable. At least he seemed to be having fun as Jeff cruised to the 2010 5A state title with ease over Mountain View High of Bend (above and below). Now we’ll see if he can help lead Kentucky to the expected national title they covet. These photos also gave me a last look at the University of Oregon’s MacArthur Court, which now has been replaced as home of Oregon basketball by the sparkling new Matthew Knight Arena.

HDR landscape experiments

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit I don’t really know what I’m doing when it comes to HDR imaging. Sure, I can bracket my photos with the best of them, exposing for the shadows and highlights and all that. But putting together an HDR, or high dynamic range, image is pretty much an art form requiring a steady tripod, a good first exposure and sound taste when it comes to post-processing with Photomatix, FDR Tools or any other HDR software.

The image above is a three-exposure series shot at my favorite spring creek in Clackamas County, Oregon. I used a 50mm lens set to f.11 with the exposures two stops apart. Any input is welcome when it comes to this topic, as I’m completely and utterly experimenting with post-processing techniques I can’t really use as a photojournalist. That’s definitely part of what makes it fun, though.

DJ Steve Aoki hits up Oregon

My work as a photojournalist brings me into contact with a wide range of people, ranging from those just burned out of their homes to international celebrities. Steve Aoki, above signing an autograph, falls into the latter category.

A native of Southern California, Aoki is a savvy businessman, DJ and musician with a huge fan base. He recently stopped in the Portland metro area for an appearance at the Wilsonville headquarters of SOL Republic, a maker of high-end audio headphones, as well as a show at Portland’s Roseland Theater.

At SOL Republic, there was an elaborate party held for the occasion, as the firm showed off its Tracks line of headphones that now are sold by Apple, Best Buy and other prominent retailers. More interesting for my Nikon, however, were the photo opportunities offered by the colorful lighting and fashionable models, below.

Look to the sidelines in sports photography

Sports photography is about much more than the action on the court or playing field. I’ve often found the most compelling images from any given game, match or contest to come from the reactions of players, coaches, supporters and other spectators. No surprise there. Emotion is a big seller in sports photography, whether it’s a sideline reaction (the 2012 OSAA 5A boys high school basketball state tournament above) or an on-court response to a big play.

I took the time to shoot more of these types of shots at this year’s OSAA class 5A basketball state tournament at the University of Oregon’s Matthew Knight Arena. Not only did the brand new arena provide top-notch professional lighting, the heightened atmosphere of the state tournament meant reactions were never far from bubbling to the surface. Below are a few of my favorites from the tournament, held March 7-10. All the photos here were shot for Eagle Newspapers and the Wilsonville Spokesman.

At the top is Wilsonville (Ore.) High School’s bench in a state semi-final loss to league rival Milwaukie. Shown below is a pair of Milwaukie players celebrating a tournament win; Wilsonville’s Sione Kauhi; Wilsonville boys coach Chris Roche; the Hermiston High School girls bench in a season-ending loss; Wilsonville girls coach Cindy Anderson; Anderson again; Springfield High School girls All-American Mercedes Russell; the Springfield student body in a win over Wilsonville in a girls quarterfinal matchup; Wilsonville’s Grant McNiel; the Milwaukie bench celebrates a semi-final win over Wilsonville.

Light and movement

It never takes long for the weather to change in Oregon. In the photo above, I returned to a spot that was nearly underwater in January. Now in March, however, the water flow has lessened and provides some really fascinating color and movement when long exposures of one second or more are taken.

The photo above is a four-second exposure taken at f.11 and ISO 100. The trick to this is a variable neutral density filter, which restricts the amount of light entering the lens without altering its color.

ND filters come in many strengths and are offered in several different forms, including variable, which rotates and functions much like a circular polarizer.

The most common is the fixed ND filter, while the graduated ND filter allows the photographer to split an image into two distinct areas, one filtered, the other unfiltered. The latter is usually used when you have a sharp delineation between areas with strong highlights and shadows, as commonly found with sunset photos with a horizon and foreground.

The shot above and the image at right were both taken during the middle of the day under shelter of overhead tree branches. The effect is otherworldly. As one friend put it, it’s like Middle Earth as envisaged by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Self-portraiture and iPhoneography

I recently ran into some work done by Washington Post photographer Michael Williamson in which he used his iPhone to snap a series of creative self-portraits. He did this alongside the multimedia work he was doing on “Half a Tank: Along Recession Road,” a lengthy series of blog posts done with reporter Theresa Vargas in 2009 documenting the effects of the Great Recession from coast to coast. Williamson has been a staff photographer for the Post for nearly 20 years and is one of the most talented photojournalists currently working.

With his experience and skill, he has a seemingly endless wealth of great photographic ideas that come across in his work. They also come across in his fabulous iPhone portraits in which he often uses shadows or reflections as the main elements in his images.

In this series of self-portraits, I’ve shamelessly borrowed from Williamson’s use of reflection in a variety of ways at a specialty shop on N.E. Sandy Blvd. in Portland, as well as with a car. I’ve also used an iPhone, which has surprisingly good image quality, white balance and other handy attributes.

Located across 28th Avenue from the club I recently played a show at, the shop is the kind of establishment you probably won’t find anywhere except the middle of a large city, and the neon lighting provided a suitably vintage feel to the fedoras and other items on display.

Blue Angels revisited

 

I was cleaning out a hard drive at work today and came across a folder of photographs from the 2007 Hillsboro Air Show. It was the middle of the afternoon on an overcast day, but the Blue Angels and other performers routinely fly so low that capturing images of the planes in flight is not as difficult as some might think. I’ve always been fascinated with flight and airplanes of all descriptions. So shooting air shows like this, while rare, is something to be savored.

These images were shot from the tarmac at the Hillsboro Airport and are barely corrected for exposure or color. Little can be done about the overcast background, but it does cause the F-18 Hornets flown by the Navy’s premier acrobatic team to stand out pretty starkly.

Oregon prep swimming championships stir memories

I enjoy shooting sports, just as I have since I started working as a photojournalist years ago. This weekend’s Oregon state high school swimming championships at Mt. Hood Community College was no exception to this. It turned out to be one of the more enjoyable events I’ve shot this year, mainly because my primary subject, Wilsonville High School sophomore Christie Halverson (right), won her first state title in the class 5A women’s 200 freestyle.

The college’s aquatic center has two pools, a six-lane indoor 25-yard pool and a 50-meter pool that is uncovered during the summer and sheltered by a pressurized vinyl dome roof in the winter. It was the latter in which the state championships were held this year, with the pool divided into 25-yard lanes across its width.

Because the competition lanes were divided off from the warm-up area by a floating bulkhead, it allowed photographers better access to the action than when the meet was held in the smaller indoor facility.

Finally, the whole thing strongly reminded me of my own age group swimming experience, when I took part in numerous meets in the very same pool, including Oregon Swimming and Pacific Northwest Region 12 championships. I even trained for a summer at Mt. Hood with my club team when the pool was entirely outdoors. Then, as now, the Mt. Hood Swim Club called the facility home and was among the most respected club programs in the state.

Here’s a link to a larger photo gallery from the meet, with more photos of Halverson, Springfield High School All-American Carlos Hunnicut (bottom photo), 200 and 500 freestyle boys double champion Alex Seaver of Marist High School (Eugene, Ore.) (top photo) and others.

Slow motion life at Coffee Creek: Coming to terms

Everything is privilege-based at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, inmate Michelle Fox explained to me during an interview in 2008. Even the amount and type of work an inmate is allowed to perform is based on having a strong disciplinary record and a good rapport with corrections staff.

Fox was sentenced under Oregon’s Measure 11 to six years and three months in prison in 2005, convicted of manslaughter following a fatal crash. She used a number of the services offered to incarcerated women to productively serve her time and was released late last year a different woman than when she was arrested.

During our recorded interview I shot photos. And it was clear that even though she was over four years removed from the crash that changed her life, it still weighed heavily upon her. To me, that’s what takes a relatively boring photograph tainted by flourescent light and transforms it into something worth viewing.

Michelle was frank with me as we talked. And she obviously was frank with herself, because she nearly broke down on several occasions.

At the other end of the emotional spectrum, Coffee Creek’s award-winning Through a Child’s Eyes program usually brings out a completely different response (right) when  incarcerated mothers are reunited with their children. Many of the children are too young to realize exactly where they are, which makes these types of scenes all the more poignant.