Vicky

I am continuing with my theme of "portraits from the past," this time with a photo of Vicky, who graduated from Watertown High School about 8 years ago.

02-01-12 Kristin

Here's another photo from my photographic past, this time of Kristin, one of the many fine gymnasts who represented Watertown Senior High School's gymnastic program. Not only was she a great gymnast but she was a wonderful portrait subject.This photo was taken at her parents' dance and gymnastics center, Dakota Gold. As I recall, I hadn't graduated to strobe lights and so I was using my "hot" lights. The advantage of continuous lighting is that the light you see is the light you get. The disadvantage is that it doesn't produce a lot of light. Thus, I was forced to use a fairly wide aperture. Truth be told, this photo suffers from camera shake, but ten years ago I wasn't smart of enough to see that. Today, this is a photo that probably wouldn't have seen the light of day.But I like the photo and so to try to make it look good, I used selective sharpening on Kristin's eyes. And then I blurred everything in Aperture, which is a great tool to help make art out of something that is less than perfect. Kristin, of course, is the most perfect part of this photo. :-)

Joelle

In my search for photos from my early days of digital portraiture, I came across this photo of Joelle that I took almost 9 years ago. I had a great subject but the the photo also represents the power of Aperture by Apple as an editing tool in that in a minute or two I was able to retouch and then enhance the photo. All of this was done in preparation for my Advanced Digital Photography class at Lake Area Technical Institute.One of the nice things about teaching photography is that I learn at every step along the way and today was no exception.

Lost!!!

This photo was a "shoebox" experience about 30 minutes ago. In a quest to find photos I have been ignoring, I started at the chronological beginning of a library of digital photos that has close to 50,000 pictures. About 300 pictures into my search, I found this. I don't remember taking the photo, but I do remember the class with great fondness.The light source was a single 150 watt bulb and the camera was my Canon 1D, which represented the state of the art in DSLR photography in 2002. The camera cost $5500 and do I dare say that it was worth every penny? It had a whopping 4.4 megapixel sensor!The "shoebox experience" is what many of us have encountered when we are searching for something in our closet and we come across a box of forgotten photos. I am sad to say that decades from now, no one will have a clue about all of the digital media that we put into boxes. If the 8-track tape and the floppy disk are evidence of the ephemeral nature of electronic media, imagine what will happened to hard drives and compact flash cards we are using today.If you want to enjoy your favorite digital photos years from now, you need to get them printed. And then put them in a shoebox.

Humane Society?

Compositionally, this isn't a very good photo. But journalistically it gets by because it does tell a story, even if you didn't know that is was taken along the Las Ramblas in Barcelona, Spain. It is a photo of a mendicant (more rudely, a beggar) and his best friends.I suspect that some may ask if he would have to beg if he weren't trying to feed 4 pets. I would ask instead, "What do you value and how much is it worth to you?"

11-19-11 Melissa

Melissa looks a little sad here but she was one of the more ebullient subjects I had the pleasure to photograph. She was a dancer and actively involved in theater and made posing very simple. And she had many great looks.Here, we are in an abandoned building in Gary, SD, in 2002. I had found a broken window that faced north and told her to pose by the edge. I got beautiful wrap-around Rembrandt lighting.Incidentally, one rule of thumb in portraiture is that you should avoid having the subject show the back of his/her hand to the camera and I break that rule here. Frankly, I didn't know the rule 10 years ago. I did use the "Burn" tool in Photoshop to make the hand a darker shade than the face. Why is there a rule about this? Well, partly because the back of the hand is fairly nondescript and also because any other bright object in a portrait competes with the face. And generally, portrait photographers don't want that.

John

This is a first in my photographic career: I tried taking photos of a child in the studio. But this is not just any child; it is John, son of Kelly, one of my second year photo students.At first I thought John was going to be a tough customer but thanks to Holly, another one of my second year students, John managed to look my way and give me a great pose. I'm not sure that this was a life-changing experience for me but would love to have another chance to take photos of John.

Darcie

I took this portrait the first year I was serious about senior portrait photography. That was almost 10 years ago. The camera was the Canon 1D, which was a groundbreaking digital camera. It cost $5500 and had a whopping 4.4 megapixel sensor!I had a lot to learn about photographing people back in 2002 but I did get a few things right in this photo. First, how could I go wrong with Darcie? I was lucky to have the opportunity to photograph her. While I can take no credit for her good looks, I will take credit for finding the right light and the right moment for this portrait.We were at Terrace Park in Sioux Falls and I knew that the morning light was best for this particular location. That meant we had to leave Watertown pretty early to get to Sioux Falls by 9 am.As for "the moment," I will say that I had no book learning on this but that even from the beginning I had a bit of an intuitive sense of when to press the shutter button. On this particular day, I had already taken over 50 photos of Darcie and so by the time I took this one, both of us were relaxed. And anyone who does this kind of portraiture knows how important that is.(NOTE: This photo was originally posted as a color image but the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. So I have revised my post with a black and white image that does have a little "glamour" applied in Photoshop.)Canon 1D 1/125s f/4.5 ISO250 91mm

The Weld

This photo was inspired by a few welding shots my LATI students submitted for a project last semester. I knew that somewhere in my vast collection of photos, I had one welding shot and here it is.I must say that welding is inherently photogenic due to the great light the welder creates.

06-01-10 Reprise: Helping Hand

I am enjoying a short hiatus from my "Photo A Day" blog and am showing you a few of my favorite posts from the last year and a half. I'll be back on the job with new photos from London and Portugal in a couple weeks.