Busking

I came across Darci on my way to Big Ben. Here street musicians are called buskers, and frequent the London Underground Tube system. Darci was a pretty cool cat, who had been busking for over 15 years.

San Jose Stealth Dance Team

A few members of the San Jose Stealth Dance Team, part of the professional lacrosse team in San Jose, are associated with SJSU. Here is a soundslide show on those girls.

Help a brother out

The more clicks Harvey gets the better. Also check out his other videos to catch up on what's happening at San Jose State.

Portaits

It's been a while since I have been blogging, school and work are catching up with me. But I had an interesting assignment not this week for the Spartan Daily. I was assigned to take portraits of two photographers, Valerie Mendoza and Kirkman Amyx. Mendoza is an instructor at SJSU, while Amyx is a graduate student.

I am not always sure what to expect when I am shooting a photo of a fellow photographer. Sometimes I expect them to be picky and kind of like a backseat photographer. But both of my subjects were nothing of the sort. Mendoza didn't really have time, as we had about five minutes to shoot and Amyx was a patient man as we tried to find some kind of shot.

For Mendoza I went in with one SB-24 and bounced it off the wall to the left. I figured since we were not going to have much time I needed to shoot in her office. I wanted soft lighting from the side. Couldn't get any simpler. She was a natural at posing, didn't really have to tell her to do much. The thing I love about her photo, is how she cocks her head slightly at a similar angle to the crow in the photo above her. The Daily ran a different photo than this one.

Amyx's photo, which is different than what ran in the Daily, came right at the end. We had originally planned to shoot in small studio that was displaying his work, but didn't have a way into it. So we went to Plan B, which was to figure out a Plan C. We took several shots in a really ugly room before I took an idea from Strobist Guru David Hobby. Amyx does a lot of his work digitally, inclding the piece behind him in which he compiled 10,000 rolls of dice. I pretty much just used one flash to light his print in the back and computer light to light his face and the light on my cell phone for the front of his computer.

This assignment was all about being resourceful, with limited amount of time.

I'm seeing blue

This semester I am taking Alternative Photo at SJSU. If working in the darkroom wasn't obscure enough these days, this class takes it a step further, by finding- you guessed it, alternative ways to print photos.

No need for any fiber based paper or lines of trays under the amber light (although may choose to create their negatives in the traditional darkroom, but is that so traditional?). Print on what you want: watercolor paper, wood, wool, cotton. Anything that'll let you really.

So for I first assignment, we did Cyanotypes. These print pretty well on watercolor paper, which is what I chose to use. One gal tried wood, but couldn't get it to work.

Since this is a sort of vintage process, I decided to go with some vintage cars as my subject. I had some pretty good shots from the Monterey Historics and wanted to pump those pics up a little more.

A quick rundown of the process is: you coat your paper (or whatever you want) with the solution that contains potassium ferricyanide and ferric ammonium citrate. Then after it dries, you put an inverted transperancy on top and expouse in the sun for a few minutes. Next you rinse for about ten minutes, drop in a little hydrogen peroxide. All of a sudden you get this gorgeous blue print.

I made things hard on myself, trying to print large. I wanted 16x20s and the biggest I found to print transparencies was 8.5x11. So I put four of them together on one. I later found that I can buy rolls of Pictorico that are much larger (but also more expensive.)

The image on this post, doesn't do the process justice. But it gives you an idea.

Next is Van Dykes. Can someone say Cowboy Up?

Blessed

I can't describe the week I had as other than blessed. The main reason: I got to cover my favorite football team, the New England Patriots, as they practiced at SJSU while on the West Coast.

Needless to say, I was pretty stoked. Here are a couple of pics of Randy Moss, who was not very media friendly at all.

Judo

So I had an assignment for the Spartan Daily, and was hoping for to come away with some better pics. Last week was one of those weeks where the obvious couldn't be more oblivious to me. So I look back now wondering why I didn't do this or that.

I went into this assignment with an idea in mind of catching San Jose State Judo athlete Jeff Fong throwing someone with some hard light coming from the front and back and hopefully blacking out most of the background. I only half accomplished that, as I failed to get the back all blacked out. But it is still an interesting photo.

All Smiles

I love college football. I don't really have a team, but since I go to San Jose State I like to root for them. This past Saturday, they did not disappoint as they routed the San Diego Aztecs 35-10.

I was able to use a 400mm 2.8 lens which I love. The only problem is the thing weighs a ton and by the end of the game you are hating it. I was fortunate enough to shoot soccer on Wednesday with it and get use to moving it around and such. It was a good warm up for football.

The picture featured is defensive tackle Adonis Davis who has a nice smile on his face, probably because he thinks he is going to get a sack. I love this shot. Unfortunately he didn't get the sack, but you can just see how much fun he is having.

Here is a web gallery of some more of the photos from the game. Enjoy.

SJSU Soccer

My internet has been down for the past couple of days, wasn't able to get these up sooner.

SJSU Men's Soccer versus San Francisco. It was 0-0 at the end of regulation and neither team looked like they were gonna pull it out. But in double overtime, San Jose got a break away and it was nothing but the back of the net.

Here are a couple of photos, as I was on assignment for the Spartan Daily.

More library time

So I spent a good amount of time in the library this past weekend, and will probably be doing the same in weeks to come. It was time well spent, as I got a lot of work done. I have been in the King Library many times, and am continually impressed by it. It has a bunch of weird quirks about it, even though it is so new. I think I need to explore it some more. Check it out.

One of the worst nights of my life...

And not because SJSU lost to Stanford.

I shot my first collegiate football game this past Saturday at Stanford Stadium. It was a great stadium to shoot at, especially lighting wise.

Unfortunately I had to leave at half time, due to the food poisoning I received prior to the game from the press box hamburgers. I am still recovering from the effects of the bad beef.

On the bright side, I had five photos in the Spartan Daily, including a front page shot.

The photo to the left was a victim of the 400mm lens. You live and die by it. But I think it's still nice shot.

Check my Flickr! for more photos.