Out

4 years in Juneau = 139,051 photos archived (likely 1,390,510 photos overall), 236 portrait subjects, 372 sports events. In total, my camera shutter was open for merely 2.32 minutes. In that time, made great friends and have many memories of a unique community.  Tomorrow morning, Atlantic Beach, NC... but tonight, going away party at Sandy Beach!

Be sure to keep coming back to this blog.  Lots of Juneau photos still to be uploaded.

PS: Here's some additional statistical geek-age:
806.28 GB of photos archived
Two camera shutter replacements
Cameras owned over four years: Canon 20D, Canon 30D, Canon 40D, Canon 1dmkIIn, Nikon D200, Nikon D3, Nikon D3s
Lenses owned over four years: Canon 24-70, Canon 70-200, Canon 50, Canon 85, Nikon 28-70, Nikon 24-70, Nikon 70-200, Nikon 70-200 VII, Nikon 85, Nikon 200-400.

Dylan: Studio Baseball

This, along with the swimmer photo posted earlier, might become the start of a studio sports series.  This shot was lit with an umbrella camera left and behind Dylan, while there was a bare bulb strobe camera right.  The "dust" is baby powder.  It took quite a bit of experimentation (and an entire bottle of baby powder) to get the effect just right, and the floor was rather slick for days after this shoot.

Basketball on the Runway: Alex Seniors

It really pays, sometimes, to live in a small town with a small airport, where the bureaucracies aren't quite as rough as say... LAX.  For Alex's senior photos, his mom got us permission to wander about the ramp area by the terminal (albeit escorted).

Seth: Studio Swimmer Session

Tried out some new ideas with Seth yesterday in the studio.  The idea was to have water "exploding" around a streamlining swimmer, as if breaking through a curtain of water.  Best shot of the session is the one above.

Lighting a Hangar: Rachel Seniors

(aka: a decent into the land of the gels)

Rachel's dad worked as a mechanic on the National Guard helicopters, so she wanted to do some of her senior photos with the helicopter in the background.  The dress was planned, but the camo vest was grabbed on a whim from the pilot's seat.  We ran two studio strobes (one each with red and blue gels) behind the helicopter, lighting the hangar door.  My assistant was standing on a ladder camera right lighting Rachel with an SB-900 and a Lastolite softbox.

Hypothermia Shoot 1: Glacial Swimming

Seth, Mendenhall Glacier

 Four shoots,  three lenses, two assistants, one softbox, one nearly frozen glacial lake, all to finally get the single, final image seen above.  But such is the cost of experimentation to learn a new technique.

2007-2010 Photo Book Released

he 2010 Minute Sixteen Photo Book is now available. Click on the link below for a full preview.

 

 Minute Sixteen Volume II

Sheer Dumb Luck 2: Anna Seniors

These are shots from Anna's senior photo session.  She wanted something more fashion-y looking than traditional and my friend Cal was kind enough to let us borrow his motorcycle for the shoot (and Mike loaned us his Porsche as well).  While shooting in a downtown parking garage, we kept having to pause for people walking off the elevator.  Eventually, on a spur of the moment idea, we decided to incorporate the elevator into the shoot.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

A dedication

For those of us destined to learn photography through trial and error, no piece of "equipment" is as valuable as a willing guinea pig. The easiest people to drag into my own experimental photographic learning process has always been my friends.

Of these friends, Sean has always been one to particularly give whole-heartedly of his patience and self-confidence over the years. But while Sean has been valuable in learning the science of photography, as one of my best friends for well over twelve years, he was the one to teach me how to begin to perceive the small triumphs, the agonies, the beauties, and the little dramas present in the daily script of humanity. Though obviously I have many more years of learning to do, by showing me how to "see" the deeper conflicts beyond the facade of humanity around me, he has helped define the way I observe the world, the person I've become, and this is hopefully reflected in my images. These are lessons far more influential than lighting techniques and apertures.

So to you my brother, I wish you more than the best. May your turbulent and listless journey soon bring you to the joy, love, and fulfillment you so richly deserve.

Sheer Dumb Luck 1: Soccer Team Poster

You never know how things are going to work until you try. I got asked to create the cover for the 2008 Juneau Douglass High School soccer program this year. I wanted to try to set up a grunty kind of team picture. The general idea was to use a fog machine to create a curtain of fog behind the players. 

Turns out, fog machines don't create "curtains" of fog, they create nebulous blobs of millions of floating particles. Any sort of front lighting would light up each of these fog particles and negate any sort of backlighting I was hoping for.

MacGyverisms 1: Underwater Housings

At the end of 2007, I finally gave in and started doing senior portraits. And so began an adventure in juggling student schedules, soothing the occasional overbearing parent, and trying my best to figure out what kind of “look” each individual senior was going for.

It came from the Caribbean

I think everyone who is passionate about a particular discipline has an “ah-hah” moment, that instant where the spark of a budding interest turns into an obsession.

Mine was on a ship patrolling the Caribbean Sea. It was just after sunset and we were preparing to send a boarding team over to another vessel, myself included. We had geared up, and in the fleetingly relaxed moments before putting our “game faces” on, my friend Kevin and I were on the flight deck joking with fellow shipmates on the level below.

Having played with my first camera (a tiny point and shoot) for a month, I noticed then for the very first time in my life the varied colors of light surrounding the scene, and the tense yet jovial mood. Handholding my tiny camera on a rolling ship for a full second, I managed the picture above.

Now, this image is blurry, noisy, somewhat out of focus and perhaps not really a great image at all. Nonetheless, at that moment, I remember thinking to myself, “wow, cameras can do that?”

The images in this journal represent the years since that moment in 2004, that one second exposure in the middle of the ocean. They document my first, exploratory steps into understanding light, capturing humanity, and telling stories. It has been a fulfilling journey of learning and frustrations, but I also know the learning and frustrations have only just begun.

I can’t wait to see what challenges and opportunities to learn are coming next.

Keeping it on the down low.

Blogging is always a bit of a gamble. Either people will visit and honestly care what I have to say... or they will completely ignore my disjointed rantings and find somewhere more meaningful to browse.

But over the last few years of serious photography, I've been feeling the need to write down the stories behind certain images I take. Not necessarily because I have anything particularly wise or poignant to share, but because I really just want to remember the background stories for my own sake.

Thus instead of blogging, I think I will call this "journaling." This site will be written for those with whom I share a common interest of learning and growing in our mutual photographic endeavors. But I also expect this site to primarily be a place for me to write down my experiences, for my own, selfish sake. If anyone else can benefit from those experiences, or perhaps just gain an entertaining read, then even better.

Either way, expect to see some dirty laundry aired, as I start sharing some of the 95% of images that are sorted out to find the 5% that are keepers.

So it begins...

Herb