Classroom blowout!
April 15, 2009. This is Joel, a super swell guy and kick-ass photojournalist. I spoke at his class tonight, and this is a shot I snagged of him as I rambled on about gettin’ sneaky with a remote trigger and a camera innocently slung over one shoulder. Thanks for having me! Sorry about all the cuss words.
Speaking
I’m speaking at a photojournalism class tomorrow, and I’m using my blog as a jumping off point. I’ll use these images to touch on sports, spot news, general news and features. I’ll also talk about pressers and the pj’s favorite — the shot the paper won’t publish. Then I’m going to wing it. God help us.
Freemason
April 14, 2009. A former Worshipful Master. Adding to my collection of interesting stuff on peoples’ walls.
Gilbert is gone
I was saddened to come to work today and see this man’s obituary photo in the toning basket. Above is a frame from a video I did on Gilbert a little over a year ago. I feel sorry for his poor sweet mother, who said this: “If I had had the choice, would I have given birth to Gilbert? The thought chills my soul. Without Gil, I would never have known what perfect love is.”
Goodbye, Gil.
Looking up, looking down
April 13, 2009. Death Valley. My last assignment was a bust. Heading back to the paper, this crooked tree and swampy grove caught my eye. I usually don’t shoot many nature shots, but lately it’s been scratching an itch. I can’t describe it. I just like spring I guess.
Quackers!
A family sent in a picture of their dog with a bunch of baby ducks. I thought it was pretty funny, so I followed up by doing a quick video about it. Those ducks were fast! So fast, in fact, that my resulting footage was pretty terrible (I shoot video like how I imagine a crackhead would do it). But it gave me an excuse to use the old timey silent movie treatment, which I’ve been wanting to do. This isn’t exactly journalism, but it’s cute. And no massive head wounds, so I’m sure the eds will love it.
Duck tape
April 11, 2009. Enterprise video. (Git it? Duck tape? Duck TAPE? Bwah-ha-ha!) The top and bottom images are frame grabs from the Canon XH-A1 — the other is a plain old still from the D3. I feel kind of weird dodging and burning stills pulled from video footage (not to mention making them grayscale), but they need all the help they can get. They’re so… brittle.
Let it burn
I’m regretting it a little that I made the last-minute decision to change my wrestling documentary from black and white back to color. And, because the video recently passed 1,000 “plays” (which is a lame landmark, yes, but come on), I’ve re-imagined a 1:45 trailer for it using some of the strangest moments. Part of me wants to go back and do a complete edit overhaul. The documentary has its warts, and it’s sometimes hard to watch, but I think it’s the best story I’ve ever told.
Stage right
Stagecraft room floor. I think it would be wicked awesome to have a floor like this at home, but I don’t know if I could convince my better half.
Sports
Early spring sports aren’t very exciting, so I’m relatively happy when I get something slightly different. This shot is no prizewinning hog, and some days I think newspapers are killing my creativity… And I don’t know where I was going with this.
Update: I had a message this morning from this girl’s father. He said everyone really liked the picture, and I believe he may have ordered a reprint. Shucks, that’s a nice way to start the day.
Supper
April 7, 2009. Assignment at Texas Roadhouse. I used to have a phobia of taking pictures around people when they were eating. I think I’m slowly getting over that fear, but it continues to make me ill when I see a still of food going down the hatch. It just looks so barbaric. Anyway, the little one in the back reminded me of myself as a boy. He smiled like that in every single picture I took at that table. Not one blink.
Neutral Milk Hotel
April 3, 2009. A fan, an air conditioner and an Aristocrat pear. If the band Neutral Milk Hotel ever got back together and made a self-titled EP, I think this would make a good album cover. That is, of course, if they wanted to go the literal route. I can dream, right? Man, I miss that buzz sound.
That old camera smell
Behold the Minolta X-370! Today is the tenth anniversary of the day I got into this business — April Fool’s Day, 1999 — and this is the camera I started out with (minus the motor drive – I added that later). In honor of the occasion, I’ll be toting my old gear to some of my assignments this week and burning a few images onto emulsion. The camera already had some mystery film inside it (?!), so when it’s spent I’m planning to load a roll of Tri-X 400 that’s been sitting on my desk for I don’t know how long (and that ought to appease Z-man). My boss caught wind of what I was doing and called me a masochist.
Nope. Just an April Fool.
This was actually my dad’s camera, but I don’t believe he ever used it. I still remember where I was standing when I heard the announcement that my father had won it in a raffle. I must have been eight or nine years old. I can’t be sure, but I believe I had to go claim it for him – I vaguely recall the box being handed to me. Growing up, this was known in my family as “the good camera,” and you needed to have a damn good reason to use it. I guess no one ever had a good reason, because it was still in mint condition when I hauled it off to college where I would learn to become a widely acclaimed screenwriter…
Bonk!
Anyway, if anything comes out worth sharing I’ll post it here. Until then, here are a few shots I made with the old girl in ‘99 at The GDN. I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but I was having a blast.
That new camera smell
March 31, 2009. The D3 is here! Everyone in the photo department is beaming like we had a baby or something. This camera is amazing.
Running Three
Indulge me for a moment while I refer to myself in the third person: Today, 3/30, Andrew Laker, who is 33 years old, ran three miles – a feat he hasn’t accomplished since 1993. Okay, back to first person. I know it’s not that big of a deal. People run much farther than that every day. But considering I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 11 years (a third of my life), I feel like I just scaled Mt. Everest.
Many thanks to my pal Brittanie, who got me on the right track by telling me about the Garmin Forerunner 205 GPS watch and the Couch to 5k training program. Also, much love to my wife Amy for buying me the watch for my birthday and for putting up with all of my moans and groans and weird new runner speak.
More coincidental threes: It was 37 degrees when I began my workout, I traveled .33 miles in my 5 minute warmup walk, and the total time of my workout came to 33:53 (yes, I’m a tortoise). And hey! – it’s currently 3:23 p.m. Whew! Think I’ll go watch some Three’s Company and throw back a few beers.
Video on pause
March 27, 2009. Was walking back to the office following a video shoot and decided to let the camera roll for a while. Here is a composition I made while strolling down an alley.
Members of the Indiana News Photographers Association recently voted overwhelmingly that video frames are “not photojournalistically equal” to still frames, and were therefore denied entry in this year’s annual contest. I’m still scratching my head on that one, wishing voters had been able to provide explanations as to why they felt that way. The best I can figure is this: Some people feel that video grabs have some sort of unfair advantage over images made with a still camera.
As someone who has to shoot video, I can say without a doubt that video frames are at a huge disadvantage to stills. High definition video has far less resolution and color space than that of still cameras. A smaller chip means the depth of field is harder to control. And for us Canon XH-A1 shooters, we have the added grief of shooting with one fairly slow variable aperture lens (and one lens is all you get). Don’t get me started on the noise at higher gains. Look Ma, no flash! Add to that the totally different styles in shooting – you shoot a LOT of “nothing” with video – and you’ve got a big ugly camera with major handicaps. The only thing HD video has going for it are the 30 frames per second. So I have to ask: If still cameras can fire off 8 frames per second, at what frame rate does shooting become “not photojournalistically equal?” Nine? Sixteen maybe? Casio is making hybrid cameras capable of shooting more than 1,000 frames per second.
When 35mm film became popular in the 1960s, some photojournalists shooting larger formats surely thought that a roll of 36 frames was an unfair advantage. The 135 format, however, could not produce the detail enjoyed by, say, a 4×5 Pacemaker Crown Graphic. I think the current issue is similar, and time will tell how and when the lines blur between video and still cameras. A few years ago David Leeson, formerly of the Dallas Morning News and a big proponent of pulling stills from video, forecasted a day when a video frame wins the Pulitzer. While I don’t agree that photographers should use video cameras for gathering stills simply because they can, I think some day we will see a Pulitzer pulled from footage. When it comes down to it, getting the shot is getting the shot. Who cares where it comes from? Saying one method of photojournalism is superior to the other is nothing short of snobbery.
Oh yeah – and those digital stills you’ve been shooting since film went the way of the typewriter? Dudes, those are video frames. Where do you think CCD chips came from? Video cameras!
Don’t get me wrong – I hate trying to pull stills from video. Know what I hate more? Dumbass photographers.
