Ice and mural
Feb. 4, 2009. Downtown alley.
Feb. 3, 2009. Three more inches.Innocuous snow scene
Feb. 2, 2009. The sidewalks are awful here, covered in ice and huge snow banks. Had to drive downtown to find a place to jog. Ended up running 2.2 miles around a corporate office building.
It got into the upper thirties today. Heat wave.
The Great White North
Our trip to Wisconsin was not so much a vacation, rather a tour of duty. And with 14 inches of snow on the ground, there wasn’t much to do. So I shot a lot of random stuff to entertain myself. In order: 1) Mendota Hills Wind Farm, Ill.; 2) A lamp shade that I’ve always admired; 3) Ron and the King — I shared a cold basement with them; 4) Purple Rain jukebox vinyl; 5) Old Style — I drink a lot of it when in Wisconsin; 6) Valu Time shampoo bottle (ridiculous).
We came home yesterday to lots of snow and ice in Indiana, and I’ve picked up a nasty cold (everyone was sick up there). It’s a bad time to have started a workout schedule. I did manage to run twice in Wisconsin — I found a park where the sidewalks had been plowed, and I had it all to myself. I’d never before ran in what the locals call “zero weather,” but I was amazed at how warm I felt after the first five minutes. It’s true what they say — you really are your own furnace. But those first five minutes? You freeze your arse off.
The trip up north wasn’t a total wash as I managed to bring back a few bottles of my most favorite beer in the world: New Glarus Brewing Co.’s Wisconsin Belgian Red, which is available only in the Badger State. I’m going to watch the Super Bowl tonight and down a few pints of it. I’m predicting the beer will be the highlight of the evening. Cards are gonna get stomped.
Full tilt
Z-man alerted me to this cool link: Tiltshiftmaker.com. Just upload a picture, and poof — instant tilt. This is about the easiest way to achieve this effect I’ve seen, and it’s incredibly true to the tilt properties. If you want more control, you can try another technique that employs gradient mapping and gaussian blur in PhotoShop.
Of course, using either of these methods would classify an image as an illustration, waters in which news photographs aren’t allowed to enter. If you have to “stay ethical” and abide by the NPPA code (meaning you’ll need to go the in-camera route), here is a site that explains how to build your own tilt lens using a sink plunger (because let’s face it, tilt-shift lenses are ridiculously expensive). Careful though – the particular plunger the article describes is difficult to find in the states, and if you do find one, it’s not going to be the sturdiest assembly and you’ll be constantly worried the thing might crash to the ground. I’ve heard of people using car CV boots for the “bellows” as well.
If you really want to achieve this effect in-camera with a reliable assembly and don’t have the dough for a tilt-shift lens, first forget about the shift. It’s a nice feature to have, but you don’t need it to make a tilt image. Now that you know that, go on eBay and buy a cheapo medium format Ukranian lens with a Pentacon Six mount. Medium what? Yes, the format of the lens has to be bigger than the format you’re shooting to provide ample coverage across the chip in your DSLR.
An 80mm Arsat lens runs about $60, and a 45mm is about $185 from Hartblei, makers of the hated lovable Kiev 60 camera. Also, pick up a Hartblei tilt adapter ($125) to fit your particular camera brand. Twist ‘em together and you’re ready to shoot guilt-free, unafraid of losing your coveted $110 NPPA magazine subscription membership. The main drawback is that even at 45mm, you probably won’t be able to shoot as wide as you’d like, and achieving a shot like the one above likely won’t be possible without a medium format fisheye (Hartblei does make an Arsat 30mm / f=3.5 Fish Eye for $249, but I’ve never tried it). And I’m not sure about what kind of result you’d get putting a fisheye on a tilt adapter. Also, the optics aren’t gorgeous, but they’re pretty decent considering the price. And shipping from Ukraine takes a month forever.
(Update: I went ahead and bought an Arsat 30mm — it looks great on the tilt adapter, and the curvature from the fisheye is a bonus.)
On a side note, the above picture was taken in the Seymour High School Gymnasium, the fourth largest high school gym in the world. Indiana has 9 of the top 10 largest high school gyms on the planet, so don’t ever doubt what they say about Hoosier Hysteria. It’s true, there is nothing else to do here. Except making meth, maybe.
Jazzed by idea of blurry basketball, I brought along old Uncle Tilty (a pet name for my own Ukranian tilt deal) to a boys game tonight. The results were interesting. See what you think:
Purses
Shot a bunch of mindless white background product stuff today. Definitely not my favorite thing to do, but at least the studio is nice and warm. The alternative was an assignment shooting frozen mail carriers. And it was funny hearing the girls’ thoughts on different purses. “Ugh, that’s not a purse, that’s a diaper bag,” and so on. I don’t care for any of them. Me, I’ve always been a Lowepro girl.
Okay, maybe the Puma.
Wrestling, not wraslin’
I don’t know much about (regular) wrestling. I just shoot whatever looks painful. Alas, all the metal folding chairs at these events are used only for sitting.
Total loss
Jan. 13, 2009. Was walking through a field in total darkness. Stepped in a huge ditch and fell face-first, landing hard on my camera. No apparent damage to the D2h – this thing just won’t die. Not a scratch on me either. The wind chill tonight was about -11 degrees, and I couldn’t wait to get across that corn field and warm up by the blaze.
Urban legend
Jan. 11, 2009. An elderly neighbor lady said the house across the street from me is haunted. I don’t believe in that stuff, but that neon blue light upstairs is eerie.
And that’s no bull
That last post made me think of this, and I just had to dig it out. Cowpie bingo. I remember waiting for this cow to poop. Ridiculous. Even Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels came to watch. This picture sums up what I thought of the event, and it actually got published. Here is the original cut: “TV photographer Dave XXXXX records an interesting angle of Snowball during the Cow Pie Bingo event Friday, July 16, 2004, at the Bartholomew County 4-H Fair. Snowball deposited her winning pie nearly two hours later, making one local resident $5,000 richer.”
In the scrum
TV Reporting 101 - Repeat the following phrases: “Why did you do it?” “Are you sorry for your crime?” “What do you have to say to the family?”
TV Camera 101 – Wear jeans. Get in the way. Point at stuff.
Contact sheet of death
Jan. 9, 2008. My Nikon D2h is on its death bed. Intermittent black frames and flashing “Err” are tell-tale signs of a camera that is over the hill. Last I checked, it’s at 337,000 actuactions. As a fellow news photographer put it: “Man, no camera should last that long.” The black frames, however, make covering a boring press conference a bit more interesting. Kind of like playing a picture lottery. Hey, sometimes you gotta make your own fun.
My guitar hero
Jan. 8, 2009. Adrianna has cancer, but you wouldn’t know it if it weren’t for her missing hair. She likes the Wii game “Guitar Hero,” and she can shred Mississippi Queen. Part of me wishes reporters would stop doing these stories – they are just so hard to cover. But then I wouldn’t meet such interesting people. Little kids really amaze me sometimes.
Kawlija, you poor ol’ wooden head
Jan. 7, 2009. Saw an abundance of wooden Indians at an antique mall today. It made me wonder: Do Native Americans have wooden busts of white people in their living rooms? Later, I made a big black transvestite smile when I called her “miss.” I think people should make wood carvings of trannies too. Heck, I’d buy one. I also had lunch with some serious bigwigs today, which meant I had to shave my winter beard and cut my hair this morning. It was a weird day. Not good, but better than normal.
Last one
Jan. 6, 2009. This is Charlie. He’s 94, and he has been making paintings of Native Americans since the 1940s. His dad knew Buffalo Bill. A stringer is writing a story about Charlie and his artwork, so I seated the man at his easel for a portrait. As I spoke with Charlie, he told me that his eyesight had recently gotten so bad that he could no longer paint the intricate details on this Ute Nation girl’s dress. Driving back to the office, I realized what he was saying: This is Charlie’s last painting.
First baby
It’s been slow. So slow, in fact, that we ran two new year’s baby stories. One for the local edition and one for a regional edition. On the up side, my desk is the cleanest it has ever been.
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