Change of Pace

Sister Cindy Smock preaches about the dangers of homosexuality, promiscuity and alcohol abuse on the Mel Carnahan quadrangle at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo., April 8, 2009. Smock and her husband Brother Jed frequently engage in lively debates with students when they bring their dramatic form of evangelical performance to the campus.

The latest photo challenge posed to us here in the heartland involved using the strobe again, this time as either the fill flash (to brighten up shadows cast by bright, mid-day sunshine) or to balance the light (as in a situation where subjects are located in a shaded interior and backlit by bright light from outdoors, coming in through the windows). I'd actually already gotten some practice with this second technique a couple of months ago when I did a shoot for the campus magazine, but fill flash was something I needed a bit more practice with. I actually really like the look of it, and the way it makes a subject just pop out at you from an image, but the professor pointed out that the technique can get old fast if it's overused and is best done with subtlety. I think I probably could have dialed down my flash even a bit more than I did for these shots, but then again, my subject wasn't exactly subtle herself.

With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I'd gotten a bit more context into the top photo because I just love it for its emotion. That darn bible (is that bad to say?) fell out of the frame for this one and you don't really get a sense that it takes place on a campus with a lot of students around.

And before I forget...an audio slideshow to critique in class before going out and making one of my own in a couple of weeks. This one sort of falls into a grey area somewhere between photojournalism, social commentary and art.
ROAD WORKS. by Antonin Kratochvil - based upon an interview by U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Jack Lewis.

I don't think I've ever claimed that I would never do a triathlon, I've just never felt any really compulsion to do one. As a weak swimmer and a road-bike-a-phobe (having had a frightening high-speed crash on one back in college), it just always seemed to make more sense to stick with what I know. I'm a runner. It's what I do.

Of course, this whole disclaimer rather predictably leads up to the fact that I've gone and signed up for a triathlon. I've fallen so far off the competitive training wagon at this point I have to find something to spice up the mix. This will not only get me back to exercising regularly in order not to waste the exorbitant entry fee, but it will also force me to cross-train and thus hopefully avoid getting injured by jumping back into things too aggressively.

The race itself (440 yd. swim/14 mi. bike/3 mi. run) is only about three weeks away at this point, so I'm not expecting any aerobic miracles to occur, but so far I'm up to almost 30-mile weeks with the running and I can flounder through the proscribed pool distance in about 10 and a half minutes. The biking however still needs some work. I've been putting in some time on the spinning bikes at the gym here, but I really need to pump up my tires and try covering the actual course. It's tempting to just do the ride on my mountain bike, but I think I should at least attempt to get the hang of my wobbly road bike before I give up and go that route.

Anyhoo, just wanted to mention that even though grad school through a wrench into my athletic identity, I am making some efforts to claw my way back from the abyss.

Sorry if the above makes you dizzy, I just thought it was fun. My final project crew and I braved inclement weather to road-trip up to St. Joseph, MO to cover their second annual Civil War reenactment this past weekend. It was an interesting experience, giving me flashbacks to my childhood in the capital of the Confederacy as well as my brother's college days at Gettysburg. Everyone was really nice to us, considering our non-period clothing and anachronistic camera equipment, but it was a shock to hear the frequency of the n-word coming out of the mouths of adult white men (as opposed to black teenage boys, which I've become grudgingly resigned to).

The attitudes towards women there were sometimes a bit alarming as well, but I found a nice crew of horsemen who 1. agreed to suspend the stream of race-based jokes 2. let me ride one of their horses and 3. suggested I ride into battle with them tucked into the back of their covered wagon and dressed as a boy.

I had mixed feelings towards a lot of the photographs I came away with, since I struggled to get workable light ratios (bright, white cloudy skies/dimly lit subjects in hats), but our three group members all took close to 2K photos each and we'll only need about fifty good ones for the final multimedia presentation, we should be okay.

All in all a soggy weekend, but a good learning experience and an overall success.

Meanwhile I'm up to comfortably running nine miles at well under nine minute pace. The swimming is coming along, well, swimmingly and the biking...well, like Meatloaf says, two out of three ain't bad.

Not my finest hour, I'm afraid. I intended to, and attempted to fulfill my multiple flash assignment out in St. Joseph last weekend, but I couldn't get my strobe units to play nicely with the checked-out D700 I was shooting with and I could only get one of them to go off at a time. I think I had one slaved to the master, but it was reacting to the pre-flash instead of the actual flash...I don't know, I still don't understand quite what happened. I'm planning on buying my own D700 in about a week though, so at some point I do need to figure out what exactly I wasn't doing correctly.

Columbia, Mo. resident Rachel Plourde finishes up her shift at the front desk of the Activity and Recreation Center (ARC) on West Ash Street, April 20, 2009. Plourde began working at the ARC three years ago at the suggestion of her uncle who also works there.

What I finally ended up with was a last ditch effort at the local recreation center, where I wasted my time photographing table tennis players for the not-yet-due blending assignment when I should have been photographing them with multiple strobes. By the time I thought to do this though, the fellows were packing up their paddles to head home and the recreation center was preparing to close up shop for the night.

Luckily the desk receptionist there was kind enough to let me surround her with flashes while she finished up her work...one in front of her, gelled with blue film to mimic the light of the computer monitor and another over her shoulder to light up her arm and hand and the back of the chair. It's not a thing of beauty, but the lighting technique does allow me to black out the cluttered background and create a late night feel when in reality, the light was a monstrous mix of fluorescent, tungsten and twilight.

I love blending. It's a hokey, gimmicky technique and it should only be used sparingly, but I can see it being my photographic crack. You slow down the shutter speed, shut down the aperture and flash at will at the fast moving subject of your choice. Or to mix it up, point your bad camera at a slow moving subject and shake it, shake it like a polaroid picture so the flash freezes them and leaves the background all woozy and streaky...all the better if there are a lot of lights to leave fun lines zig-zagging all over the place. Of course, much of this stuff could be done in Photoshop, but somehow it just seems more kosher when it's done in camera.

Lead singer Steve Sexton plays guitar with his rockabilly group, the Wildcat Daddies, on the sidewalk of 9th Street in Columbia, Mo., Thursday, April 16, 2009. Bandmembers say they are performing to protest the dissolution of the Twilight Festival, a local Thursday night tradition that featured live music and sidewalk sales by area businesses.

Ming Wang competes in a game of table tennis at the Columbia, Mo. Athletic and Recreation Center, April 20, 2009.

Participants in the St. Joseph Civil War Reenactment return to the battlefield in the evening to show of their 19th century dance skills, April 18, 2009.