More Dance
June 8th, 2008
Another photo from the Ohio University Spring Concert. I still don’t have any information about this concert, so I can’t tell you the title of the piece or the names of the dancers. I’m pretty sure about the dancers’ names, but I don’t like to put up incomplete credit info and not having the program greatly increases the chances for error. So I’ll leave it at a photo for now.
It’s been busy around here. My older daughter got married on Friday. I’m still in recovery mode today. But it was a great wedding and we all enjoyed the ceremony, the reception and the visits with friends and relatives. But father of the bride is a stressful and expensive role.
Now, tomorrow I have shoots at the studio with two traveling models. Have to be up early to get in there and get things set up. So maybe it’s back to normal after weeks of wedding preparations.
More Dance from Ohio University
June 3rd, 2008
This photo is from another Ohio University School of Dance concert last month. May is a busy time for dancers in Athens, Ohio. There’s the Senior Concert produced by and showcasing the senior dance majors and also the Spring Concert with both student and faculty choreography and dancing as well as work by visiting artists. This dance was part of the Spring Concert. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend any of the actual performances of this concert and therefore I don’t have a program to provide the title of the piece and the names of the choreographer and dancers.
I never photograph actual performances because I consider it rude and a distraction for the audience to have someone firing a camera throughout the concert. My photos are taken at technical and dress rehearsals.
I hope someone at OU will send me an electronic copy of the program for the Spring Concert. If that happens I’ll update with the proper credit information for this photo.
Primordium
May 30th, 2008
Here’s a photo from the Ohio University Senior Dance Concert that I photographed a couple weeks ago. The dance is called “Primordium.” Choreographer: Quiterie Gianina-Gabrielle Dancers: R. Eric Hill, Chelsea S. Goettge, Ryan Dick and Monica Pack Lighting Designer: Joshua Willett
Program note: Primordium: In embryology, an organ or tissue in its earliest developmental stage. Primordial cells are the first differentiated dividing cells in the fertilized ovum.
The senior concerts fulfill the capstone requirement for the BFA in Dance. The dances are original works choreographed by senior dance majors and are performed by seniors and other students in the School of Dance. The seniors are responsible for organizing and producing the concert including publicity, programs, costumes, sound and video. Some of them also stage manage the shows, design the lighting and handle the group’s finances.
It’s always a pleasure to be involved with the productions by these talented young people.
Remember
May 26th, 2008
It’s Memorial Day here. A day to remember those who have died in defense of this shining beacon of liberty known as The United States. It is not a day to honor veterans, even though it is often misrepresented as such, even by our current President, who can’t seem to get anything right. Veteran’s Day is in November. Today we should pause to remember those who gave their lives so we can enjoy our hot dogs and burgers at our cookouts this afternoon.
War, in all cases, is such a stupid waste of lives that we should all be working to make war a thing of the primitive past of humanity. But for all the waste of lives and tragedy they cause, wars have been a part of much progress. It took a war to establish this country on principles of individual liberty that were previously not even recognized as existing. It has taken wars to defend those liberties over the years. But we humans need to find better ways, civilized ways, to work out our differences and move forward with social progress. Maybe some day.
I took this second photo as my response to 9/11. I was seeing a lot of really bad flag photos around that time and I thought I could do a little better. I wanted it to express the mood of the country, saddened but patriotic.
9/11 was a huge tragedy which brought the sympathy and support of the entire world to the United States. It’s a second tragedy that our leaders squandered that sympathy on a senseless war that has done nothing but worsen the world situation and bred new terrorists. I look forward to a significant change in 2009 that, I hope, will mean fewer brave Americans will have to sacrifice their lives in service to their country.
Passing by
May 21st, 2008
Another from Dario Vaccaro’s dance, “Segiuti.” That’s Dario in front, along with dancers Christine Freeman on the right and Rosanne Ma in the back left.
I’ve photographed two dance concerts at Ohio University in the past week. I hope to get those photos edited in the next couple days and start posting some of them. But I also have a guest bedroom that I’m trying to get painted before family arrives for my daughter’s wedding the first weekend in June…and time seems to be slipping away.
But, more dance photos and some new figure work will be coming here soon. Stay tuned.
World turned upside down
May 17th, 2008
Here’s another photo of Dario and Heidi from “Segiuti.”
And, I have to take some of it back. Some of what I said about the new TTL exposure flashes, specifically, my new Nikon SB-600. I shot the wedding this afternoon. I shot the pre-ceremony and post-ceremony group shots with one of my old Vivitar 283s using this setup which allows me to rotate the camera from horizontal to vertical while keeping the flash at the top. The flash is connected to the camera with an SC-17 hot shoe cable. The camera was set on manual and I could control the shutter speed to provide a proper exposure for the stained glass windows in the background while the flash gave perfect exposures to the bridal party in the foreground. Here’s a sample. I didn’t even need to adjust levels in photoshop for this…it’s right out of the camera except for some minor cropping:
Then I went to the reception and switched to the SB-600 directly on the camera’s hot shoe. I used a Sto-Fen diffuser on the flash for all the photos at the reception, sometimes direct and sometimes tilted up for bounce. The value of the TTL flash setup in that situation, which involved moving from a dark indoor hall to a sunlit outdoor deck to an enclosed tent, was immediately obvious. I could just leave the whole setup on Program TTL flash and the exposures were pretty accurate. I did have to use exposure compensation ranging from -.3 to -1 in order to keep the white wedding gown and men’s white shirts from blowing out, but that was easy to do. This would have been a much bigger problem with the 283 and would have required a lot of adjustment as I moved from one situation to another…with some test shots to establish a correct exposure for each scene…it would have taken a lot of time and thought…not things that go well with doing a good job of taking photos of a wedding reception. So I’m pretty happy with the capabilities of that new SB-600 and TTL exposure.
Outside:
In the tent:
Please remember that I’m not a wedding photographer. I only do this for friends. My style of shooting is probably pretty much stuck in the 1980s which was about when I stopped shooting things like this for money.
Segiuti (To continue on)
May 16th, 2008
I was in New York City a couple weeks ago to shoot a dance concert. This is the first of several photos I’ll be posting from that concert. The choreographer is Dario Vaccaro, a very talented dancer and choreographer who I met at Lois Greenfield’s studio in December. The name of the dance is the subject of this post, Segiuti. That’s Dario in the photo along with Heidi L. Kershaw, another very talented dancer.
The performance was at the Dicapo Theater on the east side of Manhattan. I’ve delayed this post because I was waiting to hear from Dario. Turns out he had taken off for Puerto Rico right after the concert and did not have internet access there. He tells me his company, the Dario Vaccaro Dance Project, will probably be doing a lot of performing in Puerto Rico in the future.
Whatever he does and wherever he goes, I’m confident Dario will be very successful in the world of dance. His talent is amazing.
I’ll post more photos from the concert soon. For now, here are a few words from the program about the meaning of this dance:
“Seguiti reveals the moments when change becomes a necessity. The dancers disengage themselves from reality to unveil the lonely truth of desire.”
Life continues to be very busy. This week I had the great pleasure to work with Unbearable Lightness and RJ Berry when they both came here for two days of shooting. One of those days involved an “oh dark thirty” drive across the state to shoot at dawn at one of my favorite locations…one of the most beautiful locations in Ohio. I’ll share something from that shoot soon.
This evening I’ll be attending the rehearsal for the wedding I’m photographing tomorrow. Then I’ll run in to Dayton for an opening of a show where some of my work is hanging. Wedding tomorrow, Sunday back to Athens to watch the lighting rehearsal for another dance concert, then Monday back there to shoot the concert. I might get to catch my breath then for a day or two.
And, one more technical comment. The Sto-Fen flash diffuser for a Nikon SB-25 flash will fit perfectly on a Vivitar 283. So I’m all set with strobes for the wedding. The 283 will be the primary flash with the new SB-600 as a backup. I may put the SB-600 on and use its TTL exposure mode for the reception photos…or not…
Ode to the 283
May 11th, 2008
Meanwhile, for those of you still reading…
I have a wedding to shoot this Saturday. Now, mind you, I don’t shoot weddings. I used to. Once upon a time I had an “anything for a buck” strip mall photo studio. I shot lots of weddings. I shot seniors, families, commercial catalog photos, model portfolios…like I said, anything for a buck. When I closed that studio I swore I’d never do retail again. And I haven’t.
But every once in a while someone I like or am related to…or both…asks me to do their wedding photos. I usually say yes. I don’t charge anything to do it. I have to like them that well or I won’t do it.
It’s been a while since I did a wedding. In the old days I always took studio strobes to do the group photos. And I always worked with an assistant. These days there is no assistant and I’ve officially declared myself too old to drag all that stuff around at a wedding. So it’s going to be on-camera flash…well, on bracket flash…I use a bracket that positions the strobe a little higher and allows me to rotate the camera from horizontal to vertical while keeping the flash in place above the camera.
These days I don’t use flashes outside the studio much at all. When I’m out shooting in nature I’m not really interested in trying to force the light into some pre-conceived idea of what it should be. I’m much more interested in seeing what the light is really doing and seeing what sort of photos I can make that take advantage of that light. Sometimes this approach works very well, sometimes it fails totally. That’s a fine approach for art photos, in my opinion, but not so much for a wedding. Failure is not an option.
So I started digging around in the equipment cabinet for my shoe-mount strobe stuff. Like most pros from my generation, I have used Vivitar 283 flashes a lot. I still have two of them. But, they are getting a little ragged. One only works with a hot shoe. The other only works with a sync cord. I was not feeling real comfortable about their reliability for this wedding. After all, they are 25-30 years old…might even go back to college…I don’t really remember when I bought these two.
So, I naively thought I’d just go buy a new one…or if the 283 wasn’t available, something similar. HA! How can it be that there are no simple, non-dedicated electronic flashes available today?
I ended up buying a Nikon SB-600. It’s a nice little flash. It costs way too much money. Its manual is thicker than my camera’s manual, and harder to understand. It does all kinds of neat lighting tricks that I’ll never use and could care less about. The good old 283 always…yes, always…gave a perfect exposure. It didn’t have to look at the film plane and communicate 47 different ways to do it. The sensor on the flash was dead on accurate. And I could just set the shutter speed I wanted to allow ambient light to register and improve the look of the photos.
I hate Nikon’s dedicated strobes. I have an SB-25 that has never…yes, never…worked accurately. And it cost about 4 times what a 283 cost. And until today I’d never even been able to get it to fire on my D200. Finally figured that out as I was playing with all this stuff today.
Now I have this new dedicated flash and I think I’ve figured out how to turn off most of the fancy crap on it so I can control what’s happening without being a computer programmer. Of course I had to pay an extra $100 just for a stinking cable to hook it up to my 30-year-old Quantum Battery 1. I think that’s more than I paid for the battery. Another old piece of gear that has never missed a beat. But the adapter doesn’t fit well into the SB-600 battery compartment and the velcro that came with it wasn’t doing the job of holding the contacts in place…so now it has a couple heavy rubber bands wrapped around it to hold all that together. It doesn’t look like there’s any acceptable way to carve a notch in the battery compartment door to let the door close and the power cable come out, like I was able to do with the good old Vivitar 283s.
After all that, I think I’m still going to use a 283 for the wedding and just keep the fancy new flash as a backup in case it finally breaks. I’ve been looking around and it seems that some places are still selling the Vivitar 285, which was also a good strobe, though not legendary like the 283. But I’ve been reading that the new units that are still around seem to be poorly made and there is no support from Vivitar which has stopped making flashes. I see a few other odd little non-dedicated flashes are available, but even if I could get a Quantum cable for them, it seems silly to buy a $100 cable to power a $40 flash unit. So I guess eventually I’m going to have to try to read that SB-600 manual…or more likely hunt up a third-party manual, since Nikon can’t seem to write anything about their cameras and flashes that isn’t totally incomprehensible.
OK…done ranting for now. That photo is the entire kit and kaboodle (shot with the built-in flash on my D200)…I’ll probably drag it all to the wedding so I have options when things break. (Yes, when, not if.)
Before and After
May 9th, 2008
I’d been growing my hair and beard long for the past year. This was the longest they had been since I left college back in the 70s (seems like there was more on top back then, though…don’t know what that’s about). I was going for an “eccentric artist” look, but it was tending more toward “unabomber,” I’m afraid. I was getting a little tired of seeing fear in stranger’s eyes when I passed them on the street. Then I did an outdoor shoot early this week. Between the heat and the wind blowing my hair around, I knew it was time for a change. I don’t think that career as a mall santa was really going to work out anyway.
So I went to the barber and told him to just leave an inch of hair. Now it’s shorter than it has been since the army cut all my hippy hair off in 1971. I like the result. My wife, not so much. But it grows. I think this is pretty much the look I’ll be keeping for a while, though. I like the lack of required maintenance.
I’ll get back to posting nudes and dance photos soon. Sorry for the less attractive detour. But you may have to read a photo-technical rant first. Just fair warning.
Long week
May 3rd, 2008
It’s been not quite a week since I got back home from my trip to NYC to photograph a dance production. In that time I’ve been editing those dance photos, just about full time. Today I finally finished. After the editing there were just about 1,000 photos to be photoshopped and prepared for uploading. As of about an hour ago they are all on line, ready for the choreographer to review. Once he gives his approval I’ll post the link just in case some of you want to go wade through that many dance photos. I’ll probably post a few of my favorites here too, to save you that trouble.
