it's my picture! :)

http://branford.patch.com/articles/hornets-basketball-seniors-get-send-off-and-graduated-students-having-success-at-the-college-level#photo-4960169

This is kind of exciting, and look - it actually has my name! This is Tucker, as you can see, and I guess it's his high school that ran the story/photo. It's a cute idea, a "where are they now" kind of thing.

it's been a looong week

It really has been a long week, a very long week, and it's not over. BUT... I made the new header for my blog, as you can see, and I like it :) I haven't made final decisions on all the pictures but for now it is done. Just one of the perks of having photoshop on my new computer :) it's so exciting! So anyways, this week was pretty much a research and redevelopment week in the project. Hopefully this weekend I will get the lights all figured out in the gym/pool and then next Thursday I believe I'm doing a diver and a basketball player, yay. That'll be a long day but oh well, I realized I don't have as much free time as I thought I did this semester. And that plus trying to coordinate with models' schedules is going to be wonderful. But it'll all work out, I'm convinced. I've decided that no longer really want to shoot in the studio though, the black background was going to be dull compared to the ones one the field/court/etc. So I'm going to try to do all of them "on location" now. Sadly, that means most of the outside ones have to wait till at least after spring break and I'm really hoping then the fields will be clean. It was funny because that's what I told Sean Sullivan, the new athletic director, when he asked if he could do anything to assist with this project. He said he's working on it though, so that's good news. And the models I have so far are being very agreeable and helpful which is more than I was expecting I guess. But there's a big difference between working "professionally" with someone and being friends with someone so we'll see if I can accomplish both. That's my personal goal for the semester, to be confident as a photographer and to branch out. I need to be more comfortable with directing models (for this project) and I need to believe in myself more in general as a photographer. In addition, I'm hoping to become actual friends with the people I'm taking pictures of too. So I have a lot to do this semester as you can see :)

First Studio Portraits :)

Hi again! Twice in one week, that's definitely a change. So I have (almost) officially started my project for this semester. My idea is to take sports portraits, mostly of athletes at Clark, in the studio or hopefully on the court/field/etc that they play on. This Wednesday, I had my first actual athlete model, Joe, he's a cross country runner here at Clark. I had a bit of lighting help though from Frank and Michael, they showed me a few tricks and then I took some photos. I'm not really sure what I want at the moment, which is the problem. However, I'm trying to figure that out and in the meantime I'm just kind of going with it. So here are a few shots from Wednesday :) I attempted to show some different poses (or the same poses with different lighting) and then my favorites too I guess.

So these are just a few, I mean I only edited about 30 or so images out of the many I took. But this first session was about experimenting with lighting. So I am aware in some of these photos that the black background isn't actually behind him as I wanted but I'll figure that out later on. I just need to try different ways to light someone's face or body using the lights in the studio and various reflectors. But he was very patient and wonderful throughout the whole... I think it was around 2 hours. And it definitely gave me renewed hope in this whole experiment. However, at the same time, I still have a long way to go before I'll be really happy. Because while I can now adequately use the studio lights, I'm still very limited (both in the space itself and with the lights available). Ideally, I think I would like to take pictures on the court, field, in the pool, etc. However, that poses the problem of that lighting and finding a time when the space is available as well as the model and everything else. But it would add a lot more dimension to the images, make the more interesting and give me a bit more freedom in terms of poses. But who knows, I have a lot of ideas running through my head in general. Like if I were to put this in book form, if I had an action shot of the athlete on the right page and their portrait on the left. Or just in some way incorporate the two halves as a whole. It'll come to me eventually. What I'm trying to focus on now is coming up with ideas for poses and looking into how plausible location shooting would be. So until next time :)

I'm baaack!

Hiii! I've been feeling a bit inspired lately (and I've been missing this) so I decided I should start posting again. Plus, this semester is certainly going to be an interesting one. First of all, I'm still working for the athletic department and that is going great! Secondly, I have two pictures in the ARTSWorcester show this year (the same show my soccer was in last year)! The first one here is from Midnight Madness at Clark. And the second is of Karissa during the huge snowstorm we had at home over break - the night we got snowed in. This picture is obviously very out of the ordinary from my usual style, or at least what people are used to seeing in class and whatnot from me.

Lastly, this semester, I am embarking on a sports portraiture journey. That's going to be the interesting part, I'm still in the testing stage at the moment and it's proving to be much more frustrating than I had anticipated but hopefully I'll make the desired progress this week. I had never realized that studio lighting could be so difficult. But I have a decent list of athletes so far willing to pose (18ish I believe) and I am determined (as usual) to make it work. I mean, I've come to realize, when I started out taking action shots freshmen year with a film camera I felt the same frustration I'm feeling now and look at where I am at the moment with that. So I won't lose faith! And I intend to keep my blog updated throughout the process, which I'm sure will come together shortly, I already can't wait till Wednesday, haha. I've clearly been thinking about this too much lately.

That's all for now :)