While covering an Ellen Allien techno concert at B-Side in Coventry, a fellow photographer (didn’t catch his name – but I think he goes to Case) told me about a cool technique he likes to use. The idea is this (for a perfectly dark room with a few small intense but discrete light sources):

• Set your camera to manual exposure
• Set the ISO to 100 for ultimate sharpness
• Set the shutter speed to more than 2 seconds
• Adjust your flashes output manually to get an aperture more than 5.6-ish
• Focus on your subject (and then I usually set it to manual focus so it does not hunt)
• While shooting the picture, optionally purposefully move the camera and then manually fire the flash at your subject

The goal is to either use the available motion in the light sources/subject to create a blurring “light trace” and then to manually fire the flash which you hold in your hand to “stop motion.” If done correctly, the results can be very interesting and beautiful:

Yes, I survived Amsterdam. It’s been awhile since I last posted on here so here is the quick 2-minute summary. Amsterdam was a blast. I learned much more than I even expected to learn about the Netherland’s drug policies, palliative care issues, and met many new friends. I know this previous single sentence is a vast underwhelming summary, but at least I have some awesome pictures of the Netherlands in the gallery to tell the tale.

Getting adjusted to the time difference wasn’t horrible but I was definitely a bit hazy the week after I got back. All the work I should have been doing over spring break was dumped on me when I got back. It wasn’t pretty.

All is not horrible and I got quite a bit of good news this week. My pictures of Rockwell Automation and GE Lighting for the Case Alumni Association appeared on the front cover of their Spring 2007 – vol 19 – no. 1 magazine and throughout the articles. This magazine is sent out to all Case alumni!

Also in photography news, one of my photos of artwork from the Huichol Sierra region in Mexico was published in the student textbook “Anthropology – the Human Challenge” version 12e by Haviland, Prins, Walrath, and McBride (ISBN 978-0-495-09559-0). You can see my photo on page 585 in the article on “Peyote Art: Devine Visions among the Huichol.” They sent me a copy of the textbook and it’s totally cool to see my photo with my name next to it in a textbook!

Finally, I am working with FrameMedia.com on developing an RSS Photo Slideshow screensaver. They are creating a website which delivers image content to digital picture frames. They allow users to set up RSS Feeds based on news services and their own photos. Of course, this idea is very similar to the http://photos.case.edu project that Andrew Witte and I worked on. I updated the screensaver for their purposes and I’m hoping they like it.

Of course, one of the most exciting photo shoots was covering the movie premier of Perfect Stranger at Valley View Cinema where Halle Berry and Giovanni Ribisi made an appearance. I’m not a big fan of paparazzi, but I had a fun time – it’s sort of like a mosh-pit with a purpose. I met some other photographers, including Leslie who is a photojournalist from Kent State. We had a fun time hanging with the “pros” and sneaking her into the theater. The movie wasn’t so great, but I have a very fun evening.

Oh, and school. I’m toiling away on my master’s project. I have a lot on my plate, but I feel I’m still on schedule. I just have a lot of work ahead of me and need to make sure I keep at it.

Tomorrow I am heading to Amsterdam to study health policy over spring break with a number of other Case students. I received an email today from an employee working at a photo store in Holland asking if they could use a picture of mine in their store publication. I don’t think they were expecting me to trade the picture for in-store credit, but they’re going to try to hook me up with a discounted B+W 72mm UV filter if I stop in their store in Rotterdam. Sweet deal.

I need the filter for my new Canon 35mm f/1.4L lens. Oh baby, what a fine lens. This is my first L-series prime lens and…wow. This is one sharp lens. I picked it up used from a guy on FredMiranda.com. Normally, I use a 24-70L as my walk around lens, however, the clarity on this lens is so impressive that I might start to try to use this lens instead. Having the zoom is certainly a major convenience, but I really want to get that extra sharpness in my shots and I know this lens can deliver. I’ll see how it goes in Amsterdam – expect plenty of shots.

As you might have noticed, I recently changed my website around a little. Aside from the new banner navigation image, I changed around the flash intro page that I wrote about before.

I really wanted to have the flash embedded seamlessly into my website’s theme. Before, the flash page was completely disjoint and the style didn’t look like anything on the rest of the website. It was totally unprofessional and a total hack job, but it worked.

I ended up using the Kimili Flash Embed plugin to embed the AutoViewer flash into a WordPress page. I then set this page in WordPress to be the default page by going to Options, Reading, Front Page = the page I just made.

I then moved the XML file (gallerydata.xml) and images folder that AutoViewer looks for into the root directory – done! Doesn’t it look beautiful?

PS – If you don’t want your new flash intro wordpress page to show up in the navigation menu, you might want to check out this quick WordPress hack for removing pages from the navigation menu. Simply add an &exclude to the php function and insert the Page ID numbers separated by commas you wish to exclude from showing.

I received the best 7am phone call ever on Tuesday morning. A lady from IBM India told me that they were accepting me into the Extreme Blue program in Bangalore, India. This is excellent news because it means that they will cover my housing and flight costs, whereas before I would be on my own. I was pretty worried about my housing situation (because I really had none), so this definitely will make things much easier in India. Also, the Extreme Blue projects are always very interesting and involve cutting edge technology. I know I was very excited before I got into Extreme Blue India, but now I am even more excited.

I still am waiting on hearing more details about what type of project I will be working on. I am also a little worried that I will be either arriving late or leaving early. Hopefully the details will come soon and I’ll figure these issues out as soon as possible.