le 30 janvier 2005
During one of the most amazing Penn State weekends ever, I hung out with the Rohaly Brothers Derek and Drew. I can't remember Drew and I ever doing so much in one weekend. During our time together, I took a few hundred pictures and over an hour of video footage among our three cameras. What a weekend it was.
This is one of my favorite shots from the weekend. Derek was at Penn State to audition for the school of music here. After his audition, he and Drew met me at the IST Building where I was photographing the Cocoa workshop. I insisted that Derek take out his trumpet and blast it on the large bridge of the IST Building. I got him to blair "charge!" a few times before we went to lunch together. This was just the beginning of our adventures that day.
le 23 janvier 2005
My latest camera had just arrived in the mail a couple days before I took this picture. I barely had time to play with it because of classes and whatnot. Once the weekend came, I went to town. My roommate had left for the weekend, so it was just me. I set up a tripod and I was experimenting with taking pictures of things with unusual light sources.
At one point, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror while I was working with this lava lamp, and it looked like it had the potential to be a pretty cool shot. So I set the timer on my second camera, and resumed taking pictures with my new camera. So this is me, all a lone in the dark, taking pictures on a Saturday night. Everyone seems to think I took this picture with a mirror. Nope. It was inspired by the mirror though. How vein!
le 17 janvier 2005
The line art on US paper currency is a world of its own. There are so many ridiculously minute details that make up the mundane designs on a paper bill. If you take a close look at the larger version of this image, you can make out the very, very small "fifty"'s that have been worked into the patterned border going down the left side of the bill. It's also interesting to see how the ink that was used to print the bill has actually bled quite a bit into the paper's surface.
le 9 janvier 2005
My Dad has had this lock in his possession since he was a little boy. He doesn't remember what it is from or how it came into his possession. I know that I can remember seeing this lock lingering around his workshop since I was a wee little guy. For as long as I or my Dad can remember, he's never had the key to go along with it. It's a pretty solid, weighty lock. "They don't make 'em like that anymore," my Dad said after handing it to me hoping that I might be able to use it as an interesting photographic subject.
I found all the images of this lock to be quite striking. What makes it so, must be the heavy lettering molded across the face of the lock. They provided beautiful, hard shadows across its face, as did the deep inset framing "YALE." I love the weathered, embattled skin of this lock. It looks its age, and it's all the more beautiful because of it. The lighting prevents you from realizing the depth of this object with the left side disappearing into the background and the hard right edge positioned away from the lens and into the light.
To truly appreciate the detail in this photo, you must click on it to view the enlarged version.
"MADE IN USA"
le 8 janvier 2005
Here's another interesting vantage point on the chess pieces. Three pawns at various distances. I particularly like the hard, defined line the front-most pawn creates against the pawn on the left. They look so cold and lifeless, almost alien. Something about the way the pawns are all lit up, this one in front most of all - close up it looks as if it were cut out from another picture and pasted on top of another. It doesn't look like a real picture, and I think that means I've done a good job.
le 7 janvier 2005
I went rummaging through my Dad's workshop because he has loads of old mechanical parts from teletypes, machines, and computers. Found some awesome items like this plume of wire contacts. It's ridiculous how small they were until I took this picture of them. Each metal contact was about half the size of a fingernail. I love the way the wires arc around the right side and bring the contacts into focus. The way the wires bend and inter-twine give them a sense of motion. If this were put into motion, I'd expect to see them writhing around.
le 6 janvier 2005
I took this picture on a very gloomy day in West Virginia. The rain had just begun to drizzle, but I took interest in the emblem on the front of this Mercedes Benz parked in the street. I never realized how cool the emblem is on the front of Mercedes. I like the color. It's pretty simple and classy. It's not streamlined down to a few sleek lines to look flashy and new. You can see a row of houses from across the street being reflected in the lower left of the image. I used two masks on this image, one desaturation mask and another for adjusting the hue, saturation, and lightness of individual colors.
le 3 janvier 2005
The glass chess set I photographed had pieces made of frosted glass and clear glass. The clear pieces in this image feel colder like ice than the frosted pieces do in the previous two images. The knight in particular looks like it was sculpted out of ice. I took this same exact shot a dozen times with different pieces in the background and at different distances and in various numbers. This image, and one in which only the knight and bishop are visible, turned out best.
Normally these pieces would be reflecting everything that appears behind that through their faces, but they're positioned in such a way that you cannot see anything refracted through their faces. That's what is great about these pieces. They don't reflect back what is in front of them, so when I take a tight photo of them, my camera and hands to not show up in the picture like they do on so many other shiney or reflective surfaces I've tried to capture. The soft back edge of the chess board fading into the black background looks awesome, if I do say so!
le 2 janvier 2005
The light was just right so that the pawns would disappear into the distance. It's almost impossible to see the last pawn in the front row here. If you think you can see the last one without squinting or moving closer to the computer screen, then you aren't seeing the one I'm talking about. Yes, it's that dark - barely a shadow in the background. You should see 6 pawns of the front line and one bishop in back. I love the way each pawn is progressively darker and less defined. The halo on top of each pawn looks surreal, almost as if the image was computer generated. The board looks like it's illuminated, and the pawns look as if they are illuminated internally. The bishop appears to echo the shape between the two closest pawns in the picture. Pretty cool.
le 1 janvier 2005
I found this old glass chess set in the basement, and I knew it would be perfect for capturing since every aspect of it is either translucent, frosted, or reflective! I love the way the reflection of the pieces is checkered by the squares of the board, and the high contrast between the pieces and the pitch black background.
I accomplished this shot by turning out all the lights except for one desk lamp, which I laid on its side off to the left behind the pieces, facing towards my right hand in front of the pieces. This gives the pieces a haloed effect generously accenting their edges. The angle of the light prevented the frosted board squares from reflecting too much light, which is what allowed for such strong reflections of the pieces off the board. The room was so dark behind the pieces that no backdrop was needed for this shot. ...and yes, it took incessant dusting as I shot the photos to keep dust from appearing on every part of the class subjects.