Jiame Sr Robles, American Hero

For an assignment last spring semester, we had to photograph one of our classmates for our portrait class. I was starting to get to know Jiame at this point, and we became good friends. I wanted to photograph Jiame in a way that one could look at him and know exactly who he was. As you can see in the image, Jiame is a patriot, serving in the Special Forces from 1981 to 1995. I desired to show that Jiame has seen a lot in his life as a soldier, things that I could not begin to try to understand. I am honored to have a friend like Jiame, and we are honored as a country to have people like him who have fought for our freedom.

Red Shelby Mustang

This image was the result of many backup plans. In successful photography, I am learning that it is held together by the glue of backup plans. Last spring semester, we were given the assignment to do a window lit photograph. In my true nature of shooting for the moon, I ended somewhere in a cow pie. Originally, my idea was to photograph a piolet with his plane in a hanger, while the warm evening sun was illuminating him. A sort of romanticized image of aviation. Though, it was not how things panned out. After the piolet back out on me, I was left to come up with other ideas. Long story short, I did not get a window lit image. However, I did get this image of this Shelby GT Mustang, with its racing stripes. It almost was an unsuccessful night, until this Mustang rolled up.

Portraits

           

Angela Sloan poses for me to have her photograph taking for the school magazine. For an assignment my class has been given the jobs of doing some of the portraits for the Randolph Community College magazine. I am learning that portraits can be a fun relaxing form of photography. It allows me as the photographer to get to know the subject on a somewhat personal level. The fun comes in trying to to capture them that reflect who that person is, kind of like Arnold Newman, the greatest environmental portrait photographer in my opinion. Also it can be fun to be the light shaper, like setting the mood.

"I fight with my camera" - Charles Moore

          This week was the most eventful week I have had in a very long time, possibly in my entire life. Humanity is a funny creature, possibly the most unpredictable creature to walk the face of the earth. Maybe just because of the things that we as humans are capable of doing. We can build each other up and we can tear each other down. My calling is to tell stories through images that otherwise could not be told any other way. This week has been an attention-grabbing week for our state. First was the presidential candidate, Donald Trump, who came to High Point University on Tuesday for a rally.

            Three of my classmates and I went to High Point Tuesday morning and after a media bus and security checkpoint, we were denied access to the rally. However, after walking around campus we found a group that was trying to counteract Trumps hate with love. This body of university students gathered and voiced their opinions with an open mic setting. Lastly, closing with the song “Imagine” by John Lennon. As I hummed and sung along with it in my head I just watched how this group just laid aside their differences and the hatred and came to a commonality, to show love, not hate. Though my views might be different than most of the participants, it was heart warming to see such friendship and love in a crowd that large. On the contrary, I was unaware what was going on in Charlotte.

            I didn’t find out about the shooting of Keith Scott till Wednesday morning. Immediately as soon as I saw my photojournalism instructor, Jay Capers, I asked: “would it be worth going?” After he explained the magnitude of what was possible to come of this, a classmate and I decided that we were going to go and document what unfolded.

Pulling into Charlotte that evening the sunlight hit the tops of the towers as the sun began to beautiful city, leaving nothing but destruction and hatred behind. Tear gas filled the streets as revulsion came from the mouths of rioters and unity of protesters as they voiced their opinions.
set. It almost had a cinematic look to it. I don’t think anyone could have predicted the chaos that was about to come in this city. Protestors lined the sidewalks getting denser as we were reaching closer to Marshall Park where protesters would start their march. Everything started peacefully and then the crowd started marching to a church. However, a group split off and we followed them, they marched to the Charlotte police department. Here they pounded on the front doors demanding “justice” by chanting, “If we don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace.” Cheers abruptly rang out as they brought down the American Flag and had it resting on the ground to show humiliation to this great nation. And from there the chaos unfolded very rapidly. As the group went further into the heart of this

Like I said earlier I am fascinated with all that the human race is capable of. In the aspect that we can encourage and build each other up or we can build walls and attempt to destroy others. The human race is a powerful creature we are capable of accomplishing magnificent things and also terrible things. Which one will you choose to do? 

Deep Rooted Legacy

This is a portrait that I did last summer of a man named Wade Foust. Mr. Foust owns a farm in Liberty North Carolina, there he raises chickens and cows. He also has produce such as corn, tobacco and beans. I did a book on Mr. Foust and his family titled Deep Rooted Legacy because the Legacy that Mr. Wade along with his wife Mrs. Judy have implanted into there two boys. This book was important to me because this same legacy has shaped the agricultural landscape. There is something that goes much deeper than the vary roots that these farmers plant it goes through many generations. This Legacy of hard work Blood Sweat and Tears and nothing in life is free you have to work for it is a legacy that we should hold true to. That nothing less than hard work will get you anywhere in life. I am still grateful to the Foust family for allowing me to photograph them.

B-ball

Driving around Asheboro I found two guys playing basketball I asked them if I could photograph them for my photo of the day blog. They agreed. I pulled out my light stand and the schools camera an amazing Nikon D4s. At Randolph Community College we are super privileged to be able to use some of the finest equipment out there to the photographic community.

I put my flash on about half a stop because the ambient light was pretty strong and I couldn’t get my light too close do the basketball players and I also didn’t want it to be straight in their face. The  issues to overcome for me was the background part of the background had the city with the water tower sticking up and I wanted a clean background or as clean as possible so I got down low to keep the sky in the Back. It is kind of hard to freeze motion because you have to shoot at 500/second to freeze motion however with the flash you can only go up to 250/second. But that’s okay because Flash can freeze motion so I used it to freeze the motion of him playing basketball. Again I would like to say thank you to these young men that let me photograph them I appreciate their help and not laughing at me too much.

Sticky Fingers

My youngest son, Nathaniel, reaches for my camera during a photoshoot. After photographing my oldest son, Troy, for his birthday on Sunday. This is Nathaniel's personality coming out in a photograph. He is always happy. But he is at the stage where he is walking and nothing is off limits.

Game Day

Randleman High School's Tanner McGee, 12, stands at the mouth of the cave before going on to the field. Tanner is a quarterback for Randleman. The angle guides your eyes with the leading lines and the low angle gives the "larger than life" look. I wanted to try something unique and show an angle that most spectators don't see. Here a player has to think about what and how he is going to play a game he has to consider what kind of player will he be. This is also that final moment when a player gets hyped up and prepares for what's ahead of him.

Now I Know Why Everyone is Doing it

After an exhilarating night; of a really nice photography exhibition, I heard music down the road. Of course I had to go investigate. Drums pounding and people were dancing. I saw this to be a good opportunity to try a technique that I “practiced.” We tried it out as a class last semester but I really didn’t take it any further. The technique is to combine a flash and a slow shutter speed. The trick is to have the flash set to rear curtain sync, doing this allows one to have the slow shutter speed but the flash does not fire till last possible second of the exposure (simply put.) In this style, it appears that there is a ghost following your subject.had never really tried agree, before I shot the images I thought the technique produced “odd” photos. However, I think that it is after this technique is practiced that the images are of this style are fantastic, though I do believe that with many photographers this style can be and is over used. Bottom line, you can like or you can leave it.

 Now I know why everyone is doing it.

Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys

Cowboy stands at a train while smoking. This guy found me. I was working on an assignment, interviewing a guy and he walked up, was interested in what I was doing. We talked for a little while he agreed to let me photograph him. He also told me he likes trains. So we went to the train cars in town (not on the tracks.) Got some very cool images. This one was the most story telling to me. I wanted to give the sense of a "freight-hopper" traveling America by rail road cars. My lighting was a 12 inch soft box close to give the sense of a street light the smoke was just icing on the cake. I shot this for a Multi Media project

Asheboro High School vs Wheatmore High School

Desmond Trogdon (Blue) for Asheboro High School has a clear shot to the in-zone as his team mate Jalen Ettson number three for Asheboro hold the defender back. Its that time of the year. Football players slamming into each other for the great American sport that many gather to cheer the team on. Friday night skies are filled with lights from stadiums. Cheerleaders cheer with every good play as they try to get the crowd hyped up. Boys pound fist and shout to see who can be the loudest. Yes this sport is truly an American sport that I have the honor of covering.

"Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." JFK

Up until this point my confidence level has been ok, with the exception of summer semester. This semester we are introduced to Multimedia, in this we combine multiple types of different media, bet you couldn’t have guessed that. Being used to photography this idea of audio combined with moving pictures and audio introduces uncharted realms for myself. However, with the guidance if our instructor and my classmates we will be able to work through this and succeed. The reasoning behind multimedia is because most photographers are expected to do this now. I am learning very quickly that much like sharks, we photographers must learn to move on and like a Chameleon we must learn to change to quickly adapt to our environment.

Today's blog was brought to by the number 1.

Back in the swing of things. School started back this semester and in our Digital Photo class we were given an assignment to photograph the umber 1, 2, and 3. Also we had to have individual frames of something red, green, blue. In the import process we had to add the proper keywords, certain words that are embedded into the image making it easy to identify the photographer, location, date, time, equipment used and much more. With this assignment I wanted to stretch myself and do macro, I don’t have a lot of practice with the type of photography that makes small things big but I wanted to get comfortable in it, so I practiced while getting school done.

Trump Rally in Charlotte, NC

The Trump rally in Charlotte North Carolina was
a heated one. My first rally that I have been to before. Our instructor, Jay Capers, told us that if there was ever a candidate to come to North Carolina to go a photograph it. So 3 other classmates and me went to Charlotte yesterday to see what went down with the GOP candidate. I have to say, not what I expected, 2 men were stirring up the crowd that was waiting to in line to get in to the Charlotte convention center. Tempers got ugly and voices got ugly. But it surprised me to see a few go up to the Hillary supporters and shake hands and act like they were friends, many lessons to be learned for their actions.

Putting my best foot forward...

Photographing shoes, how hard could it be, right? Well, theoretically really not that hard. However, you get what you put in, and seeing that I wanted a good grade in the class I put “my best foot forward.” Get prepped, setting up, and shooting took a total of four hours. And the results proved to be fantastic! Bellow are images of the shoes and the setup. I do not show the setup to brag or to show off but rather for the average person to understand all the work that goes in to one image and that photography is just not simply “pushing a button.”

It's only a flesh wound!

I will be transparent with you guys. This semester is exhausting. For eight weeks I have had no life, other than work and school. But we are now drawing to an end, and I could not be happier. Although I could not have made it through without my wife, my parents, and my in-laws helping out so much, from babysitting to mowing the grass. I love them all, and I could not say thank you enough. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! … See I can’t.

Soft as a baby

Photographing fabric proved to be harder than expected. Not only was it harder than expected, I decided to add another level of difficulty to it by choosing to use my one year old son in the first image. To showcase fabric in its true essence you have to show it doing what it was made for. This is why I chose to use my son. This duck towel is a babies towel and it was a soft towel, so what better way to showcase this than to put it on a soft skin baby. I used a soft box on camera right as the main light to give soft shadows and filled in the shadows with a regular Speedotron head, that was on camera left and a Farrel light above.

Why did the chicken cross the road?... To see light stands

Image 1

Image 2

One of my classes I am working on a magazine project and I have chose to photograph a family and their farming legacy. It will consist of images of chickens in chicken houses, tobacco, and portraits of the family. This past week I photographed the chickens. I never knew that these birds were so curious. Walking into the chicken house with my tripod, light stand, and props the chickens understandable fled. But after I set things up I never would have thought about how curious they would be.  Slowly the group or flock of birds would gather around investigating my stand. The I noticed on some frames that my fill/background light didn’t fire but this was due to a chicken trying to figure out what my flash was. All in all a fun and humorous experience.

Image 1:

Shutter: 1/250

Aperture: 5.6

ISO: 400

Light: SB800

Image 2:

Shutter: 1/250

Aperture: 5.6

ISO: 400

Light modifier: SB600 and a Parabolic soft box

Making a splash

This past week we were given an assignment, to show motion in an image. A relatively simple assignment, however, if one ponders the thought of capturing motion in a single frozen frame then one realize the difficulty of the assignment. I chose to shoot an apple falling into a 60-gallon fish tank while I had the apple in one hand and the other on the shutter release button. I timed it so when the apple touched the water my shutter was released. The image you see required about 500 trials and error but I finally got it. Nonetheless, this photograph did not meet the requirements. This image was more of a stop motion rather then a motion image.

Shutter: 1/250

Aperture: 29 (No I’m not kidding)

ISO: 400

Light: SB600 and Water?

The Pitch That Echoed Through Ramseur

     Riley Myers, number nine pitcher for the Ramseur Deep River Muddogs, steps up the mound, confirms the signal from the catcher, rears up and throws, flying through the air like a bullet the ball reaches the catcher’s glove, the force of the ball meeting the glove created a sound, like a gunshot, that echoed through Ramseur. As the dust from the glove dissipated the crowd, so did the crowds voices. After sometime chatter picked back up as people talked about the spectacle that just appeared in front of their eyes. Shortly after Myers sent the batter back to his dugout where he came from. Myers helped carry his team to a win against the Carolina Pirates with a final score of 8-2.







ISO: 640
Shutter Speed: 1/500
Aperture: f/5.6

Copy Cat!

                

Disclaimer: This week we had to find a photographer and copy their work.

Now I chose to go with a very simple lighting setup, not because I wanted the easy way out. On the contrary, I chose the simple one because I wanted to show that even with a one light setup someone could show drama and mood. The particular blog,   “Night n’ Day” caught my eye especially the first photograph of Thomas Rodriguez mopping the floor. Drama is a big part of a photograph, and I loved the drama in this particular image. The light pouring in like a streetlight was brilliant, and the hard shadows created a nice frame around the subject. Though, my favorite part about this image was that the viewer could not tell that there was a strobe/flash unless told otherwise. I like images that utilize lights in a way that it looks natural or in this case a normal streetlight. When I saw Joe McNally had the “sweet” concept of shooting in a doughnut shop I instantly thought of a Doughnut shop that is not far away from where I live, Glaze King is a doughnut shop on highway 49 and they have the best doughnuts. So on Friday evening after closing the storeowner’s wife let me in. Samreth Kem, the store owner, was in the back getting the batter fried, he starts at 9:00 PM after the store closes and cooks all the way through the night till the store opens at 5:00 AM the next morning, a labor of love. Mr. Kem took a break at 10 and let me photograph him and within 2 minutes I had the photograph. But in reality, I had practiced on Jaime and Mr. Kem’s son, Ronnie, for about 30 minutes beforehand. To achieve the image of Mr. Kem I used an SB800 at ¼ power and 105 zoom mounted on a Profoto air-cushioned light stand. I used two Rogue filters on the flash, Full CTO, and Plus Green cc30 to give that street like feeling, however, I can’t figure out why mine looks more neutral or cooler than McNally’s. The camera was a D7000 with an 18-200mm Nikkor lens set at 20mm.

    In closing, this assignment was actually really fun and I would suggest it to any photographer that wants to expand the field of knowledge in the aspect of photography. However, the challenges that I faced helped prepare me and made me really think. The main problem was the color temperature; the image you see is an untouched photograph. As you can see comparing mine to Joe McNally’s image that mine does not seem as warm as his. I think this was due to the interior color of the buildings.

The bonus was that my photo made the photo of the week: RCC Photo of the Week

The final image was:

Shutter Speed: 1/250

Aperture: f/5.6         

ISO: 800

Flash: ¼ power 105 zoom with green and warm filter.

I would like to say thank you to the Kem family for allowing me to photograph at your shop (Glaze King.) Secondly thank you Mr. McNally for you blog Night N’ Day. Also thanks again Jaime for helping me out and being a stand in model for me.  

Oak Photo Art: PaintingWith Light ...

Check out my classmates work of our night of light painting.



Oak Photo Art: PaintingWith Light                                ...: Painting With Light                                                  June 17, 2016    One of my homework assignments for class last wee...

Gus the Bus

Image A

            Sitting in class last Monday, my instructor gave us the next weekly assignment. “Light painting is this weekly assignment, and you just heard Tyler inside say 'yippee,'" said my instructor as he looked at me, grinning. He knew that light painting was a passion of mine. Light painting is exactly that, essentially taking a light source and using it to illuminate an object. However, to me, it is so much more. Like the sculptor Michelangelo, one of the greatest artists to ever live, once said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” If we think of the night or the darkness as the stone and our lights as a hammer and chisel, then like Michelangelo, we as photographers need to carve the night away to reveal what lies underneath. Shortly after the assignment was assigned I knew exactly where I wanted to do this pulchritude art form.

Image B

            A classmate, Jaime, turned to me and asked if I was interested in joining forces with him. I agreed and we decided on shooting this past weekend. I also told him about a location I had in mind, an old bus that I had stumbled upon one day while driving down an old country road here in Asheboro. So after we both decided that would be a good choice, we drove and asked the property owner, and he approved of our coming out late at night to photograph it. Everything was set!

            Sunset on Saturday night came in a hurry. Soon Jaime and I found ourselves spending a lot of time, eight hours to be exact, from sunset to sunrise, with these inanimate objects and a curious horse. I decided to photograph a bus that I later named “Gus.” Inside the cab of Gus, he was gutted with no seats, except for the drivers, seat which was occupied by a plastic Santa Claus/ As seen in the image (taken by Jaime Robles,)

Photo By Jaime Robles

the inside of the bus was used to store scrap metal and other things. Also, a few wasps called this run down bus home. So one can imagine how precarious and nerve-racking it was to crawl in a bus and fire a flash 90 times. However, it was so worth is so worth it! Overall it was a very productive shoot, and I was very pleased with results.

Special thank you to Mr. Adam for allowing us on his property and also thanks to Jaime Robles for sticking with me, even till sunrise.

Image A:

Shutter Speed: 15 minutes

Aperture: f/11

Focal Length: 22 mm

ISO: 100

Image B:

Shutter Speed: 15 minutes

Aperture: f/11

Focal Length: 19 mm

ISO: 100

Street Photograph

The assignment was street photography, so I chose this image and this composition because of its central point to Asheboro.  Chandler concrete probably is a big portion to this town’s revenue, thus, making this a central point for more than one reason.  I liked the colors in this image because without the blue hard hat and the yellow reflective vest this image was almost mono chromatic, but with just the touch of color to the image it brought life to the photograph. The composition is low and straight on because I feel that one pouring concrete is fairly straight forward, yet, requires some form of precision. Secondly, to reiterate the idea that Chandler concrete is a central point of the town Asheboro.  

50 mm
1/125 
 f/22

What is photography to me?

           Since the age of nine photography has captivated my essence and made me who I am today. When I was just a little boy my parents gave me a Kodak digital camera, a Kodak DC3200. Massive in size but small in quality, though it was all I needed to rocket my passion into the atmosphere. Photoshop was just starting to stretch its legs on the consumer level and digital photography was making massive strides into the realm of photography. Yes, it was an exciting time for everyone; at least it was for me.  At that time I found my voice. Photography for me is communication, a way to convey my thoughts and ambitions.

            If you have ever met me you will come to realize that I am an awkward fellow, not Napoleon Dynamite awkward, more like Patsy from Monty Python and The Holy Grail awkward. I am not elegant with words or my body language and so, I rely on my craft to communicate. To me photography, my craft, is painting with light in a way that writes stories that could not otherwise be told.

Camera: Nikon D7000

Focal Length: 42

Aperture: f/3.3

Shutter: 1/250

Flash: SB 600 from the right approximately 5 feet away through a window

He's Gone Batty!

T.J. Nichting number thirteen on the Asheboro Copperheads baseball team swung at a low pitch and seemed to have butter fingers when he sent his bat flying. Originally from Ohio this right fielder found out how far his bat could fly in to the visitor’s bleachers. When the onlookers realized the incident that was coming their way they fled like a school of fish that saw a hungry shark coming their way. This accident was strange for this junior from the 49ers a college baseball team in Charlotte North Carolina, who started out this year with very impressive batting average of three hundred fifty-eight with three homers and thirty-three runs. However, this simple mistake made for a great photo and no one got hurt so the only thing that was lost was a wooden bat. After the incident Nitching laughed it off and grabbed a new bat and faced the pitcher once more.