2013 Fine Art Photography Competition
April 22, 2013
Opening reception and awards ceremony is this weekend: April 27, 2013, from 7-9 p.m. at ArtSpace Herndon. The exhibit opens tomorrow and runs through May 26, 2013.
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Thirty Hour Famine: Haitian Hunger
March 15, 2013
Click the image below to see the Flickr slideshow, and read on for some context.
A newly married bride stands outside the church where the wedding was held in Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Every year the youth group at my wife’s church (Saint Timothy’s Episcopal in Herndon, VA) takes part in the 30 Hour Famine. This is the same church that lets me tag along to their trips to Haiti, and the youth group asked me to be one of the presenters this year. So after various ice-breaking games and the briefest of hootenannies, I was given 30 minutes to talk to teenagers from various churches who had all convened at Saint Timothy’s for the event.
The first thing I do when I’m given 30 minutes to present is to limit myself to 10 minutes for remarks. I like to leave lots of time for questions, for the people who are interested in the content to direct the conversation. In this case I was presenting pictures along with some text, and my goal was to try to create a single work in which the pictures emphasize and expand on the text, and vice versa.
Following is an excerpt of the text. If you’re interested in reading more, or think you’d like me to present this (or some version of it), I rarely turn down an offer to come speak about Haiti: so contact me by email.
I feel I should start the evening off with a confession, or at least a clarification. I’m not a Christian – I was raised Jewish – and although my wife and children are members and regular attendees, I’m more of an “innocent bystander” who is sometimes accidentally hit with stray prayers rather than someone who tries to be in the center of the Divine Fight. In fact, I think I have now attended more church services outside the United States than in, and nearly all of those in the past 18 months.
So what am I doing here? And who, in their right mind, would invite a skeptical, somewhat heretical non-member to speak at a Church?
I’m here because, despite all of the things I don’t believe, I do believe in people and in their ability change their own lives, and the lives of those around them, either for good or for bad. We are all separate people, and yet we are all in some way connected, and even the smallest steps we take for positive change can have profound and unexpected impacts.
And that’s why you’re here: to take part in a global movement connecting those of us who have everything we need – and a lot of things we don’t – with those whose need is overwhelming, ever-present, and often overpowering. “Overwhelming, ever-present need” is a good working definition of life in Haiti.
Our connection to each other is strongest when we are friends. So I’d like to start by introducing you to some of my Haitian friends, and some of the people I’ve met while traveling there.
Protest Outside John Brennan Residence
January 15, 2013
Protesters demonstrate outside the residence of John Brennan, recently appointed to lead the CIA.
About a dozen or so protesters gathered outside the home of John Brennan (President Obama’s recent appointee to head the CIA). They were carrying signs and graphic pictures of dead children. They also had a mock-up of a predator drone. Most of the protest centered around the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, with which Brennan is alleged to have been involved, and the U.S. practice of striking at targets using armed, unmanned drones.
A protester holds a banner as he stands in front of a model of a drone. The banner reads, “Stop killer drones.”
The protesters beat a drum as they chanted the names of children killed in drone strikes; they ran out of names after less than a minute. They attempted to deliver to Mr. Brennan a letter requesting he withdraw his name from consideration; the letter was refused at the front door, and police prevented them from placing it in Brennan’s mailbox. Eventually the protesters were asked to move their protest to the public areas of the neighborhood (the Brennan residence is one of a number of homes sharing a private drive), and after neighbors complained of the noise the police then asked the protesters to leave the neighborhood.
A protester takes cover from the rain while holding a picture of a child allegedly killed by a US drone attack.
This is a small neighborhood – less then a half-mile circle, with one exit – but it took nearly an hour for the small group (nearly outnumbered by police, Secret Service, a couple television cameras, and some photojournalists) to make their way slowly out of the neighborhood.
Protesters in the rain outside the residence of John Brennan.
Protesters in front of the Brennan residence hold signs reading “Stop killer drones” and “John Brennan = Torture.”
Candlelight Vigil
October 2, 2012
Congregants sing “Amazing Grace” by candlelight at Floris United Methodist Church in memory of Al, Kathy, Matthew, and Christopher Peterson
The photographs in this post were also published on the Herndon Patch.
I didn’t know the Petersons, really, much more than to say hello to in the street. But we live in a small neighborhood with a single entrance, and their home sits on the far left corner as you enter. Al often sat out on his front porch while his boys played in the yard: soccer, baseball, football, Nerf darts, whatever. He was a fixture.
So was his truck. During the winter he’d strap on a snow plow, and I don’t know where he cleared snow, but his truck got a lot of use. We had a particularly icy stretch a few years after I moved in, and VDOT – as usual – forgot we existed. A week later the road was still covered in 2 inches of hard-packed icy snow, with the occasional slush-filled pothole. Al did what he could to clear the entryway to the neighborhood. Some people, especially those of us at the front of the neighborhood, appreciated being able to get out. But Al didn’t make it all the way around, and the story soon was being told of how VDOT trucks, who had finished clearing every other road in the county, drove by our neighborhood, saw bare road, and didn’t bother to come in and clear the rest.
Community members started leaving candles and flowers at the Peterson house.
That’s sort of how it was with the Petersons, at least as far as I experienced: I saw them all the time, occasionally felt their impact in the neighborhood, and although they didn’t live more than 5 houses away I’d have been hard pressed to name anyone except Al.
So it shouldn’t be surprising that I’m no different than anyone else when it comes to understanding why Al shot and killed his entire family, then himself.
The next night the nearby church the Petersons attended held a candlelight vigil. This became more of a community event than a church event. The press descended as well, finally having tired of empty shots of mundane suburban sidewalks and a house that, outside the police tape, looked just like every other house on the block.
I arrived late, and the press had left. I walked in, took a candle, and listened to the end of the service. The crowd included local parishioners, but also dozens of people from the community. There was audible and uncontrolled sobbing throughout the service. And finally, the lights went down, the ushers lit candles, and we all sang “Amazing Grace.”
Floris UMC community members lift candles and sing “Amazing Grace” at a vigil for the Peterson family.
I’m not religious. I don’t believe in God. But I believe in people. We’re never going to know why Al did what he did. I hope, though, that those the Petersons left behind will follow the minister’s advice, to “be a light to others” in dark and difficult times.
Beach Week
July 2, 2012
A boy reaches for lights on a fence by sand dunes at Dewey Beach, DE. ISO 3200, f/2.0, 1/160@50mm (Canon 50mm 1.4)
It’s a mostly relaxing beach week here in Delaware with the kids. Dewey beach has a Wednesday night “bonfire” (okay, it’s a bonfire, but much smaller than I had expected) where you can bring your own marshmallows and roast them fireside on the beach. This – and the others like it – are from the walk back, when my mood had finally improved.
Backyard Safari: Smithsonian National Zoo
May 17, 2012
A golden lion tamarind perches on a branch. ISO 1600, f/5.6, 1/160 @ 135mm (Canon 28-135 IS). Cropped significantly.
Living, as I do, with two children and so near to the National Zoo, from time to time I make the drive out to the park and bring my camera (and my kids) along. Zoo admission is free, although parking costs something (but is free with your FONZ membership). Food is overpriced and served in a family-friendly, wasp-filled food court.
If you are ever at a loss for subject matter, take yourself to the zoo and pick a theme: you can spend all day with the gorillas or other primates, you can shoot only things that are green or red or black, whatever.
Photographing animals is often a gamble—for actual gambling, of course, there are online gambling sites like Party Poker—but animals aren’t the only things to photograph at the zoo. I once spent an entire day at the zoo shooting only water; images that happened to include animals (Oscar, an octopus, was a winner) were an afterthought.
I once spent an entire day at the zoo shooting only water; images that happened to include animals (Oscar, an octopus, was a winner) were an afterthought.
Meerkats playing. ISO 1600, f/5.6, 1/2000 @ 112mm (Canon 28-135 IS).
Think about your gear in advance, though, and pack light. Zoo visits typically require lots of walking. Most of the animals don’t like strong flash photography up close, so to avoid stressing the animals try to leave the flash at home. Your wide angle lens may be largely useless unless you’re shooting the people at the zoo. And telephoto is a must if you plan on catching the large cats, the giant pandas, or other animals in large enclosures. With the meerkats above, I could step right up to the glass to catch these relatives of the mongoose in action.
A black baboon relaxes on a log. ISO 800, f/5.6, 1/320 @ 135mm (Canon 28-135 IS)
Also bring along an ample supply of patience. For the more interesting displays, you may have to fight crowds or wait while people rush in front of you to see the animals. You will miss many good shots this way.
Support Chapateau’s Schoolchildren
January 23, 2012
Chapateau is a small, rural village in Haiti about 3 hours northeast of Port-au-Prince. Saint Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Herndon, Virginia sponsors the education of more than a dozen children there, and the church is undertaking a formal mission to the village. This video contains photographs that I and another photographer took while visiting the village this past November.
Home Portraits – Gear and Techniques
December 30, 2011
What’s the right gear to use for family portraits you want to create at home? Of course, the best gear you can have is a professional photographer, but suppose you want to do it yourself: what do you need? The answer depends on the kind of photograph you want to create, but there are some simple things you can do to make your home portrait come out looking great.
My quick recommendations are below; keep reading for the deeper explanation:
- SLR or Point-and-shoot camera that lets you use off-camera flash
- 1 or 2 strobes you can control from the camera
- Radio transceivers or cables to control the strobes
- Something to soften the light – white umbrellas, poster board, or even a white sheet or wall will do
- Fabric or paper with either no pattern or a neutral, subtle pattern for a background
- A happy and willing subject with plenty of time.
The first and best thing you can do – and this is required for all good pictures – is to get good subject matter. You can put a check in this block right away; your child (or spouse or pet or parent) is beautiful already. These are family portraits, and you don’t really need to do much to the people who will be in them. You can help yourself out later on, however, if you pay attention to a few things about the people:
- have your subject wear solid color clothes, preferably a color that contrasts with your subject’s face.
- Be aware of allergies, activities, and skin conditions which might cause rashes, blemishes, scratches, or other skin problems.
- Find the right time for portraits: make sure you have an hour or so in your schedule, that you’ll be undisturbed, and that your subject is not already tired.
Especially with small children, that’s not always possible, but do your best and you’ll help yourself out later.
The next most important thing about a picture, besides the subject, is the light. So you need to arrange good lighting conditions. Almost all the time this means having the main light source be something other than the flash on the camera. In the above picture, I’m using two lights – both Canon Speedlite 430EX strobes – and controlling them wirelessly using the wireless flash feature built into my EOS 7D. But an alternative is to get one strobe on an off-shoe cord, a couple strobes on wireless transceivers like the Pocket Wizard, use a couple good floor lamps, or skip the artificial light entirely and just use a nice big window in the middle of the day.
I usually like to soften the light somehow. If I have a big window providing light reflected from outside (i.e., the sun is not streaming through the window directly onto the subject) I’ll often just use that. If I’m using strobes, a softbox or umbrella helps provide a bigger, softer light source. There are tons of different kinds of equipment to choose from here. You could also decide you want the look of strong, hard shadows, and just use direct flash or direct sun. But most people don’t have this equipment lying around. A good home technique is to use a large white piece of paper – 11″ by 17″ or larger – or a big white sheet, and bounce a flash or light off of that.
You also want to provide some level of contrast between the darks and lights, but not so much contrast that the darks are just black. In the picture above, I am using two lights, both on stands with umbrellas. The light to camera right is my key light, and it is set to expose normally. The light to camera left exposes at about 2 stops dimmer, leaving the shadows intact but filling them with soft detail. This helps sculpt the look of the face.
What if you’re not using artificial light at all? Use a window for the main light, and on the other side, use a white piece of paper or a cloth to reflect some of the window light back to the subject.
Most formal portraits use a solid, shaded, or otherwise neutral background. In the first picture above I’m using a large piece of muslin fabric with a mottled gray pattern. The cloth is stretched tight over background supports. But in the picture above I’m using a blue blanket we had lying around the house. It’s draped over a background support rod and hung in such a way that it ripples in the background. There’s one light here: the indirect light coming in through the window.
If you have access to seamless paper, it makes for a simple, neutral background, like this:
Same two-light portrait setup as the first picture above, but this time with black seamless paper. Gray seamless is actually a little more versatile, but I like the way the background just disappears, with just enough detail to frame the hair.
Now that your stage is all set, it’s time to think about the camera. If you are using strobes, you need a camera that can trigger them somehow. The Canon EOS 7D features a built-in wireless (optical) flash controller for compatible Canon Speedlites, but these are expensive (camera + 2 strobes + lens for around $3,500) and not everyone wants to use an SLR. If you usually shoot with a point-and-shoot camera, it might have a hot-shoe attachment for an external flash, and you can use a radio transceiver to trigger remote flashes.
The truth is, the camera almost doesn’t matter as long as your light source works with it. You can, in fact, take fine pictures with an iPhone. But there are a couple camera choices that make a big difference for portraits.
First: use a long lens. On a point-and-shoot camera, this means backing up and zooming in. On an SLR, a zoom length of 85mm to 135mm (on either full-frame or crop-sensor cameras) will work. The idea is to back up and use the zoom to compress the nose against the face so your portrait looks more like the person and less like a strange balloon caricature of a person.
Secondly, use a wide aperture. You want the background to blur slightly, although you want to keep both eyes in focus (and this usually means the mouth is in focus as well). Apertures of f/5.6 and wider, down to about f/2.0, work well, as long as your light is not too strong. Narrow apertures (f/16 or f/22) will put everything in crisp focus, including those dust specs and scratches on the background. The three pictures above were taken using f/5.6, f/6.3, and f/5.6, respectively, and at 105mm, 90mm, and 135mm.
Geese on a freezing pond
January 22, 2011
… cautiously subtitled, “the Jesus Geese.” It does get cold in northern Virginia — today’s high will be below freezing — although nothing like the mid-west, the north, and other desolate lands.
These geese are walking on the barely submerged ice sheet that’s formed on the top of a neighborhood pond. In between meetings I stopped by and made a few exposures from the “shoreline,” a muddy embankment just off the paved sidewalk. Geese walk on the edge of an ice shelf in a barely frozen suburban pond.
