Thursday, April 29, 2010

Day 91 : Equipment Manager

Josh is awesome. This semester he's been lucky enough to see me almost every day with a silly request to check out equipment or just to chat. Without him, most of the Mass Comm department would be lost. Truly.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Day 90 : My Angel

This is an old edit from last year when I took Studio with Jerod Foster. Great class. I learned so much and really got comfortable using the equipment downstairs. This idea came from Rob Peinert. I really enjoyed this shoot because it was different and it taught me a lot about reflections using Plexiglas and how to achieve them.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Day 89 : Nontraditional Student


Debra Chapman is an incredible woman with incredible stories. She is a nontraditional student working toward her degree in Journalism here at Texas Tech. This is a portrait of her with her son, Tommy. They are an incredible team, and I can only hope I have another chance to photograph them together.

Day 88 : Triumph


Triumph and Isaiah are frequent visitors to Cafe J on 26th and Boston. When they showed up as I was sipping on my fru-fru coffee, I couldn't resist snapping a photo of them together. So, I asked and Isaiah laid down next to his puppy and this photo was the result. I keep thinking I could do a really cool effect on this image to make it more awesome than it already is, but that might distract and destroy it, so I kept it simple. That's more my style anyway.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Day 87 : Lost But Ready


This is my beautiful baby sister Jaclyn. She's 18 now and getting ready to go to OU. I'm so happy for her and very proud of her. This is one of my favorite portraits I have taken of her. She's lost in this world, trying to discover who she is, yet she is open to what's in front of her.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Day 86 : Broken Future


Walking into Westminster Church on 33rd and Indiana to set up for swing dancing on Monday night, my heart broke for a momma bird. Earlier I was chomping down on my Wendy's fries when I saw this bird swooping low and picking at what looked like a brown fuzzball. Turned out, momma bird was trying to save her fallen nest and her 3 eggs. No egg survived that fall. The two in the nest were cracked. It was so sad to look at.
Seeing that nothing else could be done, I grabbed the nest, tossed the eggs inside it and proceeded to photograph the horror. Momma bird watched me from high in the tree. I can only imagine her pain. Breaks my heart to think of it.

Day 85 : Je Suis Un Forban!


Je suis un forban!

I had rented a stand and cyber syncs for the weekend and had a free evening, called Alex and told her to get he butt dressed and pretty and we'd do a quick fun shoot. 2 hours later, she came over and we played with dramatic lighting.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Day 84 : Jana


I need a computer.
I need photoshop, lightroom and illustrator.
I need to stop using online editing tools.
I need more Jana in my life.

Jana was all pretty today, sporting her new necklace she paid too much money for, so I took her outside (so pretty out) and took her picture. Tomorrow will be another adventure of photos, and the day after as well. So much photography! How'd I get so lucky?

Day 83 : My Sister


This is a scanned photograph.

I took this photo several years ago, I'm pretty sure my junior year of high school. Crickett is like my sister. We got her Spring of 2000 when we first moved to Texas from Las Vegas, NV. In this photo she is 5 years old. She is 10 years old now and unfortunately suffering from some health issues. It's sad to see someone you love so much grow old and struggle to do things that used to be so easy before.

I love Crickett. She is the most amazing dog and has so much personality. More nurturing than I could even imagine, she would take care of stuffed animals and has been a mother to any animal we brought into the Church home. Growing up with her, I can't imagine life without her.

I could write all day about this wonderful dog, but I don't know if my heart can take it. I love her so much and miss her a lot some days. I keep thinking back to when I left home after Easter. I was so wrapped up in leaving I forgot to say goodbye to Crickett. I don't want that to be the last time I see her.

"I have sometimes thought of the final cause of dogs having such short lives and I am quite satisfied it is in compassion to the human race; for if we suffer so much in losing a dog after an acquaintance of ten or twelve years, what would it be if they were to live double that time?"

Sir Walter Scott

Day 82 : There's A Metaphor In This


This has to be one of my favorite images I have captured all year. Mosquito on a dogwood flower. Again, this was the result of me playing with my 10x zoom filter. I hope a few certain people are proud of me for this one. I really do, because I feel like I've been bragging about this shot for a while now.

This was not an easy shot to come by in the least, but the effort was completely worth it.

Day 81 : Spiny Balls From Hell


I feel like these little bastards are all over the place.

"Spiny balls from hell" was a name given by my best friend in junior high, Melissa Reynolds, as we walked around the front of the school and saw these littering the lawn. Apparently she had a bad experience with them. Since the first time I heard those words come out of her mouth, the name stuck for these pointy seeds.

I can't recall if I have ever had a bad experience with them. This photo, I'd call a good experience. Good experiences are good. They're what I look forward to every day.

Day 80 : Wild and Blue


Being out in the wild, I just can't help photographing the wild flowers. This purple-ish blue gem is all over the back of my grandparents house. I once did a wildflower project for my 7th grade science project. The goal was to find 25 wildflowers, press them and turn them in as a wildflower book. I got overexcited about this project and collected about 65 different flowers, some albino versions, but mostly flowers found in Arlington and Tyler. This was one I had found 9 years ago but the name of it escapes me. I can still name off a good amount of flowers when I see them, but not all from what I had collected in my wildflower project. I still have it, actually and when I was home for Easter I went through it, naming a majority of the flowers before I read the title in my sloppy, 13 year old handwriting.

Day 79 : Springing Spring


Spring is definitely in the air and boy, do I smell it! I also love, by paying attention to where I am walking, I can see it too. This is a fern that may possibly become something else later in the future (I'm not a botanist, forgive me for not having knowledge in everything, only an opinion).

Beautiful. I feel I am going to use this word a lot as I catch up on my project.

Day 78 : Dogwood Flower


Outside my grandparents home in Tyler, Tx is a ton of dogwood trees. While I was visiting I got to playing around with several zoom filters, this being the 10x and I think it did a great job focusing and dropping the background.

Beauty is in the details.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

Day 77: Photograph Her Portrait


Lindsay is an incredible sister. We are 14 months apart and ever since my parents brought her home we have shared everything. Even now when I go home, we swap clothes, stories, and so much more. I love her. She's an amazing person to be around and you are lucky if you know her.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Day 76 : Blue


This is one of my baby sister's staple accessories. A blue bow. Visiting Tyler this weekend to see my grandfather and granny, Jaclyn and I walked around the wooded neighborhood taking photos. When you go out to photograph a specific thing, be it birds, or flowers, or rocks, take a moment to look around and see what else there is in the area.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Day 75 : 23 Flavors

"Drink the Dr. Pepper. You know you want to."

Thank you Kirk for being such a good model for me in the studio. For portfolio we were shooting portraits and recreating advertisements. This was one of my favorite portraits of that assignment. Such a goofball.

Day 74 : Literacy Lubbock


This is a shoot I did for a new friend of mine who needed shots for the Literacy Lubbock campaign she is helping out with. I love this photo because it says so much. It's dramatic and inspiring. You only see what is important, a man struggling to understand the book he holds in his hands.

Many of us take reading for granted and we overlook just how difficult some of the things we read are to understand. Anyone recently fill out your medical information on a doctors form? Anyone do their taxes? How long did it take you? Imagine if you couldn't understand the language on those forms. How long would it take you then?

This was shot with one light directly above through a snoot. f 6.3 1/100 ISO 200