Lens Life

Still a fun job with a cold? Yeah...

Graham — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 03:19:00 +0000

Well, fun might not be the right word, but it certainly beats doing most other jobs while sick.

The last two days I've worked through a bit of a cold, which while certainly slowing me down, it was not nearly as bad as having to do most other jobs while under the weather.

Yesterday- the worse of the two- I had only one assignment to tackle, a tennis match, which got me out in the sun for an hour or so.

I'll tell ya, all that fresh air really helped me out. I had two pictures run today from that match, including an image of a player's shadow returning the ball (I nearly had to beg for them to squeeze it in because of space issues).

Feeling much better, but not really 100%, I was able to take on a few more assignments than the previous day. In addition to photographing a few people for an upcoming super secret project, I covered an after school YMCA program, a ground breaking and a band.

Well, despite working the evening shift, I have to get up early for a scheduled magazine portrait.

Time to find caffeine to help me wake up tomorrow.

Out with the old, in with the new

Graham — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 01:41:00 +0000

Last night I wandered over to the News-Post's old downtown building to watch the very last (nock on wood) paper to roll off the press.

Tonight, I will be heading back to our new building to document the first daily paper to come off our brand spankin' new press.

It was amazing to see our old press, which is maybe a tenth the size of our new one, crank out its last edition before we put the old thing out to pasture.

I shot video and took a few stills, as did my boss, who, like me will also be on hand tonight as we complete our move to 351 Ballenger Center Drive.

The News-Post will be hosting our first public tour next Thursday, so people will get to see our new facilities, including a press that when you're on the top looking down... Well, lets just say it's not for those afraid of heights.

What? No Saint Patrick's Day assignment?

Graham — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 01:42:00 +0000

A year ago today I was being paid to stand around inside an Irish bar being chatted up by semi-drunk (understatement) patrons wanting to have me take pictures of them wearing green glasses.

For this year's incarnation of St. Patty's, I spent the day photographing the News-Post's giant new sign being installed, a portrait at the courthouse, a German bakery contestant and the proprietor of a store which sells items, most of which I could not show in the photograph.

That last assignment, scheduled to print Tuesday, was certainly a difficult one, because all the items in the store could be found offensive to some of our readers and thus could not be visible. To get around this obstacle, I had to shoot this guy's portrait from across the store with a long lens and a wide open aperture, which allowed me to put everything but my subject out of focus.

While none of my assignments today took me anywhere near pints of the green brew, I was however, challenged to make eye catching images that will hopefully help draw a few more people through an interesting read.

New toy arrived today

Graham — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:01:00 +0000

As was expected, my new Nikon D300 arrived today, giving me a gorgeous new camera to play with. I started my day at a dimly lit five in the morning, needing to be in Brunswick by six for an early morning book signing.

After returning to the office around nine, I had to wait patiently until the UPS guy showed up mid-day to get my hands on my new camera.

This photo, the second consecutive I've posted of Kit was shot with my new D300 at 1/25th of a second and 3200 ISO, which looks amazing considering the afore mentioned settings.

I replaced the standard batteries with eight AA's which let me crank up the burst rate to somewhere in the neighborhood of seven frames per second, which, simply put is awesome.

It took me just a few minutes to fall in love with this camera, which I'll discuss in more detail once I've had more time to play with all the features.

P.S. Keep a lookout for my blog on the News-Post's website, which will go live soon and will go by the same name as the blog you are currently reading. So henceforth, I'll refer to this blog as the home edition.

Newsflash! Cats love the camera

Graham — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 19:17:00 +0000

With the awe factor an inevitability, photographing cats is just an outright delight.

I snapped this photo of our newest addition, named Kit (or, Kit-Kat) yesterday before heading to my mother-in-law's birthday get-together.

I find it impossible to not photograph my cats while I'm holding a camera. It's kind of like a reflex, I suppose, which I'm sure will also hold true when my child is born.

Come to think of it, it's not even only my cats I love photographing. I've had to go to the animal shelter for an assignment several times, which resulted in my returning with probably more than a hundred pictures of adorable kitties.

Photos from the animal shelter are usually pretty sad, like the pair of eye's staring through the steel bars, or a paw reaching toward the lens. It's images like those that I almost always find someone in my office has printed and pinned on their desk.

But not all images from the shelter are sad; if I recall correctly, the afore mentioned assignment at the shelter was for a story about adopting pets during the holidays, so I followed a young couple around who were interviewing for a dog.

The woman was pregnant, and I guess the dog would make a nice addition to the growing household. They wound up going home with the dog, but not before i got a picture of the man bending down for a hug with his new friend.

One of these days I'd like to spend some time photographing all aspect of the shelter (good and otherwise) for a picture story.

Until then I guess I'll remain content with all those "awe factor" pictures I take of my cats.

Ah the Ten Day Week

Graham — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:09:00 +0000

Every third week I work the weekend shift, which means I will have the Monday before and the Friday after, off of work.

That makes two thirds of my weekends three day weekends. But while that sounds great (and it is...), it also means my fellow photogs and I end up working ten day shifts every few weeks.

Well, I just finished one of those extended weeks, hurriedly attempting to get all my work done so that maybe I don't get a call from the office asking for a photograph that should have been placed on a page hours ago.

People say that there aren't enough days in the week to get everything done, and I'll tell ya that it's true even if you double your work week.

Although, I'd prefer being busy to being bored; and being a photojournalist is typically never boring.

Snow, sleet, freezing rain and every other winter road hazard are forecast for tomorrow, meaning that more than likely I'll have the company of my wonderful wife (schools will undoubtedly be out). Must be nice being a teacher and knowing you'll be off when the winterly precip begins to fall.

Journalists however... Let me put it this way; the worse the weather conditions, the more I need to be out taking pictures. Although really, I have an affinity for tromping around in the snow, so it's not all bad. It's the freezing rain I could certainly do without.

I spent the last few minutes at work readying some of my work from 2007 to be sent off for judging in the Chesapeake AP contest. This is the first year I will send any of my work for contests, and honestly, I'm somewhat excited.

I'm really curious to see how the News-Post multimedia, and in particular, my work fare. Since multimedia is so new to us print journalists, papers our size in Maryland have not produced as much of the internet only content as we have.

But more than the multimedia, I'd really like to see my still photography do well. While I love getting phone calls from my grandmother just to tell me how much she enjoyed one of my photos, I'd really love to have my work recognized by my peers.

Enough for now I suppose, I'm going to go see if the snow has begun to fall.

Damn you beltway...

Graham — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 01:01:00 +0000

Spent a good bit of time driving today ...

After three hours of commuting and nearly running out of gas, you might just see a few of my images of the State indoor track championships on our sports page Tuesday.

My lone assignment today was to cover the Maryland indoor track finals, held in Landover. After an hour on the road, and a few laps around both Fedex Field and the Sportsplex trying to find a place to park, I made my way into the mob scene that was my assignment.

The easy part: finding my reporter. The challenging part, making an image (or two or three) that will catch someone's eye.

One of the things I love about being a photojournalist is going into a school or restaurant or whatever and finding one of my photographs clipped out and put up on the wall.

For example, my wife and I went to a new Japanese steakhouse on Valentines day, the same day my photographs of that particular establishment appeared in the News-Post.

Look at that; I've already digressed from the sports topic. Getting back to the track finals, I came across several photogs from my neck of the woods (Frederick and Carroll counties). Like the athletes we were covering, newspaper photographers from around the state converged on Landover, all of us looking to come away with a unique image.

After the first heat of a boys 3200 meter race, I saw two runners sucking wind and one of them laying on the ground in some discomfort. I thought it looked pretty interesting, so I snapped a few frames only to hear some kid from another heat behind me say "why don't you stop taking pictures of people laying on the ground, and take pictures of the winners?" I replied to the young runner, "I already did... cause they finished before these guys".

The best images from events like these come from very fleeting moments, moments that you have to be able to anticipate. I find that it helps to watch peoples eyes to see what they're seeing, but it helps even more to always have the camera in the ready position.

Case in point: When several runners bunched together to cause someone to take a spill at full sprint; yeah, that's when you would want to have the camera ready. Did I? Well, I won't say (yet). But if I did, rest assured you would see it on the front page of the sports section.

You may be asking, "Well?! will we see it in the paper or not?". Alas, you will not. That's why I find it so important to have the camera at the ready. I hate it when I let an image get away like that.

Enough for now; as my wife is pregnant, the responsibility to change the cat boxes falls to me.

First off...

Graham — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 04:19:00 +0000

Ok,
so here we are.
Here's my blog.

I'm watching Family Guy on Adult Swim right now, chuckling all the while and postponing taking out the recycling of course.

I'd like to use this space to discuss photography related issues. However, I will no doubt digress. By the way, if this first post actually makes it to the web to be read, It would go a long way to make me feel smarter (or at least as smart) as the average middle schooler.

Well, sleep is in my not to distant future.