SF Chronicle Day 08

I was just looking back at rhe blog entries and can't believe I missed two days without even noticing!  I really thought I had been posting every day, but I guess not... 

I can't believe it is already 8 days (and they have been 8 days in a row).

Tomorrow will be my ninth back-to-back day and the last one.  I already have 3 stories assigned to me.  The first will have me leaving at 8:30 in the morning and my last assignment ends at 7:30 p.m. in Berkeley.... Then I have to file the photos and find my way home.  I'll be home after 9p.m.

I counted today, and so far I have shot 7 stories, and by the end of the day tomorrow it will be a nice round 10!

On Monday I got a car and some gear. 

I had my first panic attack when I could not get the Chronicle gear to auto focus.  Luckily I still had my gear in the car, so I ran back and switched out the gear.

It turns out that the Chronicle bodies had been set to back button focus, which I have never used.  I am getting mixed responses of other photogs about using that function.  I figure it is not a bad idea to try to learn a new technique, and I shot that way today with mixed results.  Most people say it is faster, and maybe it is, but I had a lot of out of focus shots.

For those who have never used back button,  basically instead of the half click to focus and full click to release the shutter,  you press a button on the back of your camera to auto focus and then fire away.  The idea is that each time you pull the shutter release, the camera re-focuses.  With back button, you focus once and can make many exposures with that same focal point.  HOWEVER...  if your subject moves between the first and second exposure, then they may be out of focus.  ALSO... if you move they may be out of focus.  With the shutter release as the focus, it takes the camera another fraction of a second to refocus, but... atleast your shot won't be soft.

I think there may be a time and place for this technique, maybe for sports when there is enough depth of field and a specific player stays within the boundaries of the critical focus (an at bat baseball player for instance). 

But dark places where you are shooting wide open and hand held, the movement is too great and the the depth of field too shallow to keep each shot in focus without letting the camera refocus.

That is my take on it.  I plan to shoot a few more assignments with the back button focus settings to see if i can find another advantage that I have not yet seen.  If nothing, then I'll reprogram the bodies back to shutter release/focus.

So the image I leave with you today is a shot I took with my phone while filing photos from the car.  After an assignment,  many times we need to file the images right away.  So I filed my images in the shade of a little residential neighborhood in Redwood City today. 

SF Chronicle Day 07

On Sunday morning I met veteran photographer Brant Ward.  He had just come back from shooting the swim from Alcatraz.  It was fun and educational talking to him about his shooting process and his workflow.

Instead of using a 70 - 200mm he prefers to use a 135mm prime with a 1.4x teleconverter.  I had never even thought of that!

After watching him file his photos we just talked a bit and it turns out his son went to UCSC and is a musician. 

We watched a few videos that his son's band, Bear Lincoln, made.  It made me feel old because when I was playing music the promotional tool we used was a demo (cassette,  that is).

After talking, Brant suggested that if i had no assignments I could walk around and try to get a weather photo.  Sunday we had record breaking heat and if a day is a particularly slow news day, sometimes papers need to fill a hole and will use weather realted photos.

It was a lot of fun walking aroumd and talking to people about the weather and how they were dealing with it.  I got a lot of fun street stuff.  We will see if they had a hole big enough hole.

Here are the photos I selected:

SF Chronicle Day 06

Yesterday I had my first assignment.  I was asked to take photos of trees.  Yes, Holman... TREES!

The story is about 193 trees that have been tagged for removal.  In their place a new dedicated bus lane will be built.  The thoroughfare in question is the two mile stretch of Van Ness Avenue from Lombard to Mission streets.

I went first thing in the morning and got three shots I was happy with in the first 15-20 minutes.  However, since this was sort of a test run and my only assignment for the day, I had been encouraged to stay out there and try to get as many shots as I could.

I roamed up and down Van Ness for a couple hours and talked to a few people on the street.  

I came back with 20 shots I was happy with and met with the editor, Brian Feulner, to review the images.  He picked his top images which had us narrowed down to 6 for submission. 

One of the six images was a long focal length shot that I used to compress several tagged trees that were on the median and curved up the road to make way for the left hand turn lanes for both the north and south facing traffic with a bus in the background.

Brian asked me to go back and get another shot with the same framing, but to try to get the bus more prominent in the photo.  

I went back and faced two challenges.  One, when shooting a moving target (the bus) I found that I was naturally tracking the bus.  In so doing, I was panning away from the row of trees.  I noticed this after the first bus went by, but it still two passing buses before I could force that habit out.

The second challenge was that on Saturday afternoon there are not a whole lot of commuter buses driving up and down Van Ness.  To get the bus large in the image, I needed the bus to be in the closer lane, but as we all know, most buses travel in the lane closest to the sidewalk (for obvious reasons).  

Finally an express bus came down the close lane at the same time another bus was at the sidewalk.  I got my shot and headed back to the office.

Here are the images that were selected.  My fave is the top right.  

Which is yours?

Which will run in the paper?

SF Chronicle Day 04

Yesterday I got to shoot at the SF Ballet.  But the best part of the day was getting to work with Scott Strazzante.  

It was a day of shadowing like Day 01.  I think shadowing is actually really great for me.

The last two semesters I acted as an editor at the Guardsman and was not on assignment that many times.  In the past 9 months I have been working on a lot of personal projects, all of which have been long term projects.  I have not shot daily news with daily deadlines since The SF Examiner.

Today I will work with Russell Yip in the SF Chronicle's studio space.

The word is that by Sunday I may have a computer and without a computer I cannot actually file photos.  So, maybe I will have my first published photo for The SF Chronicle as early as the Monday.  Let's  go for a cover story, right?

SF Chronicle Day 02

This week I will be shadowing other seasoned veterans.

Yesterday I was privileged to follow Michael Macor around.  Michael has been with the Chronicle for 22 years.  He got his start printing contact sheets and making enlargements of selects.  He dropped out of school after a few years of  of Jr. College and just started knocking on doors.  After a while his editors let him shoot weekends and evenings and shortly thereafter they realized he was a their best photographer.

I followed Macor to a Cal Berkeley football practice.  He shot with the monster 400mm f/2.8 with an extender and i shot with my little 70-200mm.

After, we went to cover a police involved shooting in Oakland.

Today I will follow Scott Strazzante.

SF Chronicle Day 01

Today I start my internship at The San Francisco Chronicle.

Here is the gear I packed, hope it is the right stuff.

Last year I was offered this internship, but decided to keep looking for a paid internship.   Unfortunately I did not find one.

The silver lining is that I had the chance to finish all my coursework for my Photography degree.  I am officially an art school graduate... yippeee... haha

So, I returned to Judy Walgren to ask again for the internship at The SF Chronicle. She was kind enough to accept me.

Last semester two of my colleagues wrapped up their internships and are both going on to great things in the world of photojournalism.  

Jessica Christian,  my fellow intern last year at SF Examiner,  recently was accepted to the coveted Eddie Adams Workshop.

Santiago Mejia, my photo editor during my first semester at The Guardsman,  has gone on to intern with The New York Times.

So, today I start my adventure.

Watch out world, my turn to get some...

Event Photography Flash vs. Video

Well, I just had a member of the conference that I am shooting tell me she has a medical condition and the flashes I am using are causing her to feel ill. 

Oddly, I just spent almost $500 on external battery packs, diffusers and stands (plus accessories) so that I could make some killer light from a nasty lit conference room.

Luckily,  I had an idea of shooting video also. I had hoped to upsell the client, or at very least, have a portfolio piece to get work doing videography for conferences.

I was stressed because I wasn't going to be able to do both.  I got myself in too deep.  I am always trying to learn a new technique and master new equipment. Sometimes I give myself too many things to do.

Sooooo... down come the new lights and now I get to focus on video! 

This is exciting. 

I turned lemons into a margarita! 

Well... we'll see, right?

My First Mobile Entry

We are just going to test this app out and see how she works. 

I should however make it pertinent to the blog which is about my photo journey.

So...

Recently I shot a couple of conferences which we use a lot of strobes for because conference rooms have hideous lighting. 

I think a hundred years ago the architect union and the photographer union got together and decided to only build crap lighting in hotel conference rooms so that there would be more work for photographers. 

I am just wondering what the photogs had to give up to the architects?!?

Anyway...  we commonly aim our strobes up at the cieling (I am sure you have seen this and thought we were being stupid).  This, however, allows the light to hit the ceiling and bounce back as a much larger (albeit dimmer) lighter source. 

This generally works wonderfully.   Yet i found that if i am shooting wider than 50mm, i am too close to the subject and my light (from the ceiling) hits them straight down.  This causes huge shadows under the eyes, nose, chin, etc...

Not flattering.

(I will post some examples)

So, i bought this new flash diffuser which lets me shoot straight up, but also gives me some light that will hit the subject straight on. 

I will also post some photos after my gig next week alomg with my findings on if this difusser does the job or not.

Damn... this was supposed to be a test of the mobile blogging app... it better friggin' work now!

Welcome to my Blog

Hello everyone.

If you are reading this you likely know me, so I shouldn't need to introduce myself.  However, maybe you are an alien (excuse the ignorant earthling term for you guys from outer space) and are intercepting our interwebs and have some desire to know about me and my lovely photography journey.

Since I am not planning to make any of these posts too long, I will just give a brief synopsis of why I am starting this blog, and in subsequent entries you can get to know me better.

I have recently taken my final photo class to acquire a degree in photography.

I have spent the past 4 years studying full time and working nearly the same.  It has left me little time do anything else.

One of the things that I've always thought that would've be fun would've been to keep a journal of all my crazy experiences, insane bosses, exciting classes and fun projects.  (too many modal verbs in that sentence)

So here is my brand new blog.  I will be talking about new things that come up in my jopurney as well as retelling old stories.  It will be a little like "Lost", except I hope to have a much better ending!

Oh... by the way...

I am...

Nathaniel Y. Downes
www.Shutter2Speak.com