Profile Photo

I just had one of my portraits added to a website. It is of EWU Music Professor Michael Waldrop. He teaches percussion here at the University and is a very interesting and thoughtful person. He called me because his current portrait was outdated and he need a new look. I shot it with Norman strobes through Chimera soft boxes. I shot it with a Nikkor 85mm f 1:1.4 lens wide open to give a narrow depth of field. It is much better than his previous version.

Flickr Banners

After searching for universities with flickr accounts in an effort to see how other institutions use this resource I found a few that were doing interesting things with web implementation. The University of Charleston uses flickr to feed a flash banner on their homepage. The images used can be found in their set here.



New Jersey Institute of Technology uses a similar approach feeding a rotating web banner on their homepage with images pulled from flickr here.

It makes total sense to use flickr in this way. Edits to the banner don't have to involve touching the code, simply update the flickr set that the banner is pulled from. Cloud computing is evolving into a new method of content control. Also the update to content is instantaneous. Our current web server takes over an hour to update a web page, with flickr as soon as the content is updated in the set you simply refresh and the content is posted to the web page.

Definitely Worse Than My Bark

Here is a photo I snapped during a recent photo shoot at one of EWU's Summer Dental Camps. It is a mounted in the dental chair and is used to educate students on proper use and technique of dental instruments. I think these things bleed less than the human equivalent. The bokeh, the greenish tint and the polished shine of the gums make for an interesting photo.

Web Shooting

I have been working on a series of marketing photos for my employer's new website which is several years in the making. The images are to be used for the rotating flash banner. The banner is to have it's graphic element on the right side. The banner is 960 x 321 pixels. Subsequently the Rule of Thirds is out the window. I am basically shooting "Halves" where I cut the photo down the middle and stuff on the right is in focus and the stuff on the left is a blurred out.

In my camera cabinet I found a truly great lens. It is a Nikkor 85mm 1:1.4. I had the University pick up a Canon FS-72U lens filter set with a ND 8 neutral density filter. With the combination of the super fast 1.4 aperture and the ND 8 I can get extremely tight depth of field. Here are a few examples.

Study Abroad: Cross Boundaries

Here is a video that I just finished for Eastern Washington University's Study Abroad Progam.

Another New Eastern Theater Ad

Here is another ad that I mixed.

Moving Keyframes in Motion

I just happened upon a strange quirk of Apple Motion 3.0.2. Maybe it's existed all along in previous versions but I just found it. When you keyframe a behavior, in my case keyframe the speed of a Motion Path, and move the behavior on the timeline the keyframes don't move. They stay rigid to the time of their creation. This causes problems when you want to move a layer with a behavior to a different spot on the timeline because all that beautiful motion you just created has to be redone.

But, I found a work-around!!! Simply slide the behavior to the new time you want in the timeline. Place the play-head on the first frame of the moved behavior and then select the clip the the behavior is attached to. Simply press the letter "i" to set a new In-point. The clip should start at the same point as the behavior. Now go to the end frame of the behavior, be sure to left arrow key back on frame select the clip again and press the letter "o". This sets the Out-point of the clip to the same as the behavior.

Challenge Course Leap of Death

Here's a shot of me jumping for a trapeze on Eastern's Challenge Course.

New Eastern Theater Ad

Here is the newly completed theater ad for Eastern Washington University. It will play regionally in theaters before movie. Eric Galey and Stu Steiner created the spot. They asked me to come in and mix the piece which I was glad to do. I hope you enjoy it. Tell me what you think about it.

Cross-Processing Effect

This is a shot of author Pat McManus I shot earlier this spring. I StumbledUpon an online Photoshop CS3 tutorial recreating the Cross-Processing effect. Back in the days of film, chemistry was a big deal. Each individual film stock had precise chemistry and processing recipes that had to be followed to generate the desired look. Occasionally, photographers would have happy mistakes where they followed the wrong recipe for particular emulsion. Colors would shift dramatically, grain would enlarge.

This is my attempt at recreating the effect. I had to tweak the tutorial a little bit . I think it looks like a lot like The Matrix.