Columbo the Beast

Edna and Columbo

   Over the weekend I was visiting my friend, Debbie in Montgomery, when innocently enough she asks "would I mind taking a few photos of Columbo for her Aunt Edna" I knew her Aunt adored this dog so I was glad to take  pics of Columbo. I also knew it would be an easy photo shoot of a docile, sweet faced basset hound.
    Aunt Edna and her sister Ruth (my friends mom) have a culminated total of 160 years of living between them. The sisters are both eloquent and kind, always welcoming you in to their home. I especially appreciate the sisters company since the Aunt Edna's and Ruth's in my life are now gone.
   Setting up for the shoot was easy enough. I just opened the front door and beautiful sunlight illuminated  the living room. I anticipated using all manual camera settings, since I was going to have plenty of time to focus on Columbo.  Everything was good to go.
   I couldn't have been more wrong about my subject. Every time I pointed my camera at him he acted as if I was a hunter getting ready to maim him, immediately moving out of my focal range.
 At one point I had to change my manual focus over to autofocus, I just wasn't fast enough for the seemingly sedate beast. Yes he now was a four legged beast to me, no longer an innocent  sleepy eyed basset hound.
   It was a test of wills, still I forged forward on all fours struggling to catch that perfect image of Aunt Edna's beloved companion. I'd  almost have the perfect shot set up, lulled in to believing he was down for the count when suddenly up he'd pop back up the second the camera was pointed at him.
   Later in the shoot I remember  hearing Aunt Edna's words of encouragement in the background " I think Columbo's about done now." While out of the corner of my eye I can see my friend contently napping on the sofa.
 
   It was now 2 hours and 236 images later with my knees talking to me and  I still hadn't captured that perfect image when Aunt Edna's daughter walks in the door and says, "oh wow your'e taking pictures of Columbo, he doesn't like his picture taken." I glanced over at my rested friend on the sofa with  a now noted smirk on her face.
   Yes a quicker more experienced  photographer could have captured that beast right at the get go but I still have a few more safari's to travel before I reach that level.
  What  I'd like to say about that day is I was able to capture a prize winning image but it just didn't happen. What did happen was I took some cute dog pictures for a grateful Aunt Edna. More importantly I used my camera for the good of someone besides myself.
   Call it what you want i.e. community service, paying it forward,  but as a photographer you have unlimited opportunities to do so much good at your fingertips.
  Photographing Columbo was a great learning experience  and truthfully a lot of fun.
  Why not give it a try and share your photographic skills?

Do photographs lie?

   This photo was submitted in the St Louis Camera Club competition by Skip LaRue, this past January. The club picks a variety of themes for their weekly competitions. Skip's image garnered  honorable mention in the advanced salon class for the toy theme. 
   Does Skip's image lie? Was the boy actually in the photo with Barbie when it was taken? I'd say not, he appears to be photoshopped in to the image. Does it matter? Absolutely not! This photo is not meant to be a documentary. Its hilarious entertainment in its finest form! 

Spanish photographer, Samuel Aranda wins 2011 Photo of the Year award

Arab Spring shot wins World Press Photo award

By TOBY STERLING | Associated Press – 21 mins ago

• 
  Samuel Aranda/New York Times - In this photo provided on Friday Feb. 10, 2012 by World Press Photo, the 2012 World Press Photo of the year by Samuel Aranda, Spain, for The New York Times.
  
  
  

  AMSTERDAM (AP) — Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda won the 2011 World Press Photo of the Year award on Friday for an image of a veiled woman holding a wounded relative in her arms after a demonstration in Yemen.

  Jurors said Aranda's photo, taken for the New York Times, encapsulated many of the facets of the uprisings across the Middle East collectively known as the "Arab Spring," one of the major news themes of the year.

  The photo was taken Oct. 15 in a mosque in Sanaa, Yemen, that was being used as field hospital after demonstrators protesting against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh clashed with government forces.

  "The winning photo shows a poignant, compassionate moment, the human consequence of an enormous event, an event that is still going on," said chairman Aidan Sullivan. "We might never know who this woman is, cradling an injured relative, but together they become a living image of the courage of ordinary people that helped create an important chapter in the history of the Middle East."

  The woman is almost completely concealed under black robes, and she is wearing rubber gloves as she clasps her relative, a thin man whose torso is bare, grimacing in pain.

  "It stands for Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, for all that happened in the Arab Spring," said juror Koyo Kouoh. "But it shows a private, intimate side of what went on, and it shows the role that women played, not only as caregivers, but as active people in the movement."

Striking image found on pinterest

SCC Photography Invitational

Viewed Invitational images after class yesterday. Always enjoy seeing Richard Glass photos. His images always pop out at me because of the vivid colors and intriguing architectural views. Would like to see some of his basic images w/o photoshop or other software intervention.

I was interested in seeing the Hopeville pics.  Would have liked to seen more of the subjects interacting with each other in their living environment.

Smoke images by Erika stuck out in my mind the most. The smoke curling up was oddly soothing and appealing to me. I found the images a little mysterious. Who was at the other end of the smoke. I was also wondering what camera settings the photographer used to record the smoke. They did a wonderful job taking these images.

Dr Harold Edgerton, "pioneer of stop-action photography"

Stop-action photography
An inventor and an artist, Dr. Harold Edgerton, a professor at MIT, pioneered the strobe flash, stop-action photography and a method of taking super-fast images called Rapatronic.
These images allowed very early times in a nuclear explosion’s fireball growth to be recorded on film. The exposures were often as short as 10 nanoseconds, and each Rapatronic camera would take exactly one photograph.
Harold Edgerton’s most famous picture was that of a bullet going through an apple. Taken in 1964 with flash duration of about a millionth of a second using a specially built strobe, it became a very famous image.
The .30 bullet, traveling at 2,800 feet per second, pierced right through the apple, disintegrating the latter completely. Edgerton used this image in his MIT lecture, “How to make applesauce,” to illustrate that the entry of the supersonic bullet is as visually explosive as the exit.