Ndidi's Picture Package

Photos by Ndidi Duru

We can't find the original photos that she ACTUALLY submitted anywhere, but these are sort of Ndid's Picture Package. And this is relevant to MY blog, because I stayed up until 4AM helping her make these photos!

The first photo, simply being the bottle with the "fairy" in it, which isn't shown, took us 3 hours to make, because we had a lot to figure out. First, we had to figure out how to light the bottle without showing too much of the background. We experimented with a few different ways. Snooting the light, shining above, shining through, putting a blanket over the flashlight. We found that putting a bit of black clay over the top of the flashlight and making a tiny hole worked the best and gave us the effect we wanted. :)

Next, we had to make the fairy. It ended up being a ball of clay with glow stick fluid on it.

The next challenge was figuring out how long to expose the photo for.  We ended up at about 30 seconds, which was long enough for me to paint the bottle and make the fairy "shine."

Next was figuring out how to make the fairy look like it was coming out of the bottle. We shifted the lid enough to make it look like it was opening, and then we took the fairy and spun it around in the bottle to make the view of coming out.

Finally, we used our excellent painting with light skills to make the fairly come out of the bottle and fly around the room. This one was slightly different because we didn't use the actual "fairy." We put some of the glow stick fluid on a napkin and that gave it a more "trailing" effect, so that's what we went with. :) We trailed it around the bottle and tried a few different ways until we got one she was happy with.

This took ALL. NIGHT. I went 24 hours without sleep for these photos, so. TOTALLY WORTH IT, THOUGH. THEY WON SECOND PLACE. :)

Sabrina's picture package

ISO: 200  f/4.0  SS: 1/250

Photo by Sabrina Larson

Sabrina's Picture Package got an honorable mention, and I didn't help nearly as much with hers as I did Ndidi's. Essentially, my role in this was just helping her make the "look" she was going for.  Basically, it came down to pointing the flash in the correct direction, and keeping the light from hitting the wall.

We had to get really creative and have poor Riley stand in a corner and hold a jacket over the flash to keep the light from hitting the wall.  I walked in to check on them a few times, and all I saw was a very soaked Riley trying to catch a falling cup of ice water. Over, and over, and over. I felt really bad for her.  I didn't really have to help much else than that, but it got an honorable mention!

ATPI Lesson #2 - National Geographic

Notes From Be A National Geographic Photographer

At Jay Dickman's class, I learned some really valuable information about being a photojournalist. He gave some great tips on how to go about dealing with the situations and how to be successful in the world of photojournalism.

Jay started by showing us some of us photos, which was. WOW, AMAZING! Some of my favorites were from Antarctica, where a submarine was coming out from under the ice. It was beautiful. Anyway, these were some of the notes from his class. :)

• You won't start at National Geographic. You can start small; start in newspapers.
• Look for moments. Look for the center of interest. Look on the sidelines. Look for funny moments! Look for sad moments. Look for emotional moments. Capture the eye catching moments.
• You're not always in happy situations. You may have to make your audience uncomfortable too. Uncomfortable photos are memorable.
• Timing is everything. Sometimes you may have only a few moments to capture an image. Sometimes it's pure luck, so keep your camera ready.
• "Build" your image in the viewfinder. You may have to wait for it.
• Shoot for what you're intending to use it. A cover is VERTICAL! Hint, hint.
• Being "press" doesn't make you invisible. You may find yourself in dangerous situations, but you are PART OF THE MOMENT! You are a part of what's happening, so capture the essence of the situation, but be careful.

He was very inspiring. His images kind of helped me look at what I want to do in a different light, and he definitely gave me some great information to get started, so I was really happy to have gotten the chance to listen to him. :)

ATPI Lessons #1

Photo by Ndidi Duru

I'm only using this photo because it was right after the lesson we'd gone to.
I only had one class that I thought was interesting, except Jay's. We went to a class telling us how to build our own online portfolio. He gave us some good information on free/cheap things to use.

• Buy your own domain name. Find a cheap host, and but your own domain. It looks much more professional to have an email be yourname@yourdomain.com than yourname@yahoo.com.
  - That also means you can host subdomains. That means you can use these pages to make client pages, to pick up/view their images.
• wordpress.org- Use the SOFTWARE, not the free blog. Much more useful.
  - Completely customizable and free.
  - Widgets
  - Mobile apps
  - Photo libraries
• Don't put a music player on your page, for goodness sake.
• BUY a theme. They're rarely more than $50. You can handle it.
• Vimeo/Youtube for videos

There is way more, but I'm kinda in a hurry, so I'll leave the basics there.
I thought it would be incredibly useful to at least get started, and for cheap. The total he gave us was around $300, so I thought it was an excellent workshop. :)

Final Portfolio Critique

These were my images that were critiqued by Jay Dickman.
I was really happy and surprised by what he had to say about each of them.

Overall, he told me that I had a good eye for capturing peak moments.
He told me that this definitely looked like a student's portfolio, though, because I didn't have a lot of "long term" images. I had a few that would be pushed out later on. He said the portrait of the little kid may be a long term photo if I wanted to go into portraits, or I'd keep the celebration shot if I was looking into photojournalism. But overall, it was obviously a work in progress.

He also told me that I needed to work on proper cropping. Cut the "days" sign out of the Strike photo, and it would be more effective. I never thought about that one before, so I thought that was helpful. He told me to not be afraid to get closer, to find moments elsewhere than what was presented right in front of me, and it's a long process, so keep working at it.

I thought that was really a great critique, overall. It wasn't a "wow, that's pretty" critique, so I appreciated it!

ATPI, Photo Package Night

ISO: 1600  f/2.8  SS: 3 sec

ISO: 800  f/5.6  SS: 1/100

SO, photo package night was a tough one.
I had been up for 24 hours straight by the end of the night. I was helping Sabrina and Ndidi for the most part, but I spent most of my time with Ndidi.

(images a few posts back)

To start out, we spent a lot of time just setting up. We had to get the bottle cleaned and get the "fairy" glowing. The glow fluid ended up getting in my eyes at one point. That was unpleasant...

We spent the first three hours working on just the first image. Finding all the right settings and how to light the bottle. How to get the fairy where we wanted. It was a lot of problem solving just for the first few hours, but we eventually got it.

The 4th hour, we spent on the second photo... deciding whether to light up the whole bottle. How to make the fairy look like it was coming out of the bottle. How to time it without blowing out the image.

The 5th and 6th hour, we spent just trying to get the last image and processing. We tried a few different ways to get the light flowing around the bottle. We started by putting a flashlight behind a cloth, but that was too bright and didn't really make a flowing anything. We tried just the flashlight. Same result, and there was no discernible color. Finally, we settled on putting the glowing fluid on a cloth and moving it around. Then it was just a matter of capturing the image we were looking for. We had to do it at least 20 different times just to make it look right, then another 20 to get an image we liked. 

But all in all, it was dedication for sure. 6 hours of work and my eyes still a bit dry by the end of the night, but both of the girls got an award!