I am Moving

I am moving, well a cyber move. My blog will now be at home on our newspaper website
www.macon.com.

I really appreciate all the interest in my blog. It has been a lot of fun to do, another outlet for the passion I have for this wonderful artform. I hope someone has
gotten a little more interested, been inspired and learned a little from my
humble ramblings.

Follow this link to find me

http://www.macon.com/almostinfocus/

Again, thanks for reading.

Y'all come on over.

After 30 Years It Still Grabs You

This was from 30 years ago. The negative sleeve says "Fire On Poplar
Street." The lady's face says it all.

The clothes date the image, but the expression is timeless. Photographs
are like that. The good ones transcend time. All photographs are moments
in time held forever, but some are shortlived, with meaning lasting only for
certain people.

Others have a quality that can still touch someone 30 years later when viewed
for the first time. The top image grabs you while the second just doesn't
have the impact. Same room same day by the same photographer
with the same lens and camera.





The first one is an image of her. She is captured surrounded by her loss.
The viewer relates to her, she is the key.

But what do I konw. I just point Nikons at people.

A Bit of Trivia

Here we go with some more old pictures. Got a combo of some of my favorite things here. You have a dancer, huge windows with nice light, hardwood floors and Tri-X film. Can it get any better? Oh, yes, pushed in Acufine to 1600 ISO.

For those of you too young to have ever dealth with film, let me explain. Tri-X is normally rated at 400 ISO. Want to shoot at a higher shutter speed in low light? You kick up your ISO in increments of 400....so you would go 400 to 800, then 1200, up to 1600.





You shoot your pictures rating the film at 1600 ISO, then compensate when you develope. The normal developer for Tri-X is (or was) D-76. gave nice even tones,
typical development time was 8 minutes at 68 degrees. Time changed as temp went up or down. Warmer developer, less time, cooler meant more time.
To push process your film, you increased the development time by half for each stop(400 to 800 meant you added 4 minutes.)

With each increase in time, you increased the grain in your film, lost shadow detail and blocked up highlites. The more you pushed the worse it got.

So along comes developers like Acufine and Diafine. Acufine was good for 1600 ISO and Diafine was good for 2400ISO. Acufine made nicer negatives, Diafine made more grain and got really contrasty.

So, now you have a good bit of trivia.

Go Figure

Here's a couple of more from the oldies vault. Both are late 1970's
in downtown Macon.

The first is one of the many remakes of Cherry Street, Macon's main
drag. Over the years the street has been redone for various reasons.
This particular one was called the Cherry Street Prominade. The
street was routed around very large planters made with railroad
cross ties. Traffic weaved around them, was to made it nicer to
walk downtown, I guess. Had a nice look, but is now gone forever.





The second one was done a couple of blocks over on Second and Poplar.
While folks wanted more foot traffic on Cherry Street, some of the
businesses complained about people blocking store entrances
waiting for the bus.

Go figure.

Just For Me

Okay folks, here are some pictures I did just for me. The mushroom photo is right by my house. Been looking at them for several days knowing I wanted a picture. This
morning I decided to shoot it, with the sun coming through the trees. Wish the exposure on the sun had been a bit better.



Later in the day I went to photograph Victor Montes and Carmen Velasco. Their's is
a great story. They are co-workers and good friends. Victor needs a kidney, and Carmen is giving one of hers. While I was photographing them, Victor's nephew and niece came in the room eating their ice cream bars. Too good to pass up. If not for this blog, no one would have seen them



The last photo was done today for the Sports folks. Warner Robins High place kicker David Clark. I saw this assignment yesterday and knew what I wanted to shoot. Low angle, pop some flash on him, and shoot a really high shutter speed to darken the sky.

A bit scary having your face that close to the ball being kicked, but what won't we do for a good photo....

I know I said I did these today just for me, but guess what I shoot most days is just for me. That keeps me happy.

The Labor Day Race-1991

After shooting and blogging about the Labor Day Road Race, I dug out some old
transparencies from the 1991 race. Wow. Seems like it was overcast a lot of
Labor Day mornings.

These photos were done at the Hardeman Avenue water location. I always
liked shooting there because of the view back up the hill. It was a good
mid-point to get the leaders, too.



These were shot on Fujichrone 200 film. It was really good color. I would have used
a higher ISO for my available light shots, but started this roll in the dark using flash and a
slow shutter speed. This roll was mostly rejects back in 1991, about a half stop under. Too
dark for our production process back then. We had no way to correct exposure or
color correct. You were stuck with what came out of the camera, and no chimping. No
screen on the back of the camera to see what you did.



The end of the roll, I shot without the flash, and underexposed.

Anyway, take a look, and appreciate today's digital cameras.

Another Labor Day Road Race

I photographed another Labor Day Road Race today. I am not sure how many this makes.
I was talking to Congressman Jim Marshall before the race, and asked him how many he has run. He said he wasn't sure, but it was a lot. Same with me, a lot.

It is much easier now, doing digital. Also much easier shooting since the start is almost in the dark. Back in the old days we had to shoot color slide film, and the fastest we had was ISO 400. Now we just kick our ISO up and shoot what we need. I did get creative with my flash, slowed my ISO down to 200, dropped my shutter seed down low, and let the runners blur. The top image worked out real well, main subjects faces are nice and sharp.

I really like the bottom photo. My flash ran out of juice when I hit this frame, so it is totally available light, no flash to stop the action. Like I said I like the image a bunch, but wish the baby's face was just a bit sharper.

Oh, well....next year.