The photos on this Blog were taken as part of a summer independent study class at North Idaho College. The project was to photograph events from May through August, 2010, for the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe. Special thanks to Jerome Pollos, my instructor, Marc Stewart, Public Relations Director for the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe, and Phil Corlis of NIC for setting up this class and handling all the administrative stuff. I am grateful for the opportunity these three folks and the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe made possible for me this summer!

The entries below act as a learning journal and contain my feedback to my instructor, Jerome, on my various assignments and tasks throughout the entire course. His and other comments can be found in the comments section below each post. Everything is unedited and completely intact the way it was on the last day of class, July 28th, 2010, except for the Feast of Assumption section which I was asked to shoot for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe after my class was over. This section was added afterwords to completely represent my summer photography efforts.

PLEASE NOTE: Some photo sets unrelated to the Coeur d'Alene Indian Tribe have been included and were used as instructional tools along the way. These were situations where I went along with Jerome as he shot photos for the Coeur d'Alene Press newspaper.

The first section below is my final portfolio. Everything below that is arranged from newest to oldest, so everything is in reverse order by date.

Please feel free to take a look and leave me some comments. I would love to hear from you!

NO NEW POSTS WILL BE ADDED TO THIS BLOG.



Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Rockin' the Rez - 6 year olds

What I have been trying to work on:
I have been trying hard to work on waiting for the moment rather than just shooting away. Additionally, I have been trying to get a relatively uncluttered background and surroundings or at least as un-distracting a background and surroundings as possible. From the artsy PJ stuff I have been trying to combine action with a good facial expression that describes mood.

Stuff I had trouble with today:
The pool area was very dark. I was using my 70-200mm lens at f/2.8, 1/125-1/320sec, ISO 2500 (thus very grainy). I kept trying to wait for "the moment" but with all the kids I kept getting a cannon ball or arms and legs or other craziness in the way. I think I will try short bursts of 2-4 photos next time to better catch the exact moment assuming I can anticipate it well enough. I feel like I got the moment before or the moment after THE moment I was looking for quite a few times. I'm glad the camera gear is somewhat water sealed because my camera and lens got soaked several times. Mental note: bring towel! I think my 17-50mm lens (not sealed) may have been sacrificed for the cause today.

Another challenging area is as soon as the camera comes out, the kids have been crowding around asking to have their photo taken. As soon as they notice I am aiming in their direction, they pose. There were many times when I was almost ready to pull the trigger when they made eye contact and waved and smiled - another missed shot! I am almost wondering if I would not be better off with the 100-400mm lens from farther away when there is plenty of light.

42 total photos taken
19 are not too bad

Click on photo to enlarge


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1 comment:

  1. NIC Photojournalism CourseJuly 15, 2010 at 3:59 PM

    You did a lot better with getting some expression and emotion in the photos than just people doing stuff. The shots of the kids in the life jackets and the boy in the goggles are nice. And the shot of the kid laughing while spinning the ball in his hand is nice. It would have been interesting to see a shot from straight down the pool's lane markers to give a leading line to it and give a little more environment to it.
    I want to see you get up close and personal in some of the upcoming shoots. Not so much by zooming in, but leave your widest lens on the widest setting and get physically close. Show some photos that bring us viewers right into the mix. The shot of the kids painting was a good opportunity to get in close and just wait. Even if those kids start to look at you and pose, just let them know that you just want them to ignore you. And if they don't move on to the next scene or wait them out. Don't shoot a frame until they go back to what they were doing. That's how I do it and it works most of the time.
    I'll see you in the morning and we'll go over more theories and ideas.
    Good job Andreas.

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