Fall

I finally have a little downtime to post something. I didn't realize that it's been five months since my last post! Not too much has been going on, really. I have been staying busy with work, and I try to find a little bit of time each week to do some photography. I am working on a time lapse project that I will post on here once it is finished, but until then, here are a few pictures.

On Shoreline Trail -- a friend and I decided to go on a little photo walk through Millcreek Canyon and then up on Shoreline Trail.

In Millcreek Canyon -- apparently this part was actually private property (owned by the Boy Scouts), but there weren't any signs and the gates were open.

Another leaf--I was goofing off with the color hues between these two leaves, trying to see which style I liked better

Alpine Loop, looking towards Sundance.

John Deere tractor in Winnemucca, Nevada. I still need to send my sister a print of this one...

Taylorsville Days -- I wish I would have gone back about ten minutes later, when the lights on the Ferris wheel came on.

Festival of Colors

I finally got around to posting these pictures here, even though this all happened last week. I went down to the Festival of Colors with my brother and some friends. The festival is held every year to kind of usher in spring, and it involves throwing a ton of colored chalk around. We showed up, threw some chalk, walked around for a few minutes, and then went to get something to eat. I think we only stayed for twenty to thirty minutes or so. But hey, I'd never done it, even though TONS of people from BYU go each year. Anyway, so here are some pictures--

This is me just before getting into the car. The gray shirt over my should was the one I had been wearing the whole time, so this is my second layer of clothes.

Andrea, shortly after the chalk started getting thrown around

My bro

Our group--we did try to clean up before going to the restaurant, but we still looked pretty bad. I feel bad for the white tablecloth at our table...

Ian

My brother's hands, overlooking the festival

After the festival

Right when they started the color throwing--I had my camera inside a ziploc bag, with electrical tape sealing up every opening. Only the front of the lens was exposed, and I even put a SECOND ziploc bag over everything. I'm glad I did, because there were quite a few cameras that got destroyed from all the dust--

The colors really are that flourescent

Junkyard

My roommate recently bought a used car, but he wanted to get a few parts for it. He decided to take a trip to the junkyard, and I tagged along just to take a few pictures. It was kind of interesting just looking at all of the old cars, trying to picture what had happened.

Some cars looked like they had collided with a telephone pole, with the front part of the car completely twisted and deformed. Others looked like someone had died in them (okay, so some of the deployed airbags could have come from people hacking at the dashboard, stripping it for parts---it was still eerie though). One car looked like it had bullet holes through the windshield.

I just thought it was interesting, since it was only the second junkyard I've ever been to. This one was organized into rows, and you could look up on their online database which car model you're looking for. The only other junkyard I've been to was back in Georgia, and there was no organization whatsoever. That junkyard only had dirt roads that always seemed muddy, and cars were stacked one on top of the other and off to the side---anywhere there was room, really. And the "database" was the owner, who just knew which cars were on his lot, and he had a pretty good idea of what parts were still available. If you called on a slow day, he'd even strip out the parts you needed for the chance of earning a tip.

And my roommate decided to dress like a hobo for the occasion, which meant wearing 3D glasses just for the heck of it.

I just found the junkyard to be both unsettling and fascinating. It was interesting to see people finding a mini treasure trove of parts that they needed, but on another level, it almost feels like legalized grave robbing (not that I would know what grave robbing feels like...although we did stumble upon an old slave graveyard out in the woods in Georgia. One of the graves was open, and we could see a skeleton inside. We kept daring each other to climb in--nobody did, but it still makes for a random icebreaker in a conversation to throw that out there).

Lighting Class

So I just got back from a creative lighting workshop at Pictureline, and it was a blast. The workshop was led by Paul Van Allen, a Nikon rep who travels the country, teaching people how to use their Nikon gear. I was never a fan of flash photography, simply because I always felt that it was too harsh, washing out details and looking unnatural--well after tonight, I have completely changed my mind. Paul taught us how to set our cameras to trigger wireless flashes, and then we actually got hands on experience going to different stations. Each of the pictures below were ones that I took, but they are all based on lighting set-ups and compositions that Paul has displayed on his flickr account. The only exception was the water drop--that was taken with a camera that was already set up on a tripod (I believe that camera was a D300s), and I just had to put my memory card in. I still had to time the picture just right though. Anyway, here are the pictures--

The paint brush was clamped to a wooden dowel, with a bucket of lime green paint underneath. Right before taking the picture, you simply lift the bucket up to the brush to get the angle, and then time the shot to get a nice drip. I missed getting a drop of paint suspended in the air, but I still thought it was pretty cool.

Gumballs

Everyone was trying to get a perfectly suspended drop of water, but the line at this station was starting to get backed up. So I settled for this shot instead--I kind of like how the water is glassy smooth instead of rippling the way you normally see with shots of water droplets.

We all loved this station. And once you know how to do it, all sorts of possibilities just start to open up--I'm going to have a lot of fun with this stuff...

Sugar House - Time Lapse

I shot this video in Sugar House Park this past Thursday. I wanted to try and take advantage of the cloudy skies for some flat lighting. Anyway, I'm just getting a feel for the video on my new camera--I'm pretty impressed with it so far, and I'm looking forward to working on some different projects throughout these upcoming weeks (and try something outside of Sugar House Park). Feel free to leave your comments.

Sugar House Park - Winter from Jon on Vimeo.

Shoreline Trail

I was finally able to upload another time lapse test--this is from Shoreline Trail at the mouth of Emigration Canyon. And I apologize for the flicker...shooting a high contrast scene like that can cause some very tiny fluctuation in shutter speed with so many pictures, which produces a flicker when you play them back like this. Let me know what you think--

Shoreline Trail - time Lapse from Jon on Vimeo.

Valley

I went out yesterday afternoon to try and do some more time lapse experiments. I started heading up Emigration Canyon, but then I saw Shoreline Trail and decided to just walk up there. It was really muddy, but there were a lot of people still jogging on the trail. I thought everything looked great in-camera, and I didn't realize that you could get so much flicker while shooting time lapse--I'm still trying to read up on how to prevent that in the future.

Anyway, I'll post the time lapse test once it's finished uploading, but in the meantime, here's a picture I took while I was heading back down the trail. The temperature dropped a good 25 degrees or so once the sun went down, and I was in a bit of a rush to get back to my car. But I saw this tree with Salt Lake City behind it, and I figured it wouldn't hurt to take a quick picture. Luckily my camera was still on my tripod, otherwise I wouldn't have been able to set anything up since my hands were completely numb from the cold. Enjoy.