http://nikonrumors.com/2012/02/06/nikon-d800-announcement.aspx/

PDF Brochure here:

http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d800/pdf/d800_28p.pdf

1.

The first image is of actor Christopher Walken. The subject is very close to the viewer and there is no makeup. It has kind of a dark feel and the blacks seem to be very black. The lighting on Walken’s face looks high key, minus the white background. It is obvious that the image is lit, but how it was made and to what extent I do not know. Looks like it was studio strobes at the very least. The color is probably moderately toned but it is not over-saturated, most likely contrast, levels, blacks, local burn and dodge/etc.

Found here:

http://blog.ashleysimko.com/post/34585725/this-enormous-portrait-of-christopher-walken-hangs

By: Martin Schoeller

2. The second image is a fantastic environmental portrait that is all about simple geometric form and color. First and foremost, the images is about a yellow blob in front of a blue background. On closer inspection, it is a background of sailboat masts and a man in the front with a fishing overcoat on. The color is excellent and it was probably lit with speed lights on location. The lighting appears to be a bit harsh for my taste and maybe a larger or umbrella or soft box may have been used. It also looks like it was a cloudy day or there were strobes powerful enough to overpower the sun, since the image has a dark, ominous feeling.

Finally, the image is almost a hybrid standard portrait/environmental portrait. It is shot as a 3/4 shot, without much background information, but the fisherman’s coat and the limited background provide enough information to also make it an environment portrait.

Found Here:

http://photoadventuresofc.blogspot.com/2011/11/environmental-portraits.html

By: Kevin Cruff

The route I took was I-70 to US 40, exiting at Midway Truckstop, and taking 40 through Old Franklin, approaching Boonville from the North.

See the Missouri page in my Places Gallery for an extended set of images from Boone County, including some abandoned homesteads I’ve been exploring.

Above: A selected few images from my recent work, below in my post I have linked to the full galleries.

It’s been a busy six weeks. I’ve been on half a dozen separate trips, as many shoots, all while balancing the holidays and heading back to Missouri to work with POYi. Seasonal illness laid me down for over a week, which added to the backlog of posting.

In December I published my Southwest Chief story, chronicling 48 hours on Amtrak’s Southwest Chief from Kansas City to Los Angeles. Rail travel in the United States is a shadow of its former self, with lower ridership outside of the New England corridor. Amtrak uses freight rails today in the American West and the ride is bumpy and slow. You don’t go on the train for the efficiency, – it’s all about the experience. Meeting fellow passengers, etc., is what makes the difference.

Once in California I headed up to Death Valley and the Southern Nevada desert for a few days to camp and spend time in the National Park. With moderate winter temperature and a new Moon, the night photography was excellent and it was great to get off the grid for a while.

I continued to work on meeting with sources for my Salton Sea thesis project, which is slated for completed and exhibition in Fall of 2013, stay tuned. When in Imperial County I stopped by Salvation Mountain of Into the Wild fame and sadly learned that Leonard Knight is in a nursing home and probably won’t be returning to the mountain. You can see my images from the day, the full story, and some older portraits in my Salvation Mountain gallery.

After Death Valley I worked with the Catalina Island Conservancy for a day on the island photographing a chartered Jeep Tour, with proceeds funding various Conservancy operations. I spotted and photographed a Catalina Island Fox, an endangered subspecies that the Conservancy is now saving. A beautiful day in a rugged and remote place to be sure. I look forward to working with the CIC in the future on additional work promoting their mission in such a wonderful place. I posted a gallery of images that are more landscape than promotional edits.

Keep an eye out for images with the Nikon 24mm 3.5 PC-E lens. It’s a fantastic tool for making panoramas and getting landscapes sharp from a few feet to infinity. It certainly proved its worth in Joshua tree and beyond. Once the weather warms up in Central Missouri I look forward to producing a landscape series with it around the Missouri River and Boone County.

Also, make sure to take a look at the gallery section of the site, under Places. I am now up to about 25 galleries I places Ive visited and explored over the years. The destinations are domestic and international, and are a mixture of journalism and travel/landscape photography. Some of the galleries are still under construction and will be populated as I finish migrating my 4 Terabytes of archives. It is crazy to think that I was 14 when I got my first digital camera, and I am 23 now. Technically, thats almost a decade of photographing! Whew, and its just beginning.

In the mean time, my colleagues and I are hunkered down processing entries for POYi, or Pictures of the Year International. We have about 1,500 entrants, and were going through each an every image to make sure they are within contest guidelines. This year Hipstamatic is reigning as the new entry, after New York Times Photographer Damon Winters won an award last year for his candid iPhone-tography of soldiers in Iraq. Ill be honest and say the iPhone imagery this year are all copycats that don’t meet the bar. That’s just my opinion though, stay tuned to the Reynolds Journalism Institute in Mid-February for what the judges think.

Image shot 20 minutes after sunset at Dante’s View in Death Valley National Park, CA around December 21st.

Happy New Years!

The deserts of the Southwest are a fascinating place, both for their raw beauty and varied climates. Winters can easily get below freezing and Ive spent a night freezing in single digits and snow in Joshua Tree National Park. Ive also melted in 115 degrees in Death Valley in the summers.

There is a sense of history in these places, like the Mojave Preserve, where abandoned mines and homesteads slowly waste away. Its a memoir of westward expansion, dreams fullfilled or otherwise, and of the ability for people to survive adverse conditions to make life better for themselves.

Its an eerie site to see these desolate places, abandoned and in the background of immense open space bounded by hues of magenta, red, purple, and blue when the day breaks and the night falls. Sometimes you are hard pressed to see other folks out in remote wilderness, and thats they way I like it, at least for a few days.

This year sees a homecoming to Death Valley National Park and surrounding region, a place I have not traversed since I was 17. Also on the itinerary is the Southern Nevada desert and the likes of Beatty and Pahrump. Maybe I’ll run into Art Bell. Pass on the alien abductions, please.

For some cool photos check out Ken Rockwell’s past trips there.

The reason for going here is to see some ghost towns like Ryholite, which still has plenty of buildings and parts of a bank. We’ll be hunting Desert Pupfish who dwell in cracks and crevasses under obscenely difficult conditions and manage to survive. I suspect meeting some high desert residents and hearing their life story to round out the experience is in order.

Sounds cool, lets go.

Overall Coal, a Love Story, is a very well executed multimedia project. It was the gold winner of the 2012 COPY Gold award in large multimedia and it shows. The site uses HD quality embedded Vimeo clips and a clean layout for navigation. There does not appear to be flash, except in maybe some of the site layout. It is probably CSS based. Overall the color scheme is pleasing to the eye with black, gray, and white as the main colors for the background and text. There are also yellow accents for some subtitles that fit in nicely with the theme.

It is clear that the creators spent a lot of time making the project. The depth of the interviews, material, and cinematography are very high quality and show that some serious planning and storyboarding went on before hand. The combination of talking head interviews is paired nicely with landscapes and B roll. There was probably some serious funding behind the project too.

The overall interface is clean and easy to follow. Most of the videos are easy to access and load reasonably fast with a good Internet connection. The point of the project is clear on the top of most pages with the electric plug and art. There was also a geographic focus on the Virginia Coal country and a wide array of subjects, from a coal miner to his daughter as Miss Coal in a beauty pageant. Overall the project is successful because it combines a good presentation technically and aesthetically with strong journalism and excellent video.

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FLASH

On Friday October 21st the Rockbridge High School Bruins celebrated their annual homecoming football game. Feeding hungry fans was Ben Amiot, whose daughter is a Senior. Amiot has been a volunteer grill-master for the snack stand at football games for the last four seasons. He will hand over the reigns at the end of this season.

ben amiot interview