Category: Core
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2019 Week Sixteen
Assignment: Groundbreaking
Assignment: Temple Square
Assignment: Easter Mass
Assignment: Flood Warnings
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2019 Week Fifteen
Assignment: The effect of domestic violence on children
Assignment: Greeted with hugs and tears, nearly 100 Utah National Guard members return home after a Middle East deployment
Assignment: Planned Parenthood, ACLU announce federal lawsuit aimed at striking down Utah’s new 18-week abortion ban
Assignment: go out and find something
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2019 Week Fourteen
Masked Intruder
The Interrupters
Assignment: General Conference
Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square
Church Leadership
Assignment: ‘It was like the end of the world’: Shop owner recounts robbery suspect crashing truck into his South Salt Lake business and police shootout
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2019 Week Thirteen
Assignment: Karaoke
Katmandu
State Street, SLC
Assignment: Hotdogs
State Street, Orem
Assignment: Cindreia’s Mother
Level Crossing
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2019 Week Twelve
Assignment: Auburn v New Mexico State, NCAA Tournament
Assignment: Spring Weather
Assignment: Utah Jazz v Phoenix Suns
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2019 Week 11
We lost a true champion of our children this week. A friend who had made a difference in many lives, especially those of my two children. Heather we will never forget you and the kindness you freely gave.
Assignment: Dreamscapes
Assignment: Climate Change Walkout & Rally
Tough week.
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2019 Week 10
Some weeks are meant to be forgotten. Welcome to this one.
Assignment: This cannabis patient is believed to be the first in Utah to face drug charges since the new state law was enacted. Prosecutors later dropped all counts.
I’m getting a lot of practice taking photos of people choking up at press conferences.
This week on xxx xxx: wrong information, vague directions, unclear guidance. Nothing I didn’t already know, but I would have been better off playing it conservative instead of trying to outwit reality. None was serious but then when you work alone you overanalyze it over and over.
The rules I remind myself of: don’t trust or pass on any information unless you check it out, don’t settle for incomplete direction, and why
did youxxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx didn’t you just shoot from the public street?
Assignment: Utah Jazz v Oklahoma City Thunder
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2019 Week Nine
Assignment: Utah Jazz v Milwaukee Bucks
Assignment: Press Conference on Vapes
Assignment: Planned Parenthood Rally
Assignment: Utah Jazz v New Orleans Pelicans
Thinking about how using the Leica has made my vision
healthmore creative… Manual focus has been a good thing. Rephrase – Manual focus with the 21mm has been no problem at all. Manual focus with the 50/1.1 is challengingand I’m not using that lens enough to master the physical aspect of focusing on moving subjects.The 35 Summicron hasn’t been seeing a lot of use, but focus-wise muscle memory is good. Not to where I was before, where I could dial in focus without looking, but not to a point that I’m missing moments.The missing moments happens after I’ve focused, dialed in exposure, and am watching the scene ready to fire. The figure is in perfect pose, the dog’s head is distinctly looking left, or the drop of water on the icicle swells as it begins to fall. I trip the shutter and there’s a fatal pause as the moment passes, then the shutter clicks. The resulting shot is maybe 1/8th of a second late.So the slow process of composing and focusing increases the creativity dramatically. But the fatal flaw of the slow operation results in FAIL. To be fair To put the blame where it belongs, it only happens with the Visoflex, which is needed for the 21 (and also the 50 atf1.1).Too many words.
The rangefinder view is something I grew to love, but I’ve clearly moved on to great EVFs, which give me an exact version of the final image in the viewfinder. I set my EVFs to monochrome, which brings a crisp emphasis on line, shape, and pattern.
Tracking through the past five or so years of my work, or even further back, there is a pattern of rebelling against the equipment
required by the job of a newspaper photographeravailable to a newspaper budget.When we went with the Nikon D1H and its 1.5x crop sensor, I felt like I was staring at everything through a straw. In reaction, I began to expand the frame by shooting huge composite images made of dozens or even hundreds of frames.
Then it was the EOS 1-D Mark II and an array of lenses that weighed more than anything I’d ever carried around. The reaction to that was to move to a series of small cameras that were clunky and unnatural, though lightweight.
At this point, after nearly a year back with the Leica M, I’ve turned on the smaller, low quality cameras. I don’t use them anymore. And I’m being drawn toward glass of the highest quality.
Maybe there are two years left in my career. I ask myself, Why take a photo with anything but the finest lenses in the world?
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2019 Week Eight
Assignment: Opiod Press Conference
Looking back the week was weak photo-wise, bookended by a press conference and a February football game.
Assignment: Stallions v Hotshots
UNPA Contest Results
Had a good showing in the UNPA contest this year. Seven awards…
2nd Place, Photo Essay – FLDS Evictions
2nd Place, Photographer of the Year
Peace to those who allowed me to document their lives in these photographs. I hope I was able to honor your joy, your sacrifice, your loss, whatever it was at the moment we stood together under the sun.
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2019 Week Seven
IdeasProjectsBeen wondering what to do about UNPA – it’s time to put out a call for entries and yet we’re still waiting on some results from last year.
One morning this week I had an idea for one of my vacant domains, where instead of a contest I could have all the photographer friends send in their favorite photo or project they did in 2018 and make a beautiful site showcasing each photographer and their work. It could be a monthly update, grow and grow, on and on…
I got so psyched up about the idea that I was going to call a photo editor across the way and pitch the idea, to ensure that the photographers working for them could participate without any issues.
Within a couple of hours the mind slowed down and the idea was thrown on the stack of ideas that are going not to be done. I still love it, though. Fifteen years ago we could have done it.
All week I’ve planned to resign from UNPA. I have a draft email from last year ready to go. Nineteen years of volunteer work on that project is something to be proud of. Someone else can take up the reins.
Then again, the industry is so much diff than it was. The community connection… I’m not sensing it.
Then again.
The week covered a lot of miles. More photos than text.
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2019 Week Six
Idiots at Work
You can laugh because no one gets hurt in a YouTube video.
Assignment: Encircle LGBTQ center opens in SLC to combat youth suicide
Assignment: Utah Jazz v San Antonio Spurs
Jazz won…
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2019 Week Five
Write your own joke: To get a
pressmedia pass from the Utah Legislature you’re required to take Workplace Harassment and Abusive Conduct Prevention Training.Someone tells me the training is supposed to stop lobbyists from going after the interns.
Of course, the benevolence and lack of judgment toward others as taught in the training isn’t always apparent in Utah lawmakers’ proposed legislation.Assignment: State of the State
Ran into someone
who used to be a XXXXXXX. There was no need to talk about details, we both know the math and how it probably works out on a chalkboard for the next two years.Woke up in the night and thought over and over about the situation. Finally got bored with it and went back to the book I’m reading, On the Front Line: The Collected Journalism of Marie Colvin. No matter how bad your problems are, reading about Saddam hanging people over a fire until their legs slowly burned up…
Not really.
Assignment: Utah v Oregon
Waiting for the Governor to speak and a guy comes up, Is that a real Leica?
We go on to have a great conversation racing through the past forty years of photography – shooting sheet film, Hasselblads, photographing bombs exploding and missile engine tests with high speed cameras on the proving ground.
It’s the kind of thing that happens when you carry a Leica.
Photographing birdwatchers. Is that a Leica?
We lost Shawn this week. At 35. Just a boy. He had a loving family who gave him a fitting sendoff. I’ll always remember photographing him and Scott in a fountain thirty years ago.
Assignment: Utah v Oregon State
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2019 Week Four
Images > words this week.
A few from a new ongoing series taken with the Leica and 21.
Finished the week off by installing Pi-Hole. Everything looks so clean now. After two hours, 756 queries blocked, 23.9% of traffic. Brilliant.
Assignment: Selection of New Salt Lake County Mayor
Posting the most interesting, not the most popular.
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2019 Week Three
The Leica and 21mm continue to give me unique angles…
Assignment: Mitt Romney meets with Weber County Commissioners
Assignment: Women’s March
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2019 Week Two
Assignment: Vigil for fallen officer
Confession
For thirty years I kept things pure. Now I have done the unthinkable: I have mounted a non-Leica lens onto a Leica M.
I will never speak of it again.Yeah,
we’ve all done horrible things butthat was really bad.I have a 21mm again. The distortion is nearly non-existent. I am blown away, as I expected to be.
Driving South
Assignment: Cedar High Redmen
The Long Drive Home
Day Off
After working all week and being out of town for three days there is finally a day to spend together. We’re together on the couch when the phone rings – Possible active shooter at a shopping mall. You need to go.
I’m trying to cup the phone so she doesn’t hear. That’s what you do these days, try to hide the news you’re hearing, seeing, and reading so that all the everything-awful doesn’t get to her.
The week began with the vigil for the fallen officer, where I stood next to his family and listened to their loss. And now I’m supposed to drive toward what could be a mass killing. I grab my kit and start the car. It’s only fifteen minutes away this time.
Assignment: Shooting at the mall
Luckily it wasn’t a massacre.
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2019 Week One
Assignment: Gymnast Kari Lee
I find myself momentarily monumentally bored with the SLR camera.
In its place I have taken to using rangefinder cameras. This move opens up my vision while at the same time causing me to miss moments, at least until I re-tune my rangefinder skills to their previous levels.
It’s a tradeoff I’m making in order to be more creative
, and I want to see exactly what I’m getting.The cool kids will tell you that equipment isn’t important, that gear talk is lame. As if equipment choices don’t have a huge impact in your work.
Each item you equip drives you down a specific creative road, and yet we’re not supposed to do gear talk.I will tell you that the sameness of old gear puts you in a rut. And I can say from experience that once you lose confidence in a piece of equipment – a lens that after banging around for a while now seems soft, a camera that seems off – you will rarely be able to restore confidence in that piece of gear.
The ultra-fast 50mm with EVF on the Leica M is a dream. Things look good.
OldPeople who hate having their picture taken look good. It’s a fresh look.The look comes at a cost. Shooting at f 1.1 comes with a razor thin margin of focus -> manually focusing is challenging and slow, requiring the subject to remain as still as possible. And the EVF puts me into live view with its many delays. With this setup there is no deliberate catching of moments, it’s strictly up to cruel fate.
But there are successes.
In this new world the SLR remains on my shoulder for telephoto work, and also, to reassure people that I’m a real photographer. The big lens is part of the costume.
.:.
Assignment: National Guard Deployment