Category: Core

Assignment: Ritt Momney at Kilby Court

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Yellowstone Bear World

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Storm and Sunset

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Driving North

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Tuesday

Chilling and fascinating reading: Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster. This is a masterpiece.

They flung us there, like sand unto the reactor…At first there was disbelief, there was the sense that it was a game. But it was a real war, an atomic war. We had no idea—what’s dangerous and what’s not, what should we watch out for, and what to ignore? No one knew…Every April 26, we get together, the guys who were there. We remember how it was. You were a soldier, at war, you were necessary. We forget the bad parts and remember that. We remember that they couldn’t have made it without us. Our system, it’s a military system, essentially, and it works great in emergencies. You’re finally free there, and necessary. Freedom! And in those times the Russian shows how great he is. How unique. We’ll never be Dutch or German. And we’ll never have proper asphalt and manicured lawns. But there’ll always be plenty of heroes.

and this

Why aren’t you writing this down? What I’m saying? You only write down what you want to hear. Giving people ideas. Saying things. You need political capital, is that it? Stuff your pockets with dollars? We live here, we survive here. No one’s guilty! Show me the guilty ones! I’m for the Communists. They’ll come back and they’ll find the guilty ones. F*ck! Coming around here, writing things down.

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Wednesday

Yesterday I heard a comedian quote a vaudevillian: “They only remember the home runs.”

Doubling down on this even more than before.

Modern. 16 frames per second, magic autofocus tracking, zoom lenses.

Traditional. Manual focus, composition, the decisive moment, single frame drive mode.

Those are the two beliefs. Both are true.

The best photographer will be operating in two states – using traditional creative skills to identify the best form of the photograph in front of you, then the modern technology to ensure that the frame is captured (I hate that word). And then, finally, that in the editing process that the exact as-close-to-perfect frame is selected and displayed.

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Assignment: Black Lives Matter Protest

State Street

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Assignment: Transportation

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Assignment: DJ

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Assignment: One Year Later

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B & J

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Jordan River Parkway

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Utah Pride Festival

Memorial Day

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Assignment: Pro-Choice Rally

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Assignment: State Championship Soccer

Roosevelt, Utah

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Grand America Hotel

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Assignment: Real Salt Lake v Toronto FC

Assignment: Capitol Reef National Park

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Assignment: Utah Royals FC v Houston Dash

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Assignment: BYU v Utah Softball

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Assignment: University of Utah Commencement

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Second Place x3

Assignment: Studying the Spring Runoff

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Hiking Through Arches

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Assignment: El Día Del Niño

Assignment: Groundbreaking

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Assignment: Temple Square

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Assignment: Easter Mass

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Assignment: Flood Warnings

Assignment: The effect of domestic violence on children

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Assignment: Greeted with hugs and tears, nearly 100 Utah National Guard members return home after a Middle East deployment

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Assignment: Planned Parenthood, ACLU announce federal lawsuit aimed at striking down Utah’s new 18-week abortion ban

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Assignment: go out and find something

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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

Assignment: Karaoke

Katmandu

State Street, SLC

Assignment: Hotdogs

State Street, Orem

Assignment: Cindreia’s Mother

Level Crossing

Assignment: Auburn v New Mexico State, NCAA Tournament

Assignment: Spring Weather

Assignment: Utah Jazz v Phoenix Suns

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.

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Assignment: Dreamscapes

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Assignment: Climate Change Walkout & Rally

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Tough week.

Some weeks are meant to be forgotten. Welcome to this one.

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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.

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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 you xxxxx xxxxxxx xxxxxxxx didn’t you just shoot from the public street?

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Assignment: Utah Jazz v Oklahoma City Thunder

Assignment: Utah Jazz v Milwaukee Bucks

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Assignment: Press Conference on Vapes

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Assignment: Planned Parenthood Rally

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Assignment: Utah Jazz v New Orleans Pelicans

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Thinking about how using the Leica has made my vision health more 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 challenging and 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 at f1.1).

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 photographer available 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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Assignment: Opiod Press Conference

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Looking back the week was weak photo-wise, bookended by a press conference and a February football game.

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Assignment: Stallions v Hotshots

UNPA Contest Results

Had a good showing in the UNPA contest this year. Seven awards…

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2nd Place, Photo Essay – FLDS Evictions

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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.

Ideas Projects

Been 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.

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The week covered a lot of miles. More photos than text.

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Idiots at Work

You can laugh because no one gets hurt in a YouTube video.

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Assignment: Encircle LGBTQ center opens in SLC to combat youth suicide

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Assignment: Utah Jazz v San Antonio Spurs

Jazz won…