Five Minute Graphics...

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I've decided to add another set to my Flickr account. Rather than pictures of events, or belly dancers or disasters, these will mostly be pictures that amuse me for no good reason. Think of these as social commentary and social commentary. Done by someone not qualified to comment on society and who is not funny.;

All pictures in this set share three qualities - they are all parodies of things or conditions you find in socitey, they are all quickly and artlessly cobbled together in about five minutes and - being parody - they make "fair usuage" of existing works.

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If you are the owner of the copyright of any of these and want them taken down just email me with your demand (if you are angry enough to email I can only assume you are demanding). I will happily take the shots down. However, I will also share your email/demands/legal papers with my viewers here by making it into a graphic. I'll likely also post it on Facebook.

Yes, I am so powerless and pathetic that I find it a status bump to noticed by the famous and powerful even if it is just in a legal proceeding.

A helping hand to newer photographers...

I don't mean to be tedious posting so much over the last two days. But I was just checking my hits and noticed a couple of my links - the "Online stores you can set up. Write me with questions" section.


Now, you need to know that I do stand to get a little bump from one of these companies. However, I still stand behind the suggestion I am about to make. I have been using one of the sites to host my web store, Mikasiphotography.com. My experiences there over the last year have been really good. 

They have been limited mostly by my decisions on what to shoot. I don't like to do weddings, so when I do them I tend to charge low and not put a lot of marketing work into them. Still, using this web site I will be making an extra few hundred dollars off the site this month. 


In addition to the occasional wedding, I also post the results of shoots I do for bands on this site. 


This isn't meant to be a bragging session, nor is it a a bare-faced pimping of the site I use. What it is is an attempt to give some sound advice to any other photographer.

At least three other photographers and a pair of artists have helped mentor me.  So I feel obligated to help you. If you want to know more, you can email me. We'll have coffee and talk about what you need.

“No one was killed, praise the Love of God...” - Kenosha Explosion, the morning after...

 It was a new house and garage - but one gas leak and a spark later it's a pile of lumber

To see the entire set of pictures click on this link or on any of the pictures.

“No one was killed, praise the Love of God,” said one neighborhood resident, walking away from the blast site this morning.

Officials reported no fatalities from last night's blast – which is remarkable considering the extent of its damage. The explosion, which took place last night at about 11:15pm, totally leveled a newly built vacant house and garage. The blast was felt throughout a large part of the city.

Pictured from the west, looking east, the blast totally destroyed 

the home and garage and inflicted extensive damage to the two buildings 

across the street, housing Atlas Gym and the Kenosha Flea Market.

At 2113 55th Street, the house sat right on one of the city's busiest north/south thoroughfares, 22^nd Avenue. The blast, thought to be the result of a gas leak, was strong enough to break three second story windows at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church, one block south and three blocks east of the site.

Signs on church doors this morning announced there would be no mass, adoration or confessions due to “possible structural damage”. The church's preschool and Frank Elementary School, both in the neighborhood, were conducting classes today.

Signs on church doors this morning announced there would be no mass, 

adoration or confessions due to “possible structural damage”.

By noon today, numerous shattered windows in a one block radius around last night's blast had been boarded up. Repair persons, city workers, insurance company employees and a Milwaukee media wagon all walked the neighborhood, surveying damage. 

With temperatures in the 20's and snow projected just a few hours 

away, residents within a one block radius of the blast 

wasted no time getting windows boarded up.

22^nd Avenue was thick with traffic rerouted from 60^th Street due to an unrelated fire closing that street this morning. Countless cars slogged by, their progress made slower as drivers rubbernecked to see what was left of the house at the blast sight. 

 

The remains of the house at 2113 55th Street as seen from 55th Street.

Where once has stood a newly built home and garage, drivers saw nothing but an exposed foundation littered with small piles of lumber.

The west face of Atlas Gym shows extensive damage. 

Picture shot from a northwest angle.

Buildings housing businesses across 22^nd Avenue – Atlas Gym (directly across the street) and the Kenosha Flea Market (one half block south) suffered heavy damage. At the time of the blast there was one resident in an apartment above the gym. Emergency responders found him inside the building, making his way downstairs from his apartment. Either part of the ceiling or the roof had collapsed in his quarters. It is not known if he needed medical attention.

The outer walls of Atlas Gym showed outward bowing (north facing, above) and 

cracks and fissures along joints along the mortar (east facing, below).

Windows in the Flea Market were blown out. The stone walls of Atlas Gym showed numerous cracks along mortared joints, running both vertically and horizontally. The second floor outer wall along Atlas' north side showed some outward bowing. Virtually all of the windows on the side of the building facing 22^nd Avenue were blown in.

For more information on this story just Google “Kenosha Explosion”.

"Introducing America to Americans..."

was the mission of the FSA during America's Great Depression. The FSA (Farm Security Administration) would most likely be no more than an answer on Jeopardy if it were not for the team of photographers hired to document the Depression. Many of the Depression era images we take as iconic today were taken by Walker Evans, Dorthea Lange, Gordon Parks and others, in service to the FSA and ultimately to all of us.

Thanks to ChingChongBob1693 who posted this video. Do me a favor - if you liked this give it a thumbs up and maybe drop a good comment.

The Green Mill Poetry Slam and low light photography

 

Click any of the pictures to see them in all their full size noisiness. 

They're "Chunky-licious!" 

Last night a friend and I went to the Green Mill, a fantastic jazz venue, to check out their Sunday night poetry slam event. Before I launch into the technical crap know that you should definitely attend this slam! There are some really good poets reading there – and by poets I don't mean those boring dead people they force fed you in literature class. These are living, breathing people who fuse a sort of jazz, humor and feeling in their words. You can find out more about the slam here.

OK, now the technical crap - 

The goal here was not to get any great shots, but to experiment and see what could be captured. Rather than take 950 shots like last time (http://upyourasa.blogspot.com/2011/01/new-years-eve-punkmetal-show-at-rhode.html), I took just 12 shots, trying only to get Marc Smith in a halfway decent pose.

Here are the specs on the shot -

Format – RAW

ISO – 12,800

Focal Length - 39mm

Shutter Speed - 1/125^th

Aperture – 4.0

Picture Posted – the same shot was processed in color and black and white. An enlargement of approximately the same area in both photos was also processed and posted. All four pictures were posted at 72dpi with minimal JPG compression.

What I found - the reds in the stage lighting seemed to distort the picture. Intense reds seem to make the picture look “fuzzy” - I don't know how else to put it. If you switch from the color to the black and white you'll see that the image is much clearer. For the record, adjusting the curve of the reds down or desaturating short of going to b&w didn't really improve things.

Whether you look at the shots in black and white or in color it appears the focus could have been a little sharper (the shot was set to maximum sharpness in Digital Photo Professional, Canon's free RAW processing software). However, if you look at the closeups you'll see that the problem is not really focus-related. The issue us that the picture is incredibly noisy – that is the image is really chunky.

All photography is a matter of making trade-offs and compromises in order to get the picture you want. In this case, I wanted to get a low light shot of Marc Smith. The tools I used were fast ISO (12,800), maximum aperture opening (with this lens at this focal length 4.0), slowest possible shutter speed (1/125).

What I got for this was roughly the picture I wanted.

So what improvements could I make to get something more like I wanted? Next time I would use the following settings – 3200, 2.0 (which would mean bringing my fastest lens – a standard 50mm with a maximum aperture of 1.8) and a shutter speed of about 1/80^th. Shooting with a prime, not a telephoto, lens, the picture would have to be taken from farther away to get the same framing. Or I would have to settle for a more of a close up. The background of the shot would also be fuzzier. Why? Because a larger aperture results in less of a depth of field. This would likely make it a better portrait shot, drawing more attention to the focal point, the poet's face.

As always, I will happily accept any suggestions or questions. Thanks!

New Year's Eve Punk/Metal Show at the Rhode...

There is something intrinsically wrong with a 54 year old man spending his NYE at a punk and metal show. Or maybe not. Who can tell?

Punk came to America's attention in 1976, the year I turned 20. It was loud, obnoxious and nihilistic. Punk and I were a total fit. Here, 34 years down the road, I still have a fondness for the overwhelming wall of music it beats the ear with.

Now, I love shooting in low light conditions. I may not be worth a shit at it, but I love it none the less. The T1i came back from warranty work just this last week. The shop calibrated the auto focus and the results show a big improvement. What made this shoot even better than a sharper picture was that the guys at the camera shop showed me how to activate the ISO expansion. What does that mean?

Well, boyos, for one thing it means that I am not limited to the normal 3200 speed - with just a flick of a switch and a couple of clicks the camera can now shoot at insanely fast 12,800. And what does this mean? Simply, that I can shoot under even less light. True, the results are incredibly grainy, but heavy grain tends to have that old time newspaper photo look (yay!). And that's good. Way good.

In a change up from some of the stuff I normally do, you'll see that many of these shots have been editing twice - once for color and once for black and white (the B&W processing really brings out that newspaper look) or sepia. In some cases the black and white makes the picture look oodles better.

Anyhow, it's well after midnite and time for beddy bye. If you or your band was pictured in any of these shots and you like them, drop me a line to let me know.

Thanks for the show, ya'll. It was great listening to you!