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"Slides" by Wes Aldridge
I am almost ashamed to share this with everyone. You are looking at the slides from the first roll of slide film that I have ever shot.
The slides in the frame are processed from Fuji Velvia 50. I must confess, I am in love all over again. No digital shot I have ever taken can compare with the vivid colors of these slides. The colors simply explode from them. I was looking at these shots on the light board and thought I needed to commemorate the moment.
I bumped my ISO up to 400 and shot at f/8.0 handheld at 1/40th of a second. I was directly over the slides and focused on a shot of a goose that I was looking at through the viewing loupe.
"Tiny Droplet" by Wes Aldridge
Here is another look into the fascinating world of macro photography. Even the most common item can take on a different dimension when it becomes larger than life in a macro photograph. Thank you Mr. Boshier for letting me use your extension tubes once again to achieve this interesting up-close-and-personal shot... and no, you shouldn't start charging me for the times I want to use the tubes!
Shooting with extension tubes is extremely difficult. Focusing with the front ring on the lens is more or less out of the question. I fix the ring in the position closest to the subject and move the camera back and forth by centimeters to focus on a subject. The extension tubes allowed me to get the front element of my lens about 1 inch away from this tiny 1-inch leaf on the potted miniature rose plant that I received for Valentine's Day. I used my E-TTL 550EX flash shot at 1/128th power as the light source pointed dead on to the subject with a diffuser screen, shot at f/3.2 at 1/200th of a second.
The water droplet itself was probably less then half an inch in actual size and the depth of field for the shot is crazily shallow. I used my 50mm f/1.8 lens, which has a normal minimal focusing distance of about 1-and-a-half feet without the extension tubes. If I had shot the lens wide open at max aperture, I don't think the water droplet would have even been decipherable, as you can see how difficult it is to make anything out in the shot at f/3.2 as it is.
With this shot as support, I think personal studies into macro photography must continue to be examined. There is a whole new world just waiting to be shot out there.
"Wascillay Wabbit" by Wes Aldridge
You don't expect to see a scene like this driving on Mallory Lane in Cool Springs behind the Galleria Mall. This carnage isn't typical of quaint urban settings. Of course I had to shoot it.
I drove by these three enormous (about thigh height) vultures standing on the side of the street at rush hour. I parked at an A&W Root Beer stand and mounted my f/2.8 70-200mm L lens to my Canon with my 1.4x teleconverter. The beasts were busy fighting over and shredding the carcass of a rabbit that had seen better days. I crept closer and closer to them and they seemed to hardly notice me.
I got within about 10 feet of them and shot away. The scene was that of carnal instinct and nature being intertwined with suburbia. They jumped in and out of the road, where the poor rabbit lay roadkill, until one of those black monsters had the great idea of dragging the carcass out of busy traffic and onto the curbside grass. It was very interesting to watch the three big birds screech and bite at each other. It was even more interesting to watch them violently shred the animal's flesh as they were feeding.
This is by no means a pretty picture. My motivation is not to offend, but to share what I considered an interesting moment of my day. It was nature in a harsh form on display for many robotic office workers to witness on their frenzied drives home after a strenuous day of pushing pencils and sending faxes from their cubicles. Can you imagine the executive from Company X driving by, talking on his cell and drinking his latte seeing a scene like this? Isn't it divine? Ha! I love it.
"Glass Under Blue Sky" by Wes Aldridge
I was driving down Commerce Street when I looked up and saw this great mirrored building. The glass had several different shades of blues that complemented the tones in the sky behind it. The angles of the building were great and I moved around until I found an angle that really confuses the eye. The geometry of the building enabled my mind to run crazy with the composition concept of leading lines and rule of thirds for this shot. I was pleased to snap a few frames and jump back in the Jeep happy.
I had been listening to A Perfect Circle's 2nd album "Thirteenth Step" before I got out to take a shot. When I cranked the engine again, the CD player spit out these lyrics: "Call it aftermath, she's turning blue. Such a lovely color for you," from the song Blue off the record.
I thought, "Well, if that isn't a sign that I should use this shot for the blog, I don't know what is." These lyrics fit pretty tightly with this shot. They meant a lot to me during some of the tougher times in the not-so-far-removed days of my past. And now, they have had a little resurgence with my art.
"Beautiful Day" by Wes Aldridge
Today was spectacular. The weather was nicer than it has been in quite some time. I got out of bed around 2 p.m.-ish and went to Dury's and bought two beautiful rolls of Fuji Velvia 50 slide film. I forgot how exciting it was to go to the camera store and buy pro film. I definitely need to put the digital camera down and shoot some good ol' slide film more often.
This shot, another of NashVegas, was taken from the pedestrian bridge on the side of the Cumberland River where the Coliseum (Nashville Titans football stadium) sits. I was walking around with two cameras slung around my shoulders with a tripod. It was a rather fun time. People would look at me and I could just see them saying in their minds, "This guy must mean business."
I got several really nice shots today, but I went with this one because the colors were so similar to the sunset I posted from my final day in Corydon, Indiana. I just drew a parallel to how two places can be so different, but something as simple as a sunset can tie them together.
The shot is of course digital (no time to process slide film today), shot at ISO 100 on a tripod at f/2.8 with a shutter speed of 1/1250th of a second to get that nice black silhouette.
"Corydon Sunset" by Wes Aldridge
Another sun has set on another day and another photo assignment is complete. Even if Corydon, Indiana doesn't have much more than corn fields, the susnets are pretty nice in the flat land. Here is one for you shot from Interstate 64 between Corydon and Louisville, Kentucky.
And here it is... your moment of zen.
"Comfort in Paranoia" by Wes Aldridge
Ok, so I don't know if I was playing the game in my head or if the man in the chair was playing it. I was doing a shoot at the new library located on the Indiana University Southeast campus. I walked by this guy sitting in the chair. He eyeballed me nervously as I walked by with my camera. I noticed he kept looking over his shoulder, seemingly paranoid, as if someone was watching him.
As fate would have it, I ventured up to the second floor and saw some railing around an opening in the floor that looked down onto the lower level. Yup, and you guessed it, Mister Nervous was sitting right below. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to take a shot of him. He needed it in his life, I know he did. So, I stealthily popped off this frame. He was a part of my game. I caught him. I caught him.
He looks pretty comfortable with his legs propped up on the table. Well, little did he know, my eyes were watching him now. He had been my subject and all his paranoid fears had just come true.
I guess the game was all in my head and maybe I am a little crazy for thinking like this.
"Dedication: The Show Must Go On" by Wes Aldridge
Today, the photo blog almost broke the 365-day consistency. I went through hell and high water to get this pretty little flower pic online. So the story goes...
I decided to take a different approach, in leiu of the currently falling snow, and try to find something worthy of shooting at the lovely Hampton Inn I am staying at. I shot everything from reflections in the indoor pool to a strange elevator sign to cigarettes in a giant stone ashtray. I thought the relection of the flowers were just pleasing to the eye and something a little more positive and uplifting to post for the day, so I went with that shot. Now, here is where the fun starts.
I am using a loaner iBook while my PowerBook is being repaired. It doesn't have an Airport card, hence I can't use the hotel's high-speed wireless connection. So, I got a network bridge from the front desk. Turns out the snow storm knocked their Wi-Fi down, so no dice. Then, I tried the good ol' trusty dial-up modem. I just kept getting booted off and never was able to establish a connection. After a few hours of trying to get wired into the Matrix, I thought no post tonight. That is mainly due to the fact that the thriving metropolis of Corydon is minute in population, i.e., no places were open to get Internet access this late at night in a small town. And I panicked. Yessir.
Then, survival mode kicked in. I thought, "I've gotten this far, no time to start giving up on this project." And so I grabbed the YellowPages and started thumbing through and brainstorming. I called all the area hotels and one finally agreed to let me use the computer in their business suite. Then, the guy asked if I was a guest... "No" I says. I thought, for the love of all things remotely holy, just let me get on the freaking Internet. I begged a little before the guy could really change his mind and he agreed to let me use it since it was so late in the evening... and he was probably worried I might hunt him down like a wild dog if he changed his mind on me. He could hear the desperation in my voice. So, I jumped in the Jeep and drove out through the billowing snow to the Holiday Inn Express. And there, my friends, is where I got wired and the show goes on.
"Thirsty" by Wes Aldridge
This photograph tells a sad tale of human nature. I walked by a planter in downtown Nashville late tonight, very upset that I couldn't find a reasonable photo to post on the bloc, and I saw this. A cheap, generic bottle of mouthwash from Dollar General Store. It was empty, as you can see, turned upside down with the lid beside it. Not a drop remained in the bottle.
I assumed (and we all know what happens when one assumes) that a transient had made this a part of his nurturing for the night. I had heard stories about alcoholics sometimes drinking Listerine to get their fix when no other drink was available, but I had never seen anything quite like this. It was rather haunting. All the things inferred and implied from it.
Maybe I am totally off the mark here, but I don't think so. I mean, why would a bottle of highly alcoholic mouthwash be lying empty in a planter in a tougher part of downtown? I don't have the answer. I just hope that whomever used it had a better night because of it.
The shot itself was more based on opportunity than technique. I had no way of getting around the fact... I lit it with a punch flash from the camera, straight on. You surely can tell. It just lied in near total darkness. I thought there was some merit of recording the image and sharing it though. It really made me stop and think. I was shocked by it.
"Hot, hot, hot" by Wes Aldridge
What can I say? The hot sign was on, so I stopped. It was a wonderful idea with a head full of night time sinus medicine and Turkey. It was a welcome thought with the dreadful loss of one of my heroes today. Damn, that doesn't leave many. There is still Q., thank God.
I asked the kid behind the counter if I could shoot the donuts on the conveyor belt. He obliged. I stepped behind the counter and he shouted, "you can't get behind the counter!" Too late my young friend. The shutter has already snapped and I am one day closer to completing this year long journey through the mind of the photographer.
The shot settings? Figure them out for yourself, if you care. I have a feeling you don't. Toodles.
"Too weird to live, and too rare to die" by Wes Aldridge
Today is a horrible day. My icon fatally shot himself. Hunter Stockton Thompson is gone. He was a journalist and I wish I could have had only one conversation with him.
His work is the reason I am where I am in my life at this moment. After I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, I got really interested in the wild ride he made of journalism. I got the itch, thanks HST. Its strange how his semi-fictitious representation of himself in his character Raoul Duke could mean so much to my life. He was why I began writing ruff editorial columns for my university newspaper and then started digging deeper and writing news and features and then, picking up the love of my life... my camera.
If I had never read Fear and Loathing, I would be pursuing the disgusting Music Business World and not having the great traveling adventures I am afforded with my job at the magazine publisher. Can you see? The value of literature?
If it weren't for him, I never would have acquired my lustful tongue for Wild Turkey. Now, that above all, would be have been a tragedy. I went to the archives and dug this shot up from about 2 years ago. I shot it because of HST. Could it not be more perfectly fitting for the man? A ripped, twisted, distorted and wonderful bottle of Turkey... bone dry from an agonizingly wonderful night of insanity. He was the one that proved to me that you can push yourself to absolute physical and mental limits and produce amazing works of all kinds. I aspire to be half of what he was.
I wish everyone could have had the chance to know him the way I do. I never needed to meet him, I learned more from him at a distance than I ever could in my entire life. But, now I will never get a chance to sit with him and get him to sign all my first edition publications of his books that I have collected over the years. Honestly, I just wanted him to sit and talk to me with his beautifully articulate mind and knock a few drinks on the books as his "signature." We are friends. I don't think ill things of him being gone, I am just proud to have gained the things I have through the life he had. A part of me died with him today.
A very fitting quote I leave you with from the pages of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
Raoul Duke: There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.
"Cold Eye" by Wes Aldridge
Well, it is Saturday night, minutes before midnight, fun is being had, and the blog shot is still going to get posted. How cool is that?
This shot is one I have waited on for a while. I acquired some extension tubes that allowed me to get close enough to the subject to do this shot. I was shooting the 24-70mm lens with a few extension tubes on. I lit it with my 550EX with a mild cyan gel filter that I bounced off a white card about 3 feet from the subject. I think it worked just fine.
Have a good one all.
"That's Clean" by Wes Aldridge
World, meet Jarvis. He is a hilarious guy that is the photo assistant at our company. Jarvis keeps us from falling on our faces with the massive archives of slide film we have and the submitted photos that pour in for our magazines, he also comes and plays with us on various local shoots we do.
He never fails to keep us laughing, but on top of that, he doesn't mind when we experiment on him as a model for portrait work. If I were him, I would have told us to get out of my face and get a life by now. We get him to pose probably far too much. Thanks for being a good sport, killer.
Here are the shot specifics. ISO 100 at f/8.0 and a shutter speed of 1/200th of a second. I handheld the camera with a blue gel on my new 550EX, pointed directly on the subject with a diffuser screen, attached to the HotShoe on camera. I held my 420EX to the left of the subject in my free hand with a red gel on it. Shooting at 1/200th pretty much eliminates the ambient light from the flourescents in the room and allowed the gels to really do their thing. I had this image in my mind of doing something that looked like vision through 3-D glasses. Anyway, it is a little something different to look at and I think I will pursue more experimentation with the red and blue gel filter lighting mix. Also, notice the shadow on his face from the rim of his glasses... I personally think its pretty clutch.
And by the way, if you aren't one of the boys back with me in the photo department, you won't understand the title of the post or the name of the shot.
"The Dead Field" by Wes Aldridge
Ah, nothing like shooting landscapes and scenic shots in the dead of winter. It is usually a bust assignment if you need any kind of vegetation, other than a holly bush or pine tree, in your shots.
I was in Leiper's Fork, Tennessee, shooting today. It is a tiny town south of Nashville where life seems to slow to a crawl. I went into Puckett's Bi-Rite supermarket and had one of their "world famous burgers" as locals in overalls and John Deere hats joked and laughed at me while I did some food shots of my meal. It is a different world there. I feel something majestic in it, a wonderful place to visit.
This was a random field that I drove by. It was dead, and perfect for what I wanted. I think the vivid colors of the sky and fence make a tremendous contrast with the dead tree and rotten grass. The shot pretty much is void of any photographic rules, I don't like to consider those anyway. Everything inside me told me not to take this ugly shot, but I simply had to. It was a perfect scene. I couldn't have asked for much more vivid contrast. I think the extreme contrast of this scene is fitting to the contrast of Leiper's Fork. It isn't much of a town, all 2 miles of it, but something about the people there make it so alive.
"Limitations" by Wes Aldridge
Well, you would not believe the trouble I went through shooting this photograph. The long and toiling hours spent in the studio... the contemplation of every minute detail of the shot... the hours upon hours of photo editing.
No. None of that at all.
This shot was taken at my desk at work. Yup. I used my new Canon flash (550EX) on camera to get this one. My desktop was glass, not mirrored, and that is what the computer sits on top of. I shot at 1/15th of a second, without a tripod, by balancing the edge of the camera on the desk. I shot with such a slow shutter speed to eliminate the scan/refresh lines that would have appeared on the computer screen if it were faster. I tilted the monitor a tiny bit to eliminate the flash flare from appearing in the shot.
This was an exercise in how you can get very good photographs without having tons of expensive gear. I shot with an aperture of f/5.0, so you don't even need an expensive Canon "L" series lens at f/2.8 to get a shot like this. You don't even need a backdrop... the orange was simply from the color on the wall behind the desk. Heck, I didn't even clean the glass on the desktop or the glass on the monitor before the shot.
I love to set up intricate studio shots, but this shot is great and it took zero set up or pre-thought. Just some food for thought.
"Pillars of Fire" by Wes Aldridge
I frantically searched for a shot as the sun was going down. I was hoping for a dramatic sunset, the clouds were amazing today. Anyway, the sun sunset wasn't nearly as great as I had hoped for and I wasn't getting any very good vantage points of framing ideas to shoot it with. So, I started to get annoyed.
I ended up instinctively driving towards the Parthenon. Centennial Park will always have a shot waiting for me. There are just infinite possibilities over there. The Parthenon itself has appeared on this blog before, but I got a little something different this time.
It was obviously illuminated with red flood lighting for Valentine's Day. I thought that was pretty unusual and I need to grab some shots to document it. I shot the obvious shots with a total view of the structure with my ultra-wide lens from a distance, but that wasn't what I was seeing at the moment. I needed to look harder.
I ended going up on the side steps of the building and looking up to find the moon. And there my shot was. I tilted the camera all the way back on the tripod, closed the aperture to f/22 to focus to infinity, set the shutter to 20 seconds at ISO 100 and went as wide as I could at 16mm. It is something a little different. I like how the positioning of the moon in the shot totally throws off the photographs symmetry.
"Stoned Colours" by Wes Aldridge
This shot has no meaning at all. It was just a funny random thought that blossomed into a photograph. A little game of "can we make it work?" We did.
The container was a glass vase with glass or marble flat rocks in the bottom with a blue hue. I shot my 420EX Speedlite up from the bottom of the vase with blue and red colored gel filters on top of it. I shot at 1/200th of a second to eliminate almost all ambient light in the room at f/5.0, ISO 100. It looks almost as if the vase is floating in the air. The rim light on the top of the water abiscus is pretty neat as well.
Happy Valentines everyone.
"I [HEART] Vodka" by Wes Aldridge
This shot was taken at Sam's Place on 21st Avenue in Nashville. It is a cosmopolitan, of course. Yummy Stoli vodka and cranberrry juice, with a lime. Gotta love that. It is so fu-fu, and you know I don't drink it. But in mixed company, you are bound to have one floating around. Thank God it makes for good photographs.
This glass was handheld up close to the light over the table to let the color of the drink shine through. In the background, to the far left, there is a traffic light with all three (green, yellow, red) lights lit up. To the right of it, a Tennessee Titans logo shines brightly.
Anyway, this was with the trusty ol' crappy 50mm f/1.8 lens. You know, bars are very dark, so be amazed at these settings. ISO 100 with a shutter speed of 1/60th of a second. Pretty sweet, huh? No pixelation or distortion at all. Gotta love that. Plus the person that was holding it had a lot of vodka, bless her heart. Well, enjoy.
"Thumbs Up For Good Ideas" by Wes Aldridge
This shot is proof of a bad decision on my part. My final assignment in Franklin, N.C., was to shoot a new trailway on Cowee Mountain. The sun was perfect and the weather overall was pretty stellar for a winter day. I love to go out into the wilderness, so I was totally excited about this assignment.
I traveled on several forest service roads ascending the mountain side. The crude roadways were nothing more than dirt and loose rock steeply winding up to the mountain peak. I couldn't go more than about 5 m.p.h. in the Impala I rented from AVIS. I creeped along about 10 miles worth of dirt road up the mountain to around an elevation of 5,000 feet, and then I saw the snow. I had been driving trying to find the trail for about 1 hour and 45 minutes, so I thought I should keep going and get my shot.
Stupid. The snow covered the road. If you notice, the road is extremely narrow and a significant drop off is on the side. I kept trying to drive through the snow and the wheels kept sliding a bit. It scared the hell out of me, but I still trekked on because I NEEDED the shot.
I finally got to the last forest service road the trail was supposed to be connected to. Just my luck, the entrance to the damn road was blocked off. So, yes, I idiotically drove through snow-covered, narrow mountain passes to try to get this shot and then the final stretch was blocked off. And I learned a valuable lesson: Sometimes the shot just isn't worth the danger you put yourself in. But, forget that... where is the adventure without a little danger?
Another assignment in the books.
"Down On The Corner" by Wes Aldridge
This is a sight that makes me happy. In Nashville, you can look on the corner of 21st Avenue and Wedgewood when any political event is occurring and see masses of protesters. When I drove by the Macon County Courthouse in the small town of Franklin, N.C., I saw John Womack and his wife JoAnn, from left, Trish Severin and Doug Woodward exercising their First Amendment rights, standing shoulder to shoulder visually sounding their "Voices of Peace."
John said some people can't understand or get confused about his involvement with "Voices of Peace." He said his protest is not really one of anti-war, he is "more interested in working for peace." He said he doesn't understand why more people aren't trained in peace, like soldiers are trained for war. He said imagine what might happen if the money pumped into the war in Iraq was used to train soldiers in peace instead. John's point is an interesting one to listen to.
Sometimes in the smaller communities that I shoot magazines in, I wonder if these people know another world exists outside their city's limits. Today, as motorists drove by honking their horns and giving the four demonstrators the occassional "thumbs up" sign, the awareness and political interest of a sleepy little town was evident. I love to see people exercising their rights as a free-speaking citizen of this country.
SIDENOTE: Arthur Miller, a great writer who penned such amazing classics as "Death of a Salesman" and "The Crucible," has died today. Review his works, pass on his ideals and let his legacy continue.
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