What’s up everyone. I just finished up editing some photos from my junior year spring break trip to the Dominican Republic. I went with my buddies, Al Devers, Kevin Mueller, and Tim Bedford. After all of the mamajuana shots and poolside bars, I decided it was a good idea to explore a bit so I could snap a few pictures. Unfortunately, I didn’t think I had remembered to bring a memory card for my camera until I found one in the depths of my camera bag.
Carolyn, our graphic design expert, made some special Nerds logos for the holiday season! Which is your favorite?
Matt spent last semester shooting a full-length film, and while it still has yet to come out (blame Louie Sallerson), he’s quite proud of his work on the opening titles. Using a Manfrotto suction cup mount, he was able to do some fun stuff with the camera (while also being terrified of it falling-off/hitting-something/breaking-$$$$-of-equipment).
The first version was one he whipped roughly together the night after shooting:
The final version is the edit by the director (Louie Sallerson), and Matt did the motion titles:
I recently watched 180° South, a documentary following Jeff Johnson’s journey from California to Patagonia. After seeing him drop everything to ‘just go’, I’m thinking about my stay in Colorado and California last summer.
Now, I’m in the process of attempting to plan a similar trip (smaller scale of course) in the U.S. Any suggestions? Here are some of my shots from last summer.
This summer I was asked to create a patch for Lincoln Memorial Garden’s 75th anniversary. The organization in Springfield, IL wanted a patch due to its association with Scouting (both boys and girls) historically. That’s right, it’s story time. As the epic tale goes, in 1936, Harriet Knudson got the crazy idea to create a living memorial to Abraham Lincoln. In the initial planting of the acorns for the gardens, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts volunteered to do the work. The end. At least that’s the short and sweet of it. So my concept for the design was a Boy Scout and a Girl Scout looking off into the horizon as a “mysterious,” hazy figure approaches. Can anyone say “young Abraham Lincoln”? These images show a brief progression from my initial drawing to a more refined image, a base colored imaged and the final image with some shadow work (please ignore the typo…it was fixed in the final image, ok? RELAX)
If you have a farm or orchard near you that lets you pick-you-own fruits, I wholeheartedly suggest you go. I went apple picking at Honey Pot Hill Orchards yesterday in Stow, MA, which is just west of Concord and Lexington. It’s a bit too early for the McIntosh apples, but the other varieties were amazing. I used the same camera setup as the SoWa Market, so here are a few of the best stills.
My girlfriend and I went to the SoWa Open Market, which is really hip artisan and farmers market in Boston. Every Sunday, May through October, 10am-4pm on the South End, when the organic growers and hipster art makers get together, crowds follow. The produce looked yummy, and I decided they might make a good wallpaper for my computer, so I started snapping away. I was using my girlfriend’s Nikon D60… I know… I outfitted it with her dad’s old manual focus SP lens that is so old school, the aperture is on the lens itself. Using a conversion ring, I threw the Tamron 90mm Macro f/2.5 on there and started shooting. The rest of the pictures are on Flickr and Facebook.
As April arrives each year it brings lots of cheer to those who dislike the harsh winter months we experience in the northern states. Flowers bloom, the grass begins to grow, and people enjoy spending time outside. For me, though, Spring time means something else; the arrival of another storm season. I have always been a bit of a weather nerd… OK, so a big weather nerd, and this year I had the chance to take a storm chasing “vacation” with 10 other students majoring in meteorology. Anyone who follows any national news knows that the 2011 storm season was incredibly active and one of the deadliest ever, and I got the chance to spend 16 days studying and photographing some of these storms on the Great Plains.
These pictures were taken just outside of Topeka, KS on May 21st. This was our first day on the road, traveling from Champaign, IL through Kansas City and into the Topeka area where the chance for storms was extremely marginal (The National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center gave a 5% chance of tornadic activity in our target area). Surprisingly, 22 tornadoes were reported on this day throughout the area. The first picture is of a mesocyclone with strong rotation (apparent by the tiered levels of the storm all the way to the funnel cloud at the base), and the second is a closer picture of the funnel itself.
The following day, the chase was just a couple hours to our south near the Kansas/Oklahoma/Missouri border. We set out for a target of Miami, OK where this picture was taken. The picture shows a funnel cloud and storm with strengthening rotation that would continue on about 25 miles up the road to produce an EF-5 tornado in Joplin, MO which killed almost 160 people.
This photo was taken near Oklahoma City on May 24th. This particular picture shows a large, violently rotating funnel that I witnessed touching down shortly after this was taken. The thick haze on the horizon plus a distance of approximately 12 miles between us and the storm made it very difficult to photograph, and only after lots of contrast enhancement was I able to make the storm visible in the photo (hence the low quality). Also, unlike typical tornadoes, this one was so large and violent that the entire cloud base seemed to touch the ground.
On one of our final days on the Plains, we stopped briefly to shoot some lightning pictures from the approaching storm. These photos were taken near Hays, KS.
Last summer I got the idea to do this picture with conte crayons. I had always thought one of my older brothers (Jeff) looked like my dad, who in turn looked like HIS dad. In other words, I thought my brother, my dad, and my grandpa O’Brien looked very similar in their early 20’s. So I gathered photos of them at around this age, and combined them. Ironically, during the process, I realized how much they DON’T look alike. But I still think you can seem some similarities. It was definitely a frustrating/rewarding experience. Copying people accurately is a real pain in the ass. I still think it could be better, and like many of the projects I work on, I reserve the right to work on it and make it better some day…Probably won’t though…I have a fondness for half-assery.
Digital is dead. I’ve picked up shooting film stills. It’s an exhilarating feeling. Rather than simply creating digital pixels, it feels like you are actually capturing a lasting moment in time. I’ve been shooting on an old 1971 Canon Canonet 28 with a 40mm lens at f/2.8 and a newer Nikon F100 with an old Tamron manual 90mm at f/2.5. I got some stuff around Boston and Cape Cod. There are more on Facebook and Flickr, but here’re a few of the scans.
