Guerraphotography.blog

Web Site Critique

2010-02-26T15:07:00.000-08:00

For this assignment I found I website I really liked and one I was not crazy about. A site I am crazy about is the NBCOlympics.com site for the 2010 Winter Olympics. This site has everything you want to see and navigates the way a website should. A site I did not like so much is the Pictures of the Year POYi.org. This site is sometimes hard to navigate and does not live up to a site representing award winning photography and multimedia projects.

NBC’s 2010 Winter Olympics site has everything to do with everything Olympics. The main navigation bar at the top of the page is on every linked page and includes tabs such as schedules, sports, tweets & blogs, mobile alerts and photos. This navigation bar never changes and is always visible while you are at the site. This makes navigation between different sports simple because each sport is has the same appearance scheme.

The main page displays photography and information on current events and past events. Preloaded rollovers for different stories let you navigate away from the main page to view a number of different stories or events. These stories are all contained under the main domain so the appearance of the nav bar never changes. The video tab enables viewers to watch live HD events or past events in their entirety. This is great when you do not have access to a TV and you really want to watch an event while sitting in class.

In addition to the great multimedia appearance and easy navigation the site also has a wealth of information on counties and their athletes. On the main page for each sport there are inside look stories into each sport along with portraits and information about athlete.

I don’t know if it is the magic of the Olympics that makes this site interesting or just the sites effectiveness to deliver interesting stories.

The University of Missouri’s POYi.org is run by staff and students and represents award winners of many different categories including news stories picture stories and multi-media projects. Although the POYi site does not reach nearly as many people as the Olympic site, it does represent an organization judging art and should reflect artistic intent on the site.

On the main page there is too much text and one large photo. At times the site is hard to navigate and make you commit to looking at all of the images to find something you are looking for. There is no clear way to navigate the site. When looking at a photo gallery each image is represented by red dots rather then thumbnails. Thumbnails and preloaded images of each competition should be represented visually on a podium 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd with awards of excellence underneath.

The POYi website should have a standardized nav bar and less red text links. I know POYi does not have a very large budget and has to be updated everyday but it could be made to be more visually appealing.

Color Correction

2009-11-09T14:15:00.001-08:00

I decided to shoot my Color Correction assignment at Cold Stone Creamery on Elm and 10th. The point of the assignment was to use an orange or green gel to balance light inside of an area lit with incandescent or fluorescent light.

Aaron Vance Scoops ice cream for a 1/2 pan to a 1/4 pan between rushes. They use smaller pans because of all the seasonal flavors they offer.

I really like to shoot people especially with a strobe. Unfortunately the strobe I use takes 30 seconds to recycle. It is really irritating to try and take a picture of someone when your equipment is holding you back.

This photo was taken using bounce flash off the wall in front of him. The exposure I used was 1/180 @ f2.8.

Painting with light.

2009-11-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

For the painting with light assignment we were assigned to groups by our instructor and worked together to make some neat shots. The group consisted of Erin Hendry Christina Manolis and Lillian Kelly.

After being run over and chopped up by a tractor one stormy night in 1832, the young girl's ghost returns every dark and stormy night to seek her revenge on anyone who crosses her path. Many people have ventured out to this farm to see if the story is really true. Nobody has ever heard from any of them again.-Erin Hendry

My group member Erin Hendry used this anecdote for her blog so I decided to use it for mine as well. Erin also played our ghost.

When we first arrived on the scene we saw this old tractor and we knew that we had to incorporate it into our shot. First we experimented using flashlights and strobes to illuminate the scene. As the night wore on we decided to forget flashlights and use only strobes. There is a total of 8 strobe flashes that took 66 seconds to make. We used f8 to keep the foreground and background in focus as much as possible.

This is another shot we made using the strobes. I like this shot because it is simple and the lighting is nice. I dislike this shot because their is no subject and it is kind of boring. A good example of lighting though.

We wanted to keep it scary for Halloween so here is another shot we tried to pull off. Erin is again our ghost.

We could not find a lighting set up or angle that we all agreed on so we decided to move on after making a few shots.

This is an original shot out of the camera but I did not like the composition. It is too loose. I decided to use photoshop to move the elements closer together.

I changed the composition but I am still not satisfied with the shot.

Single Flash

2009-11-09T13:36:00.000-08:00

It is tuff to find subjects to experiment on with a bright flash in their face so I chose a statue of a person on the MU campus.

I used the flash to fill the dark side of this statue. I made this shot in the late day and the sun was already setting behind the subject. I used the flash to balance and fill then dark side.

I shot this at 1/180 @ 4.5.

Metal and Glass

2009-11-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

Metal
For this assignment we were assigned a partner from class to grip for the other person. Jessica Barnet and I were paired together to see what we could come up with. Unfortunately I came down with a severe case of swine flu and shot my portion of the shoot before it became too serious. About a week later I was feeling good enough to make it to the studio and contribute to Jessica's efforts.

From the begging in knew I wanted to do something with cooking and food. I had some

pork fillets I would put on a wood cutting board but I thought it was going to neglect metal as the subject so decided to keep it simple and go with the peppers and parsley.

I started by laying out a black piece of 1/8in black plexi glass on a table. The black plexi acts just like a piece of metal or glass, it will reflect the surroundings in this case mostly the background. I lit the bowl all by itself until I found an exposure and lighting set up that worked. I shot this at 1/250 @ f9.5. When I was satisfied with the composition I added the food elements and spritzed the outside of the strainer to give it a wet appearance. I added the orange gel at the last minute when I was being kicked out of the studio.

Glass

My partner and I worked on this shot together when I was still a little sick from swine flu. We tried many different

techniques until we decided to go with all wood. There was an old wooden desk in the studio and a wooden door we used for the background. We used a yellow and orange mixed gel on the background a front fill spotlight bounced off a white piece of plexi for the foreground and a snood on the glass. I would have liked to have seen more fire in the glass but when we looked at it on the LCD it looked o.k. We also used fake ice and spritzed the glass to make them look cold.

In Photoshop I shortened the bottle because we should have used a 1/5 but all we had was a handle. I added the text just to show what this could look like in an ad.

Classmate Video Project

2009-10-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

I interviewed Katie Wood for my Classmate video project. It went well but neither one of us like to be in front of the camera.

Classmate Studio Shoot

2009-10-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

I had a lot of fun doing this assignment. Its nice to get into the studio and make some pictures every once and a while. I do wish we had some newer power packs but the ones we are using work just fine. The studio has a wide selection of lights, diffusers, gels, light stands and backdrops.

Classmate portrait-Katie Wood is a wedding photographer who likes to take pictures with her Fisheye firm camera. For this shot I only used one light. I used a large soft box and a couple reflectors to get the soft lighting.

I have been working with Katie for a while now. We were assigned together for the classmate interview where we use video to interview a classmate and the final project as well.

We decided to shoot her in the wedding dress and holding the camera because she used to work for a wedding photographer.

Classmate portrait-Katie Wood is a wedding photographer who likes to take pictures with her fisheye film camera. This shot was composed using multiple lights. I used a soft box to light the face with a reflector on the opposite side. I used a hair light with a snood behind her and also help light the dark side of her face. Then I used two background lights to make it high key.

Reptile Farm

2009-09-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

A while back when I got rid of nibbles I visited this Reptile Farm in Stanton, MO on highway 44. It dosn't look like much from the outside but there is alot more than meets the eye. Inside they have lions, alligators and tigers. They also have a wide range of snakes found all over the world. This is where I ended up sending Nibbles so he could live out the rest of his days. I feel like he would really fit in here.

2009-09-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend of 9/18-9/22/09 I went to Southern IL to visit family and do a little fishing. Well a lot of fishing. There are really good catfish at this lake where we fished. I tried to catch some big ones but they got away. What else is new? It was a lot of fun though.

The family and I went to a coal miners parade in downtown West Frankfort. West Frankfort is a small town in southern IL with a deep rooted heritage in coal mining. Generations of coal miners have lived here and worked in the mines. The parade celebrates these workers and the sacrifices they have made.

We also went to the Garden of the Gods where we did a little bit of climbing on natural rock formations made millions of years ago. It is not uncommon to see small children wondering dangerously close to the edge of deadly cliff faces.

Before we left we stopped at Aunt Virginia's house and chatted before the long ride home.

(Port+) Portrait Blog Post

2009-09-22T10:59:00.000-07:00

This photo was taken by Preston Guerra of lead singer Frankie Muriel.

I think this photo shows the singers personality because he is hitting a high note and putting his heart into his performance.

This photo was taken under a red stage light at 1/350 @ f/4.5.

Dr.Zhivegas in Downtown Columbia

2009-09-17T18:11:00.001-07:00

Only a couple hundred people showed up for this free concert in front of The Blue Note in downtown Columbia, MO. All demographics were there to enjoy the show. For those who don't know Dr.Zhivegas is a cover band that plays hits from the 70's with a modern touch.
I got there late with a low battery on my camera but I decided to take pictures and see how far I could get. It wasn't more then 10 frames before my camera was completely dead. I was shit out of luck and really bummed I was going to miss this opportunity. Luckily a fellow photographer found me and lent me a battery I could use for the night. He pretty much saved my life. Thanks. With my fully charged battery I was good to go for the rest of the concert. I alternated between a telephoto and wide angle lenses to get a range of different shots. I had to find something that was fast enough to capture some of the low light situations that are presented with all the changing lights. I shot manually and was constantly adjusting shutter speed. I found that 350 to 500 was the lowest I could go without getting a blurry image. The only problem is that my lenses are not top of the line and have high F-stops. I either had to wait for the lights to get bright and snap some pictures or lower the shutter speed and settle for a slightly blurry image. After all the troubles I got some pretty good shots. The lead singer Frankie Muriel even took a picture with me. I will be a life long fan for sure. Thanks guys. YOU ROCK!!!

Copying/Meter Testing

2009-09-10T10:39:00.000-07:00

The purpose of the meter testing was to take a picture of a white piece of wallpaper with a stamped pattern in it and make the paper appear white while maintaining as much detail as possible. First I started by setting my camera to f/11 @ 1/45. For each frame I stepped the aperture down until I reached f/4. This is the lowest aperture setting for the lens I was using. It is a 28-70mm Sigma. For the meter testing all frames were taken a 57.0 mm.

Click here to view Copying/Metering Test

The tungsten and daylight exploration portion of the assignment was to go out and shoot 30 frames under different white balances. I shot some frames at the Panera Bread Co. in downtown Columbia. I set my camera to the tungsten setting and started shooting. Even though it was a little dark inside the combination of tungsten light and daylight from windows made a soft environment for the camera. I did not use any of these photos for the assignment but it was nice learning and observing the light. Over Labor Day weekend I visited a reptile and exotic animal park in Missouri near Meramec Caverns. I took pictures of lizards snakes lions and tigers. For the Daylight photo requirement I choose a picture of a dog inside a jail cell at the reptile park. The dog was just inside the door getting mostly daylight and some tungsten light. For the Tungsten photo I used a picture of my friend and my dog at my house. There are four different kinds of light falling on the subject daylight from the windows, Tungsten light, neon light from a Chicago Blackhawks neon and light from a flat panel TV. All these light sources give their own highlights and shadows that make an interesting photo.

Click here to view Contact Sheet

Free Nibbles

2009-09-08T15:33:00.000-07:00

I got Nibbles for a zoology class in high-school and decided to raise him as a pet. He was six inches when I bought from a small pet store in Valley Park, MO called Andy's Pets. In his first few months of life he lived at the school in an aquarium I built for him fully loaded with a dry area, wet area, live plants, soil, rocks, a heated rock, and a full spectrum aquarium light. On the weekends I would carry him to and from school in a kangaroo pocket of a hooded sweatshirt. Over his lifetime he would live in all kinds of enclosures including a fish-tank coffee table in my living room and a 200 gallon custom enclosure I built for him in the basement. I wish I could have kept him. He was a good pet.

Click Here for more photos of Nibbles.