Board for an Hour.

This morning I got to spend a rare hour at the Chicago Board of Trade and the CME documenting a delegation of Saudi Arabian officials visiting the exchanges. 

I’M MAD AS H#LL….

Howard Beale: 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

I actually have never seen the entire 1976 movie Network, but I kept hearing this line popping up here and there.  Here is the clip where actor Peter Finch delivers the famous and still poignant monologue, it’s the shortest clip I could find @ 2:13: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WINDtlPXmmE

Actually I’m not mad; more amused then anything, I just really like that clip and wanted to work it in somehow :)

But here is what started all this, I got a spam for a product called the ‘Perfect Bounce Card’.  Being sucker enough, I bit and clicked through.  What I found amused me, bounce card packages from $49.00 to $69.00 bucks!  OK, maybe I was a little mad, and still amused…

It’s a bounce card people, just a little plastic to bounce your on-camera flash to conserve battery life and create a much larger and softer light source.  It also gets it higher above the lens.

So here is my ‘Perfect Bounce Card’.  I made my first one in the late 80’s after seeing a similar one in a Domke catalog.

You can build one from…well…free, to just a couple bucks.  I’ve made tons of these over the years, given at least a dozen or so away, whenever I use an assistant or second shooter for a job I usually give them one to use and let them keep it.

If you click on the outline shot of the bounce card, it should open up in a new window, Print is at 100% and you have your template to cut around.  The very best thing to use is white plastic from the model railroad shop but I just made one out of foam core last week for a quick shot we needed to do at work so you can really use anything you have around.

The nice thing about using my template is its perfect size to fit into a shirt pocket when you aren’t using it and it can be used conjunction with an Omnibounce as shown. 

So print it out, cut it out and slap on a piece of Velcro or a broccoli or zucchini rubber band and you are done!

Check out the clip and revel in all the $$ you saved!!

Open House!

Yesterday Harrington hosted an open house so individuals could get their feet wet in the studio and get an idea of what we are about.  

Photo student and cage worker Rolando Davis and I spent an hour and half in the studio with a very excited group of photo enthusiasts.  

Here are a couple of pics they made of each other we walked through some of the cage offerings and turned them loose.

Both Rolando and I had so much fun just goofing around with expensive toys and interested people.  I'm already looking forward to the next one!!

Glass Houses...

I shot this as part of a lens test in an abandoned train yard in picturesque Cicero Illinois.  Keep singing Billy Joel the whole time!

Herb Crusted Roast Beef

Last night about 12 coworkers and I made dinner for the residents at the Ronald McDonald House in Lincoln Park adjacent to Children’s Memorial Hospital.  

The temporary residents dined on chicken, roast beef, finger potatoes, asparagus and an ice-cream bar complete with frozen thin mints!

Great meal, great cause, great fun.

Here is a shot of the soon to be crust for the beef and the recipe is below.

Dirk

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/herb-crusted-roast-beef-with-horseradish-cream-recipe/index.html

The Perfect Job?

Two window washers in one week, both with my trusty G11, how cool!  This time they were cleaning my windows so I got to shoot from the inside.

I’ve always thought this would be such a cool job, I can’t imagine what it would be like 40 stories up in the wind and sun!

  I also can’t imagine what:

1)   the waver looks like for the dangling washer

2)   what the insurance policy costs for the company!

I also shot a couple frames with my Holga but I have to say, the flash did seem to freak him out a tad.

:)

Sprinklers, fences and dead grass

Carbondale, Illinois

Fuel holding tanks

 

Part of an ongoing body of work based all facets of transportation 

Window Washers

Suburbia-

It’s the one in the middle…well, not the exact middle...right next to the one that looks the same…only different, kinda...but not really...

Study Hall...

Spent the day with photo students at Vernon Hills High School.  Great bunch of students, fantastic teacher, they even have an AP photo class!  It’s cool to see an arts program that gives the students so many options.  Everything from photo classes that start in the darkroom before heading to Photoshop and Illustrator to jewelry making, pottery and both wood and metal shops are available to the students.

After an absolutely fantastic Portellos cheeseburger and chocolate cake for lunch (thank you JM!) we had a short study hall period before the afternoon classes and I was itching to shoot the big FAA something or another that was located behind the track.

I have no idea what it was but it sure looked cool.

Lost History

I am happy to announce that I am officially writing a book about Photographic Lighting for Wiley Publishing that’s due out by the end of the year.  So part of the process includes digging through every image that I've ever made in search for samples to illustrate various techniques that are being discussed.

Early this morning I found some Polaroid type 55 pinholes that I shot years ago and man are they cool.  I shot them with a super wide 4x5 pinhole camera that I made specially for shooting type 55 Polaroid.

We have all watched the price of type 55 go up to almost 200 bucks a box until Polaroid exhausted its supply.  If you need a good laugh (or cry actually) check out what it is going for on eBay right now!

So enjoy these lost relics, Paul Bunyan was a hot dog joint called Bunyan’s (which is actually a little gross if you think about it) found near the very beginning of route 66 in Berwyn IL and the other shot is the Great Hall in Chicago’s Union Station.

Dirk

 

(PS) I have 6 sheets of type 55 left...
       make me an offer!

Snowblower

Blog-go-round??

Not quite sure if I’m breaking some kind of unwritten blog-by-law but this is twice now I’ve reposted another blog on mine.

Harrington found an article I wrote, dusted it off and posted it in two parts on the schools blog.  It was a fun piece that was written for the Chicago ASMP bulletin a couple issues ago about photographers going green.

I hope you enjoy reading it as much I as enjoyed musing about it!

Here is part 1:

http://harringtoncollegeofdesign.blogspot.com/2010/01/putting-green-in-rgb-part-1.html

And part 2:

http://harringtoncollegeofdesign.blogspot.com/2010/01/putting-green-in-rgb-part-2.html

(PS) yes, I saw the freefoto.com picture as well…ironic eh 

Full Circle...

Fellow blogger Somak Ray found an old picture of some of my handmade panoramic cameras on Robert Monaghan old mega photo site and wanted to post them on his Magnorama blog.  His blog is dedicated to custom, one off and DIY pano cameras. Well worth checking out if you are interested in this in any capacity.  


Thanks to Somak for digging through the Robert's archives to find my cameras, here is a link to his posting: 


http://somakray.blogspot.com/2009/12/handmade-panoramic-cameras-by-dirk.html