Science & technology — it's fun you'll see

LB School science fair today. Not really sure what this experiment was showing other than if you have a bucket of pink corn starch liquid, kids WILL put their hands in it.

-DKM

Dino Wyse, Dino Bite

In the ever continuing series of pix of my boy eating stuff...
Wyse has rediscovered his dinosaur costume from halloween (though it is pretty small on him) and has taken to wearing it most mornings while randomly spouting such facts like "most dinosaurs eat leaves." I told him I had no leaves but offered this apple instead.


-DKM

The last days of the season

It's always a little sad in a way when it gets this time each year, but last week I shot my last sports assignments of the school year. While there is still state track and golf this week, the smart folks at the WIAA have all those events taking place in eastern Washington, which is a bit far for us, as far as travel goes. I spend a fair portion of my week shooting and editing sports photos and designing the sports page (which also goes on hiatus during the summer months), so while I'm glad to have some time freed up, it is something I enjoy and miss. (Only 3 months till fall workouts begin...)
So anyway, here's a couple pix from district softball and track.
The one unifying thing about these three events I shot last Thursday (NHS track) and Friday (NHS softball and IHS track) was the rain. It never really stopped, which is what led to the photo below of Orianne Condon talking with the Naselle catcher during a rain/hail delay at their district game in Centralia that eventually cancelled the game after only one inning of play. This one and the ones below of IHS were all shot with my new 85mm 1.8 that I got just in time for these games, replacing the 80-200 2.8 I essentially destroyed by dropping on the ground a couple months back. So far I am really loving it.

So after a quick stop at Burgerville it was off to Kalama for the 1A district track meet and more rain.



The day before I was in Raymond for the 2B district track meet, where it also rained relentlessly.


See ya next season,

-DKM

I think Boyd said it best...

..."first place doesn't suck"

I don't usually write about this stuff, but...
Tom Boyd is a cool dude who shoots for the Oregonian and whose BLOG I follow. On Saturday he won the photo portfolio award in the big boys division (large dailies) of the western region SPJ contest.
Me, I won it in the little guys division (non-daily). What's also cool is that this is the third year in a row I've won it. You can check out the portfolio I entered HERE if you like.

My boss wrote up a nice little thing about it on our website, which you can check out HERE if you like.
So yeah,

-DKM

Sundown drive

Sometimes in the course of driving here and there on assignment I do stupid things like take pictures while I'm driving. Here's a couple from last night on the way back from district track.


Ahh, just pretty pictures

-DKM

Beleaguered building, birds & ball

Ahh, alliteration — Here's a couple things from the last few days
Today I went back out to the old Chinook School gymnasium, which is in the middle of a restoration project. I was there a few weeks back to shoot the outside and today I got to go inside with a few folks who were connected to the project, and had attended school there a while back. I'm pretty sure this will be the lead feature this week.


Last Saturday I got to hang with Bill Richey from state parks as he did some recon with the snowy plover project up on Leadbetter Point for a feature on habitat restoration, the Life page feature this week. It was pretty cool crawling around the dunes with him as he spied plovers, retrieved a faulty basket that protects their nests and replaced some blown down signage to the beach.


Finally, here's a pick that kinda sums up the end of the IHS girls softball season as a runner scores on a wild pitch at home. You can see more in THIS GALLERY if you like

Lots more sports to come this week the the end of the spring season — God what am I going to do for the next THREE MONTHS?

-DKM

Playing ketchup

So it's kinda been a while since I posted some work-related stuff on here so I thought I'd add a pastiche of stuff from the last week or two. Most has already been in that paper at this point so this one is more I guess for folks outside of the area.

Last Saturday I was at North Head Lighthouse to photograph a class from Clatsop College who were doing restoration work to the old horse barn at the light keepers house. It printed great in the paper, perhaps so much so that our sister paper the Astorian used the package as their A1 package on Friday.


With spring sports season winding down it's going to be mostly track stuff here on in so I'm trying to get things that look compelling, in this case lighting-wise. Of course it also helped that he won the event.

Well over a week ago when I was driving home after dropping Kenz at school I saw this scene on Black Lake and pulled over for a few. I'm sure if I didn't have Wyse in the back seat I may have worked it a bit more — lower angle, a little bit tighter on the birds perhaps? — but I kinda like it.

Last Monday night I went to the annual surf rescue drill that features all the local emergency response agencies, including the surf rescue team and the Coast Guard, practicing ocean rescues. When the copter came down and scooped these guys up I knew it'd look kinda cool (though I wish the sin was in a little better spot to light the copter beter).


Here's my favorite rescue swimmer, my lovely wife



-DKM

Wyse + chocolate brownie ice cream =

-DKM

Our boys ever expanding love of fruit continues

-DKM

My little sisters wedding

This post is a couple weeks in the works since returning from SoCal. While down the LA area for a week me and Kenz attended my sister Beth's wedding where Kenz was the flower girl and I took on the task of documenting. Now those of you who read this regularly know that shooting weddings is something I do fairly rarely and it is always a challenge — well add to that familial ties and mix ever so gently... well here's what I liked best from the couple thousand snaps I had over two days.


Here's me in the crazy bathroom at the adjacent church on the property where they were married...


Despite how some things inevitably played out on that day, I very much wish Beth and Justin the best, and I hope they will like these,

-DKM

Hello Dolly, It's so nice to see you through an old camera...

A couple of weeks ago I talked about taking pictures through the viewfinder of an old Kodak Duaflex camera of mine to make some (IMO) interesting and old-fashioned-ish-looking portraits. My little experiment, which you can see HERE was in advance of shooting the preview pix for a local production of Hello, Dolly! So the week before I went out of town I shot this session for the Life page this week. Things went great and the look is what I was hoping for. Here are some of my favorites, as well as a gallery with shots of each cast member.



In the layout for the Life page I put together some stereographs of some of the characters who are connected in the play.


Here's the GALLERY

So at the risk of giving up my top secret technique (not really), here's what I did to get these pix.
I attatched an old Kodak Duafelx IV camera (sans flash head) to a tripod at a height that was level with the actors heads. I then positioned a digital camera directly above the view window of the Duaflex, while attached to another tripod. Using a 35mm f2 lens I got an undistorted view of the scene. I manually focused the lens through the viewfinder on the subjects, which were being lit by softbox to their left. The subsequent frames would turn out with big black bars on the sides of the digital frame as the Duaflex would be a square in the middle of the frame. Not only did this allow me to get the nice curved corner square view, but by shooting through the view window on top I also got the dust and crap from the lens and the viewfinder as well which IMO added to the nostalgic feel of the frames. Going along with that I tipped the Duaflex upward on occasion to give a strong vignette look to the bottom of the frame, and overexposed one some to give that random exposure look that was prevalent with these old cameras.
So did it work? I don't know. For this particular assignment I think so. My once regret is that we couldn't get farther away from the wall behind them due to cramped quarters at the theater. I can't see myself using it very often but every great once in awhile it's nice to have a different option.

-DKM