0 comments Saturday, October 13, 2007

West Fest at the Eiteljorg was a blast. I was very pleased to get to spend some one on one time with the blacksmiths doing demo's there, we found some common ground in our appreciation of traditional crafts and hand work.

Single Action Shooter

Wells Fargo Wagon

Smith 2

If I get some free time next summer and a little extra cash I think I might take up beating hot metal for fun.

0 comments Thursday, August 30, 2007

JP Horse

That's an incredibly busy shot, but I think it works well enough.

Hooves 2nd Edit

My visual fascination with horses continues unabated. Perhaps net month it will be elephants. I am generally excited to go to the Fair Grounds these days, mainly because it gives me opportunities like these.

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Butterfly

I got to do some shooting at the White River Gardens, the butterflies were amazing! I do believe this is the first serious shot I've ever taken of a butterfly... Order copies now :-)

This was an interesting test for the Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS, the lens has a fairly close focus distance enabling some near macro level work. At 200mm @ f/4 @ the closest focus distance the lens suffers from some strange abberations (a general hazieness), stopping down helps aleviate the problem and zooming out to 150mm pretty much gets rid of it too. All in all I was impressed with its performance, it's a general purpose lens after all. The 180mm f/3.5L macro would be much more suited to this type of work.

0 comments Friday, July 27, 2007

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Sometimes you are really really glad your camera has a high speed drive mode. It's not something I use everyday, but once or twice a week it comes in handy.

Belly Dancer


I'd rather shoot dancers than sports any day :-)

0 comments Friday, July 20, 2007

Last weekend I had the pleasure of attending Crown Hill's Skeletons In The Closet tour. The tour was informative, fun and yielded some nice imagery.

Copper Drains

Those copper drains are super interesting and full of colors you don't run into everyday.

Crown Hill Gates

A telephoto zoom was used to isolate architectural details during the tour guides initial speech. The images have fair bit of post processing in Lightroom. The Hue/Saturation/Luminosity mixer proved incredibly useful for the above image. It simple wasn't working till I tweaked the orange and yellow channels to bring out some warmth in the stone, this helped to counter balance the aqua colored iron work.

Tomb

I was drawn to this militantly styled tomb from my first peek at it.

1 comments Thursday, July 12, 2007

Here's some imagery from the 4th. Note the emotional contrasts in the first image and the traditional red, white , and blue.



That last image was pure serendipity, get five hundred people together in a public place and your bound to end up with some memorable shots.

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Subtle colors and sweeping horizontals were the order of the day. It was beautiful there.

Conner Prairie Corn 2

Stretch

Conner Prairie Corn

0 comments Monday, June 18, 2007

Allergies

In 1999 and 2000 I did a lot of photo manipulation with one of my favorite professors ever, Henry. The man was amazing and I ended up taking five of his classes. This work is a big one created from multiple scanned 6x7 negatives. I used to work in this almost allegorical style fairly often, these days I'm over it.

Today it's pretty rare for me to heavily manipulate my imagery. If my intent can only be reached by such means, then sure I'll do whatever it takes. It's just so easy to make something look cheap.

I still love this print.

1 comments Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Occasionally I work in other media...

Doll Head
30x40" Pastel on Paper
2005
















I've Got My Thumb On You
6x10" Ink on Paper
2005















Constrained
6x10" Ink on Paper
2005














Sometimes it's nice to work in other media. I'll always be madly in love with pastels, I've got a thing for carcinogenic materials I guess.

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I've added the ability for readers to subscribe to this blog via email. At the right top of the page you will now find a small box labled "Your email address:"

When you enter your email address in the box and click on "Get email updates" you will automatically be signed up for email updates anytime new content is added to this blog. The registration process is painless and they will never spam your inbox.

To complete your registration just go to your inbox and click on the confirm registration link FeedBlitz sends you.

Hopefully this will make knowing when new content is posted easier for everyone!

Go do it now!

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I must admit, I have a horrible dreadful aversion to Hawaiian print shirts. I've lost count of the number of photographers I've seen wearing them. Maybe it's a local phenomenon.

There are a few things I notice about other photographers when I first see them in a basic order of importance.

1. How do they carry their gear? Do they have a big SUV (stupid useless vehicle) out in the parking lot with a trunk full of stuff in it and they are working without any bags? Perhaps they prefer belt systems. Are they using a leather satchel with a nice patinae?

2. What are they wearing? Does it fit the demeanor of the event? Do they have any special touches to their clothing to make their job easier?

3. Finally, how is their demeanor and how do they carry themselves? This often requires and introduction and requires a bit of friendliness.

I have a horrible pet peeve with item number two. I should preface this with a bit of background. I used to work in theater, I was the technical director and master carpenter for a troupe and there was a strict policy that all non-actors had to wear black from head to toe. It was a practical policy. It meant you would never draw unwanted attention to yourself in any given situation and you would always appear at least semi formal.

Now when I see someone photographing a wedding in one of the aforementioned Hawaiian print shirts, or covering a ball in jeans and sandals, it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up a bit.

I know the photographer is working, and efficiency and comfort are key. You won't see me in a tux when I'm photographing a wedding, but you're sure as hell not going to notice me sticking out like a sore thumb. I think it's largely a matter of professional courtesy extended to the clients or the guests at an event and I think sometimes it gets too easy to overlook such details.

So here's a plea to others photographers, check yourself out in a mirror before you leave the house for a gig. To everyone who already does, kudos to you. Keep on keepin on.

(I forgot my black shoes in the car in the above photo, but yes I always wear funny socks)

1 comments Thursday, June 7, 2007

Throughout the years I've been called in over and over again as ad hoc family photographer. It's a role I accept, sometimes with enthusiasm, sometimes with great sighs of exasperation. No matter how I may feel about filling the role, I can say it's made me a better photographer.

I've got a feeling the total number of frames I've shot of my family is awfully close to the number of shots I've done for myself. That's a whole lot of experience photographing in a fairly fast paced dynamic environment, if you push yourself to do it well you can learn from it.


This is my new little cousin imported here from Ukraine. It's a fairly typical example of what we end up with and it makes most of the family happy. Hardly a masterpiece, but a decent snapshot nonetheless.

If nothing else it give you an excellent chance to experiment with your equipment in a consequence free environment. Your family won't care much if you photos aren't technically perfect.

0 comments Tuesday, June 5, 2007



I think lots of photographers have an obsession with decaying objects. I know I do, there are whole flickr groups dedicated to rusty objects.

I have a particular weekness for elevator pully motors. Many a fire escape have I ascended in hopes of capturing the rare beasts. I passed up some of the horse show to photograph the chairs in the stadium. I simply couldn't help it.

My name is Jammy, and I'm addicted to junk.

0 comments Sunday, June 3, 2007

hs03

hs02

hs06

hs08

hs09

Just a quick follow up to the previous post. Comments welcome.

1 comments Friday, June 1, 2007

horse01

horse02

These were taken earlier today at the Indianapolis Charity Horse Show.

It was exciting, you can Still check it out Sunday night if you like. I've never shot horses before, this was a first for me. The shots have an unusual feel to them. Thoughts? (click on "comments" to add a comment!)

0 comments Thursday, May 31, 2007


This is a tiny test of a freeware application before it goes live on my main site. Enjoy the preview. I'm fairly happy with the functionality and the layout options. It looks like it will be placed inside an iframe on the main site and it should work nicely... weee.

The content in the above window is the same as the content in the badge on the right. It's dynamically changeable! All I have to do to update the slide show content on the main page of my site is edit the tags in my flickr stream.

Doing things this way serves several purposes. It makes the main site where I send clients to dynamic and changeable, it supports free software use, and it keeps me from having to use one of those horrendous pre-made flash sites for photographers.

0 comments Wednesday, May 30, 2007

por01

After a bit of a challenge getting settled in with an excellent copy of the 70-200mm F/4L IS I've started critically examining my results from field use. This series of posts will detail my opinions regarding the lens.

I wasn't sure what to expect regarding an F/4 zoom for use in portraiture, but so far I must say I've been pleasantly surprised. The can be no argument that the lens is critically sharp when used with proper technique, but what about depth of field and subject isolation? Unless I'm trying to achieve a very specific shallow DOF effect I've found that working at F/4 really presents very little problem in most settings, not all. At 200mm at F/4 when shooting a portrait as seen above there is already so little depth of field that the back side of a subjects face is falling gracefully out of focus. The quality of the lenses OOF areas or boke is nearly exemplary for such a complex optic.

The benefits of being able to change focal length, in the range the zoom offers, during a portrait shoot should not be underestimated. I will say this though, if my primary consideration for using this lens was portraiture, I would have purchased the F/2.8L IS version. That would have gained me some subject isolation at the cost of weight and absolute sharpness. However, portraiture was not the primary motivator for using this lens. It simply works very well for that purpose though.

por02

The lens handles very well. I've found no reason so far to lament the absence of tripod ring. It's been a beauty so far. More to come.

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The penguins, walruses, elephants, and rhinos have webcams at the Zoo! The penguin webcam has to be the best waste of time I've seen in a long time.

If you have any problems viewing the webcams in your browser, try Firefox, there's a link to it at the bottom of the right column on this page.

0 comments Tuesday, May 29, 2007

I'm soon off to visit the newly re-opened Oceans Exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo. My hopes are high, and hopefully I shall return with some tasty photos of the exhibit as well. I'll share them with everyone here. I really missed the old exhibit with it's beautiful live corral reef.

There are a few things to keep in mind when photographing through glass, these guidelines apply to aquariums and museum displays. Turn your flash off if it you can get a decent exposure using the exhibits built in lighting. Glass is highly reflective, mixing it with flash is a recipe for disaster. Get your lens as close to the glass as possible, if you can use a flexible lens hood or a large baffle push that bad boy right up against the glass. In a pinch. a baseball cap works well for shading reflections off the glass in front of your lens. (Don't let the front element of your lens hit the exhibit glass!) Finally, make sure the glass is clean, fingerprints in front of your lens will only lower the quality of photos taken in an already challenging environment.

0 comments Monday, May 28, 2007

memorial

This was earlier today at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. Christopher S. Barnthouse, a retired Major in the US Army delivered a stirring public address to locals and visitors in Indianapolis to see the Indianapolis 500.

0 comments Sunday, May 27, 2007

Mary

"If your photographs aren't good enough, you aren't close enough" -Robert Capa

Do whatever you can to get close and establish eye contact with the performers. At a large venue this can be next to impossible, but the intimate quality it can add to your photos is worth the effort.

Make sure you're in a continuous shooting mode when photographing people singing or playing instruments. Facial contortions can change from sublime to horrific in the blink of the eye when a performer is singing.

On camera bounce flash was used in this shot to massage the ambient light and add a little modeling to the flattish stage lights. In a situation like this I normally dial in an ambient exposure a half stop or so underexposed in manual mode and let E-TTL II bring the subject up to the right brightness.

You can see Mary Moss perform regularly in Indianapolis, check her website for dates. She is not to be missed!

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post249

Today was the day before Memorial Day. In Watkins Park, at 2360 Dr. Martin Luther King St., just outside of downtown Indianapolis an event took place called "Jazz in the Park". Indy Jazz Company provided musical entertainment all evening while the local American Legion Post 249 held a memorial ceremony. The next date for Jazz in the Park is June 24, bring a grill and cook out.

0 comments Saturday, May 26, 2007


The end of the Season of Lost has come and gone. Unfortunately some of my enthusiasm for the series has waned as well.

The cinematography in the first season was absolutely breathtaking. You could pause the episodes during the first four episodes during most shots and you'd end up with a composition worthy of a huge print on your wall. Gorgeous work.

That feeling of visual drama in the series has largely gone to the way side. Sure it's hard to keep something on that same level for three seasons, but it feels like a bit of sitcom mediocrity has crept into the works. Long live the Lost! The Lost is Dead!

0 comments Tuesday, May 22, 2007



I'll soon be a member of the Photo Venture Camera Club. Now why would I do that?

It presents and interesting opportunity. I've already had all the classical photography training I can stomach for the next few years, I'm not interested in attending so I can learn how to use my meter better or how to compose a landscape photo. What I'm really interested in is interacting with other photographers in a field that is inherently isolated. Photography is generally a solitary endeavor, and professional photography is often an aggressively competitive field. The aspect of returning a certain social collaberation to my photographic endeavours is appealing.

I've often believed teaching others how to do something is one of the best ways to further your own understanding and give rise to fresh thought processes.

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IndySoJourn will be undergoing a series of changes in the next couple of days to polish up the new look. Please bear with me as I hope this turns out to be a positive change. As always enjoy the imagery and thoughts. Feel free to comment on anything you see here.

So we've got some new functionality going on here! Hit the Email Post button to send it to any friends or enemies you think might like to see it. No username or anything is required, you just need their e-mail addy.

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Today I have the pleasure of returning to Canon, via Amazon, an incredibly sub-par copy of what is otherwise an incredible lens. After waking up bright and early, having a Sprite and a breakfast cookie, it's off to the post office for me.

I do have a bit of a worry about what will become of this expensive utterly defective chunk of glass, hopefully it won't simply be repackaged and sold to another unsuspecting customer. Thankfully I don't think Amazon is in the habit of doing such things. Back to the manufacturer with you I say.

It makes one question the purchasing of professional level goods when manufacturing processes can't keep up with quality control. Unfortunately, such occurrences are all to common in today's consumer driven market.

I could step out of that market and move up to what I basically consider the boutique camera arena. Leica. In hopes that such faults would be a thing of the past, but even then, there is no guarantee with any brand or system.

Unfortunately it is simply a reality one must deal with, Kudos to Amazon.com for making the whole process relatively pain free.

0 comments Sunday, May 20, 2007



Many years ago a professor told me there was a thread of "quiet violence" that runs throughout my work. I suppose all these years later it still surfaces from time to time. I can only guess that on some level the act of creation is inherently violent to me on a psychological level, almost a trauma in and of itself.

Untitled

A sucessful creation becomes catharsis and re-invigorates my passion.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

I had the pleasure of covering the Broadripple Art Fair for the Indy Star today. It was a beautiful day and as usual the artists were very friendly and really appreciative towards anyone that showed a genuine interest in their work.

The predominant art fair aesthetics are really interesting. Generally work needs to be attractive, easily accessible, and bright and shiny work seems be more popular than dark and brooding. I'd say less than five percent of the work there was really thought provoking or challenging. Not to knock the work, on the contrary, kudos to the artist for making and selling art.

It all makes me question the perception and role of art in our society. Obviously lots of people like looking at thought provoking work, go check out a local art museum. A large quantity of the work there will be pretty happy shinny pieces that illicit very little in the way of thought processes, but there will be lots of little gems that make you stop and contemplate something in your or someone else's life.

Does anyone in the general populace have an interest in buying that type of thought provoking work though? I mean consider the percentage of the population that buys art from actual art galleries (the havens of thinking controversial art that they are).

It all just makes me scratch my head and wonder what Thomas Kinkade thinks of his own work.

0 comments Thursday, May 17, 2007


One of my favorite tricks when I'm out taking photos and the light isn't cooperating is to focus on near macro photography. On a dull overcast day it works a treat. This photos was taken with an inexpensive point and shoot. If the grand vista your attempting to capture just isn't there, look around your feet instead.

0 comments Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Indianapolis had the pleasure of hosting the Gyuto Monks during the month of May at the Indianapols Museum of Art. On the 7th the Monks began the creation of a traditional Buddhist sand mandala.


The process was truly amazing to witness and continued from the 7th thru the 9th. Each day before work on the sand mandala commenced the monks performed a cleansing and blessing prayer. After the basic layout of the mandala was completed using pencils and drafting tools, the application of sand began. The sand used is colored using dyes, then the sand must be sifted to remove the fine particulate mater, it clogs the tools. The sand is placed in the mandala via specialized tools called Chakpu (pronounced more like tam-pu).

The monks representative, Sonam Hangchuk, took the time to sit and chat with me about their history. The Monks originally started their temple in Lhasa Tibet in 1474 where it stayed and prospered until the 1950's when they fled to India in exile. Today the temple still has a regular influx of new monks and is doing well. It accepts new monks from as far as Korea, but the number of monks originally from Tibet continues to fall.

The sand mandala was complete on May 9th, later that evening it was ceremoniously destroyed. Some sand from the mandala was passed out to visitors at the destruction ceremony, the rest of the sand was poured into a local canal that feeds into White River, blessing the body of water.

On May 10th the Gyuto Monks held a tantric chant performance. Attendance was amazing, and many people could be seen listening and meditation on the upper levels of the museum.

Click on any image in this post to be taken to a gallery of images from the 4 day visit at the Indianapolis Museum of art, new images will be uploaded over the coming week. Contact me for prints from this series, special discounts for IMA staff as a thank you.

0 comments Sunday, March 4, 2007

This is bloody wonderful! Check out Imaging Resource's preview of what High Tone Priority Mode for the New 1D camera can do here!

Hopefully this will signal the begining of the end for complaints about blown highlights on DSLRs compared to film.

Welcome back s-curve shapped response! We missed you.

1 comments Friday, February 23, 2007


The world outside is melting and it's absolutely wonderful. It's so nice to go outside and not feel the inside of your nose freeze. Sensationalist news stories of impending flash floods to the area due to melting snow have been the order of the last week. Sigh.

This photo was part of a self imposed assignment to capture the melting and thawing that is taking place. No one else is gonna push you to make work like yourself, self assignments are excellent motivators.


This image makes use of the Orton Effect. This technique was originally done with sandwiched slide film and harkens back to era of
Pictorialism. It is an attempt to evoke a mood and feeling within an image rather than a straight representation of the subject. I occasionally switch into this mode of working when my concepts and subjects are both being difficult. Tricks in a bag.

0 comments Monday, February 19, 2007

"Hey, your flash didn't go off!" I love hearing that. Most of the time. Except when I look down at my camera's screen and see a mostly black square.

In this shot I bounced my flash off the ceiling. Par for course during interior events with ceilings under 20ft tall or so. The subjects don't end up looking like deer caught in headlights and it's relatively easy to balance the ambient light. In this situation E-TTL works well. The camera is set on manual to set the ambient exposure, here about 1/2 stop under exposed. While the flash illuminates the subject.

Depending on the surface I'm bouncing my flash off of, ambient light conditions, and the subject bounce flash doesn't always produce the best skin tones. In such situation the on/off switch on the flash works wonders. Here I switched from Manual mode to Aperature priority and shot at f/4 without flash. It's a different look that might work in some situations. In this particular situation I'm slightly partial to the flash shot, but the boys expression is better in the ambient light shot. It happens.

0 comments Sunday, February 18, 2007



Concert Photography... dark pictures, neon lights, blurry pictures, looking up the performers noses, the hallmarks of concert pics. Lets step away from that for a minute and try something different.

The aim of this ongoing series is to share techniques and new looks for live music photography. On to the first photo. I introduced myself to the coordinators of the event where this image happened and they gave me free reign.. handy. Elevating yourself from the crowds perspective is a handy trick to kick up your concert pics a notch or two. For this photo I was on top of a low lying speaker. Face to face with the performers.

Lighting was dull and consisted of badly focused spots and occasionally colored strobes... hm. So I set a slow shutter speed in an attempt to capture a strobe burst or two and bounced my flash off an acoustic panel above the performers. Adding some vignetting in post production completes the look and draws attention to the brass man.

Stay tuned for more...