I dunno what else to say about this shot, except for that I like it. I need to invest in a wide angle lens. I threw on my friends Sigma 10-20mm for this.
I havent kept up with the blog for a couple of weeks now, but that doesnt mean I havent been shooting. I just havent been shooting too much digital. Nothing but 120 lately. I’ve been in the process of scanning and touching up about 20 rolls of film. Here is a shot of a homeless mans toes downtown. This was shot with 120 100iso Kodak Ektar, with a Hasselblad 500c/m, 80mm 2.8 Carl Zeiss Planar, with a #21 extension tube. Keep watch on my Flickr I’ll have about 175 shots from the Hassy up soon.
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Did another cover story for The Current on Thursday night. This is a local Hip Hop group “The Vultures”. I’ve been really happy of the amount of work that they have been giving me lately, hopefully it will continue. This shot is straight off of camera, NO photoshop edits at all. I used 6 strobes all with different colored gels, to get this look.
My Hasselblad extension tube just came in the mail. Before I couldn’t focus any closer than about 4 feet away from the subject, but now I can get a couple inches away. This was the very first shot taken with it. I shot a whole roll real fast today to give it a test run. I was amazed by pretty much every shot. I’m addicted, the image detail is out of this world. You will be seeing much more up close medium format photography coming from me in the near future.
Today I went to The Wildlife Animal Orphanage on assignment for The Current. We are working on a story about the place. It will actually be my first cover! I’m super stoked. I’m also stoked that I was able to get 2 feet away from a tiger and not get eaten alive! Make sure you pick up a copy, it will be published on the 21st.
This is my first time ever attempting to shoot lightning. Hopefully this week I’ll have another chance, but with the cityscape in it! That would be insane, but I still like how this came out!
Drove out into the country early Sunday morning to see what I could find to shoot. I pulled over to shoot a landscape photo when I saw this guy just chilling on the fence. I was able to get within 2 feet of him, and shoot him for about a half hour straight.
Friday night Me Tim and Darex all went on top of this cross walk bridge over I-10 to shoot some photos. We parked in the back at some SAISD school. We where all taking long exposures of the highway for quite some time, I decided to pull out 2 flashes and take a couple portraits of my friends. Only after 3 or 4 pictures SAISD Campus Police walked up to us. They asked us if those were are cars parked on their lot. We told them yes. Then they asked me if my name was Erik Gustafson, and I told them yes. They told me I had some outstanding warrants (which I didn’t). They were taking care of. Back in February I got pulled over, and I didnt have my wallet with my ID on me. I went down to court and showed them proof of a valid ID just a couple days later. So I asked the cops what the warrants were for and they told me it was for “failure to present valid ID”. I told them that it had been taking care of. They asked me for my ID and I looked in my wallet and it wasnt there. I told the cop that I must have misplaced it and it was either in my truck or in my jeans from yesterday at my house. Then the started telling me I was under arrest for “lying”. He thought I had been still with out a ID all year and I was lying about misplacing it. He put me in hand cuffs and wouldnt allow me to look in my truck for it. After being in hand cuffs for about an hour and after calling my parents to come pick up my truck and tell them I was going to jail another cop let both of my friends look in my truck for my ID. They never found it. So at this point I’m prepared to spend the weekend in jail. I started begging the cop if I could take a look myself for my ID. I bugged them just enough to let me look for 30 seconds (I think they just wanted me to shut up). They very first place I looked was my sun visor in my truck and there it was!!! The cop was kinda pissed that I found it because he was certain I was lying and he wanted to arrest somebody. So after over 2 hours of dealing with this bullshit, they let us go with “Criminal Trespass Warnings”! I’m not allowed to step foot on any SAISD schools for the 5 years. That night sleeping in my own bed never felt so good before!
Been working on my lighting and portraits lately. This one I was trying to get edgy lighting but still have bokeh.
Here is my Strobist info:
1 SB-600, camera left of subject @ 1/16-0.7 shot threw 45” white satin umbrella
1 Vivitar 285 behind subject camera left @ 1/16, with yellow gel
1 SB-28dx behind suject camera right @ 1/16, with orange warming gel
shot with my Nikon D300
Nikkor 85mm 1.4
160iso, 1/100sec, f/1.4
Last night was another late night spent shooting with Tim. I couldn’t find anything that I really wanted to shoot, so it was time for some experimenting.
Monday afternoon I had a shoot for The Current. They had me taking pictures of the Mayor and his twin brother, both at different locations within 30 minutes of eachother. After waiting for each of them and literally running 5 blocks to get to their different offices, it gave me 3-4 minutes shooting time with both of them.
So by now it is about 4:30am and we are still lurking around downtown shooting all kinds of shit, and of corse we land up at Peacock Alley once again. After this shot I was ready to call it a night.
After the Jazz Festival Tim and I decided to walk around and continue to shoot some street photos. Already Downtown why not?
