Matthew Durr Photography

Another week has come and gone and I still haven’t had the chance to take a close look at my Nikon 105mm f/2.8 AI-s Micro. Though I attribute that mostly to being sick with laryngitis and the busyness of school, that macro has just been breathing down my neck for a long time now. Hopefully soon, we’ll see. 🙂

In other news, despite my sickness and schoolwork, I still had many photo assignments to take care of, all of which were enjoyable to photograph. First up, this past Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which my university participated in as the MLKJr. Day of Service. Around campus we had multiple stations with service projects for students and community members to volunteer to help out the community. These ranged from areas to make Valentine’s cards for veterans…

35mm, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/40

…blood donating stations…

35mm, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/30

…making scarfs for prizes for special olympics…

35mm, ISO 400, f/2.5, 1/30

…to even fixing up some simple but delicious PB&J sandwiches for any community members in need…

35mm, ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/25

35mm, ISO 800, f/4, 1/25

…all in all it was great seeing my own friends and strangers in our surrounding city come together to help others in need, even if indirectly.

A couple more from the Sony 35mm, I’ve found the 50mm field-of-view to be perfect for journalistic-style photography, such as for newspaper/magazine work. Whether it be taking a look into a vacant lot that should have been turned into a lacrosse field…

How is this lock effective?
35mm, ISO 100, f/4, 1/800

…or an “in-action” shot of study counselors doing what they do…

35mm, ISO 200, f/1.8, 1/40

…the “normal” field-of-view is a great one!

A prelude to my portrait session tomorrow, my photography class assigned us all to take practice portraits to get an idea of how framing/composition/exposure works with people (this is a really, really basic class). The catch? All of our subjects had to be making fish-faces of some sort; partly to make it fun and partly to see if we could get good shots under not-so-flattering conditions. In addition, the portraits were to have a uniform background–I’m assuming to make them easier to put into a collaboration. Regardless, I needed to reach for some fast glass. I knew my 180mm f/2.8 AI-s ED was highly capable of throwing backgrounds way out of focus with it’s long focal length and large aperture, so I gave it a shot inside at first in a long hallway…

180mm, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/13 (Tripod)

…however, the mixed lighting, objects in the background, and composition all made for a distracting image. I then thought in order to get more of a uniform background and lighting, I needed to be outside, and to frame subjects much closer. It worked like a charm…

180mm, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/640

180mm, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/500

…even then, I could head back inside where it was warm and use some creative positioning to get a uniform background from the floor…

180mm, ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/50

…all in all, it turned out to be a fun assignment. Looking forward to tomorrow, for sure. 🙂

Finally, I attended an interesting event this past week presented by the Confucius Institute, titled “East Meets West: The Art of Chinese Calligraphy”. It was mostly a musical concert featuring the excellent guzheng musician Xue-Er Ding:

180mm, ISO 400, f/2.8, 1/160

However, along with many of the songs (some of which were arrangements for piano/guzheng of Debussy and Chopin works), calligraphist Dr. Hong Zhao simultaneously practiced the artform. I recorded a small three minute clip of this with my 180mm. Being only on a monopod, there was a lot of camera shake. I used YouTube’s built-in stabilizer to compensate. Though there are still some artifacts, such as pulsating mic stands (and the fact it cropped out a lot of the video for correction!), it did great to smooth everything out. Some day I may get a dedicated mic to attach to my NEX-7, but for now, the audio quality is just fine for my uses. 1080p for best quality:

These performances sometimes went on for 10 minutes or more as Dr. Zhao filled up the canvas with calligraphy. Despite the length, being in the auditorium with the guzheng played so effortlessly was an ethereal experience to the eyes and ears, I’ve since tried to find other recordings of Xue-Er Ding performing. 🙂

Some poetry from the Tang Dynasty, “Bringing in the Wine” written by Li Bai, was also recited in Chinese by Yanshu Li and in English by the MC sporting a nice floral dress (by this point I had already switched over to my 300mm f/2.8 AI-s ED):

300mm, ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/100

In other, less-serious parts of the event, volunteers were brought up on stage to try their hand at both calligraphy and playing the guzheng:

300mm, ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/100

300mm, ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/100

Even my professor of music, Dr. Larry Barnes, had to have a shot:

300mm, ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/125

I’m usually not that into multicultural events, but I have to say I was thoroughly impressed by the music and artistry combined on stage here, even when viewing it all behind a lens:

300mm, ISO 800, f/3.2, 1/160

Zhang Zhui
180mm, ISO 1600, f/2.8, 1/160

300mm, ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/160

That’s all for this post guys and gals, thanks for dropping by! Hopefully I can both find time and get my body back in working order to go out and take more pictures with that 105mm Macro this week. Until then, have a great one!