Final Features!

So the day that this was assigned I had posted my features presentation with the knowledge that it was eeeh. So I went out looking for something to cover that I felt was a good features story. I do feel that I lucked out with this one even though another came along that may have been more interesting.

The Utah Food Bank was founded in 1904 and under different names in the last 100 years. It originally started in Salt Lake City and since, has been expanding. There is a southern Utah branch of the food bank that helps give more stops for food to stay fresher. It also provides another location to benefit more of the state. According to the food banks website (Click Here) one in 10 Utahans and one in eight children or living in poverty. One in seven children are at risk for hunger and Utah is ranked fourth in the nation for the highest rate of low food security. So I went out because I heard on the radio that they were trying to win 1-million dollars to fight hunger in Southern Utah. The money would be given by Walmart. The main thing was that people would listen to the radio station and then go to the Facebook page and vote. As of the time I was there they went from third place to fifth. The key things to know about the contest was that people had to vote so the word needed to be provided for the community. This was accomplished by Planet 94.1 radio station. The other rule was that if they won, Walmart would monitor and delegate the money for specific items and needs of the food bank.

The Utah Food bank is no stranger to this contest. In the past Salt Lake City and Ogden have won. The idea was to get the public to go to the Facebook page and vote for St. George food bank to win the million. This isn't just a like button though, the people actually need to vote.

-Expedited distribution to six southernmost Utah counties
-Southern hub for inbound goods from Arizona
-Accelerated delivery of perishable items to local distributors
-Refrigerated truck delivery
-Increased ability to meet growing needs of the rapidly expanding southern Utah population
-Four employees beginning January 2011

Features

Even with the economy trying to recover from the past few years, there have bee some glimmers of light occasionally that show promise. Color Country Community Housing has been part of the rural development program which in its self has been around for 40 plus years. This program provides and opportunity for people who are struggling to get a home to actually build their own.

Hard News

My hard news is a little old. This happened in Washington Fields area, this year towards the end of January. Me and my family were heading out to my in-laws and we saw this big cloud of smoke. We decided to drive by and see what was happening. Needless to say when it comes to house fire's, they are nothing but disasters. As we drove by the two story house bellowing smoke out of the top I knew I needed my camera. So I turned around and as I looked in my rear view mirror the top of the house exploded with flames. I dropped my family off at my in-laws and then headed home to get my camera. As I returned I was able to still catch a lot of the action and images as follows.

The family was not home during this time. I overheard that the family was on their way back from Salt Lake City, and that they would be there the next day. Later that night I drove by to see if anything had changed and this is one of the shots I got.

I went back the next day and spoke with the family. I asked if I could get some pictures and they agreed. One of the owners said that the maricales of the fire was her nativity sets. She had somewhere around three hundred nativity sets all in a storage closet up stairs and none of the boxes or nativity sets where burned or lost.

The last two images I saw as I walked through the house and felt that they were messages of hope within the disaster.

Tuition!

These two pictures are my take on the Tuition issue. I felt that the first one was a good representation of what can happen for the future of children that may be apart of a struggling economy and family. the second focusing on partial families that may struggle to get education. I used the empty pockets to symbolize no money but I wish I could have better or bigger pockets to pull out on both subjects. It was a fun little shoot though!

Portraits

I really didn't have enough time to get into a studio this week and get some shots. So I begged my wife to let me take pictures of her in a little make shift studio I made with some lamps in out bed room.

Glamor 1 in black and white

Glamor 2 in color

This one is my favorite as a Rembrandt

I liked this one in both color, as well as black and white.

Get In Tight!

All the images that will be posted today have been shot on my Cannon XSI with a telephoto 250mm lens. I basically shot tight on anything I could.

This first photo was taken this morning with the fog out in Bloomington Hills.

This image and then next tree was taken last night in my front room with one of my cheap guitars that I named Ernie Bones. I was about ten feet away from the guitar and zoomed in around 135mm and manual focusing.

This last image was taken last night also in the parking lot of Walmart as the rain was poring down hard. The main reason why I am posting this photo was cause when I zoomed in I caught some of the rain bouncing back up in the lower left corner. So I thought it was cool.

Shoot Wide!

This first shot for my wide shot assignment was at an 18mm focal length. This was taken in my office and with a co-worker at his desk. My ISO was 1600 and the f stop 5.6 with the aperture at 1/250 I think. This first image tells more of a story by showing the full area.

This next photo was taken out in a parking lot and I am not against or for mini coopers it just seemed like something to shoot. I am still at an 18mm focal length. My ISO is at 400 and the f stop at 13 with the aperture at 1/4000. Even thought this may not tell a whole story it provides much context, detail, and texture.

I might have some of the numbers wrong as far as the ISO and aperture go but the other numbers are correct.

Axioms

So after class I went home and grabbed my SLR in hopes that I would be able to get this assignment done. As I arrived back at work I took a picture of the Washington county school buses lined up in the parking lot but wasn't to impressed. As work came to a close I was informed that a certain kind of training was going to be happening with a group of people using the building. To my horrifying luck I had my camera. I do warn you and anyone who looks at this blog that even though the wounds are not real, if you have a weak stomach you may not want to look at the images I present for this assignment.

This is my depth of field shot wear the brain leaking out is in focus and then it follows into the hand with the rule of thirds and the hand is out of focus this seemed to be a shallow depth of field.
here is another depth of field . In this one I took two shots one of the hand and then changed the depth of field to the face.

The next photos was my attempt to catch movement and some light. The building was dark and so I allowed the aperture to be open longer to catch light.This image has some motion to it.

The next image has a little more movement caught by the the aperture timing.

and then last, the image that I started the day off with for depth of field.