Cell Phone Celebration

Children wait to find out who won the costume contest at their appartment complex in Fort Worth, Texas on October 30, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

 

Shooting with a camera phone is easier and harder. Easer because there is limited set up and control, harder because there are more things that can go wrong with no real way to fix it. People are more likely to walk in front of you when you are shooting with a phone instead of a bulky camera. The indoor lighting also made me realize how much people standing still actually move. But I got the moment of anticipation when they were holding their breath and it worked out well.

On the road for rocks

Texas Christian University geology students Adrian Rodriquez (left) and Carl Kurtz examine the rock layers exposed in a road cut along a Wyoming highway on October 18, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

Texas Christian University geology student John Howard examines a section of rock exposed in a road cut along Interstate 80 outside of Park City, Utah on October 23, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

Texas Christian University geology student John Howard uses his rock hammer to remove a section of rock exposed in a road cut along Interstate 80 outside of Park City, Utah on October 23, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

Texas Christian University geology student John Howard hammers free a section of rock exposed in a road cut along Interstate 80 outside of Park City, Utah on October 23, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

Taking these photos was a lot of fun. Riding in a car full of geologists who enjoy to talking about rocks for hours on end … I will never look at a rock the same way again. The lighting made capturing a clear photo in each case a challenge. The students were moving around a lot, from one to the next amazing feature in the layers. The light was either strong and direct or very diluted, and I was in a race against the setting sun in several cases. About the time I got the shutter speed, aperture and ISO set, they had moved on or the sun had set too far.

I solved this by being a bit bossy, making Howard wait for me to set up before he hammered and making Rodriquez and Kurtz stand in the cold for another minute until I was sure I had the shot. I also set the ISO to get enough sensitivity and the shutter speed to a fast enough speed to stop action and just worked on changing the aperture, rather than fiddling with all three constantly.

Whether or Not There is “Weather”

Children race and play while ominous clouds loom over their homes in Fort Worth, Texas on October 13, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

This was a hard one because it only rained or had any show of real weather while I was at work  and couldn’t carry a camera. But I decided “weather” was every thing good or bad and people always work around the conditions. So I took pointed my camera at people enjoying life under the threat of storms. In hind sight, this would have been better if I could have gotten the very dark clouds in the frame, but the apartments are so tall and arranged in such a way that the photo would have had to be taken an indecently low angle to capture the sky.

Samantha Calimbahin, a junior journalism major at Texas Christian University, dashes to the shuttle bus in the Sandage parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas on October 14, 2013.

This one is a little better. Samantha Calimbahin is hurrying to the shuttle bus under her umbrella. The pavement is clearly wet and the lighting is muted by the clouds.

Two things I’ll remember next time I have to shoot weather. First: you need a place where that is conducive for capturing the sky or other direct evidence of the weather. Second: people are moving fast so you need to be in a position and place that you can take lots of shots or wait for people to step into the shot you have framed in your head.

Planning a Hail Mary

Workers construct the frame for an overpass support near the intersection of I-30 and University Drive in Fort Worth, Texas on Oct. 4, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

Workers construct the frame for an overpass support near the intersection of I-30 and University Drive in Fort Worth, Texas on Oct. 4, 2013. (TCU/Bethany Peterson)

Stuck in traffic waiting for the stop light to change, I noticed these construction workers climbing all over a support structure. It was fascinating to watch them move, seemingly in mid-air, along the length of the cage, hooking rods together into the frame.  Just as the light changed, I thought “What a cool picture that would make!” More than slightly upset at myself for not thinking of it sooner, I did some less than stellar driving to get back to the same spot while setting up the camera. I circled back three times before I was happy I had at least some thing to work with.

Knowing Murphy’s law would prohibit me from being stuck in the perfect location again, I prepared to shoot on the fly. While turning around and praying fervently the workers would not finish before I got back, I found a similar lighting situation at another stop light and preset the camera. I chose a very fast shutter speed (because I would be shooting while driving), a large aperture (for a shorter depth of field because I would have to shoot through my windshield and didn’t want the world to see how dirty it was) and switched to automatic focus (to cut down on the likelihood of a crash). I used a medium zoom to make sure my photos’ edges would not catch the interior of my car, as low an ISO as I could to get a sharper longer-distance shot, and made sure the camera was set to burst mode. Once at the construction zone, I put half of one eye to the view finder, just enough that I could see the orange vests the workers had on and ensure at least one person was in each shot, held down the shutter button and hoped for the best.

These two photos are from the same original, cropped with different focuses. The top is much more personal, showing the workers’ interactions. The second provides more context and highlights the construction.