Aaron Barker’s Photoblog

I have been wanting to update the look of my blog forever, but just never got around to it. After posting pictures of the holi festival I got lots of great comments on the photos, but thought they could have been shown of so much better.

I have been a long time fan of the big picture blog over at boston.com. They post a few times a week on various interesting subjects. But the best part are the… BIG PICTURES.  They display their photos at a glorious 990 pixels wide. So different from most other blogs.  You really get to dig into the detail of the amazing photos.  So I decided to take my cue from them and change my layout to show bigger pictures.

I moved all the stuff that was in the side column down to the very bottom as that wasn’t what you are here for anyway. I took that extra space and added a little more and am now proudly showing my photos off at 900px wide.  Sure it’s not the full 990 that Big Picture does, but it’s still pretty dang big and gives me a little room to have some fun with the design.

The web designer (and geek) in me had fun using some fun new features that the good browsers are starting to support.  I say good, because if you are looking at the site in Internet Explorer you are missing out on a few of the niceties. I won’t get on my soapbox about why IE sucks at this time, but do us all a favor and stop using it… m’kay?

I know I don’t post that often, and there are many better photographers out there (see my blogroll at the bottom of the screen for several)… but for the little I do post, I hope you enjoy the new format of seeing the bigger photos.

I have updated the holi festival post to use the larger photos, and may go back to others from the past to update them as well.  The photos in this post are selections from the past in their new bigger format.

To more easily navigate the photos you can press your J and K keys to go down and up respectively, jumping to the next or previous photo.  Kind of weird keys to use, but that is what a number of sites are already using (Google Reader, Big Picture) so thought I would follow suit.

I’m sure I have the occasional bug to fix here and there, but hopefully I’ll get to them… sometime this year.

For the last two years I have wanted to go to the Holi Festival at the Krisha Temple in Spanish Fork. Each year something came up.  This year I wanted to go extra bad after seeing all the pictures from the past years.

A photographer friend, Scott Jarvie, has been shooting the Holi Festival for the last few years.  This year he had the crazy idea (for most mortal men, not for him) to organize a dozen photographers to shoot the festivities.  I quickly volunteered.  In the end we had around 10,000 photos from the 12 photogs.  As of this writing they are still being uploaded (that’s about 100gig worth folks) but they can be seen here.

The baby powder like colored powder is naturally an enemy to expensive camera equipment.  I spent some time the night before to seal up my camera and lens.  The short version is that it was some gallon ziploc bags and some tape.  It worked perfectly.

The day of was very long.  I showed up around 9 and left about 5:30. Which paled compared to Scott and Pete Stott that were there longer then I was. I was sore and tired by the end of the day, but wow it was fun.

Seriously. Fun.

So many amazing photo ops. So many people willing (and excited) to have their pictures taken. It really helped me to step out of my normal comfort zone and get into peoples faces.

I’m really worried about next year though.  I’m not sure if I will want to participate or take photos.  It looked like a lot of fun.

I know, shut up already and get to the pictures.

Full Holi Festival gallery here.

Special thanks to Scott for being his normal over ambitious self and organizing the outing.  I would have tried to go out anyway, but it was more fun to hang with other photogs and be a part of something bigger.

Even more special thanks to my family who puts up with my regular photo outings. I was out at a conference for a full week just a week and a half ago. Photocamp Utah last Saturday. Now this. Thanks for putting up with me guys!

One of my carpool buddies, David Lindes, bumped into this here photo blog I believe as a result of my Happy Dallintines Day post. He has a new band called Rumbo Rumba (on facebook) that plays Latin alternative music. He asked if I would come to one of their practice sessions to get some documentary type shots for their website. I figured I could use the experience so I said yes.

Saturday I went up to their studio to see what I could do. In talking to David before hand he said it was a small room with dim lighting. So just I’m case I brought my studio lights. I was glad I did as they helped immensely.  It was still quite difficult as the band was scattered around the room all facing eachother.  Naturally any place I put the lights would be close to some and far away from others.  This made the lighting quite difficult.  I basically had to adjust the lights depending on who I was shooting.

More experienced photogs may have been able to do it all with one setting, but I guess I’m not that photog quite yet.  Luckily I had picked up some Radio Popper JrX remote triggers which allowed me to adjust the strobes on the fly.  This made it extremely easy to adjust the power of my two lights as I went around the room and framed different situations.

After the studio we moved out to an auditorium of sorts to do some casual shots on a couch that they had.  They had a great wood floor that added a lot to the shots.

Finally we went out to beside their building to get some outside shots.  Again, wanting it kind of casual.

All in all I enjoyed the challenge.  Hopefully the band gets some stuff out of it that they like.  David is a designer himself, so he will be editing the photos with his own chosen style.  I edited these for my own benefit to see what I could do with them.

Any feedback is welcome as I am always wanting to improve.

View the full set on flickr.

Story behind this down lower…

I started with the following picture:

Did some work in Lightroom:

Then into Photoshop for the text (hopefully I can do this all in Lightroom 3 when it comes out):

Final Product

So the computer editing is all well and good, but at this point Dallin just looks like he’s shaking his fist in the air.  The funnest part of this project is when you add the lollipop:

Full Story

Full disclosure that I blatantly stole this valentines day card idea from Suzanne over at Lookie Loo Photography.  I am a huge fan of her work and if I were to have someone else take pics of my family, she would be one of the two I would go to.

So what is Dallintines day?  Last year when my son Dallin could first really register the word “valentines” he naturally thought it was Dallintines because hey… how many words have an “allin” sound in them? So when I started thinking about recreating this idea in making a card for him to hand out, I thought it would be fun to include that on the card.

Dallin doesn’t normally like to sit/stand still for my parentally enforced photo shoots.  Luckily he was kind of interested in this one after seeing Suzanne’s examples and so cooperated with me. He even did the arm on the hip like Suzanne’s daughter did without my prompting.  Here are a few more of the winning shots from the evening.  We got a few of each of them printed out to mix it up a little.

Thanks to Suzanne (who hopefully isn’t mad I “borrowed” her idea) for the inspiration. This was the most fun I’ve had taking pics with Dallin in a while.

Gritty Details

I shot this in my basement with my two AlienBees B800 studio lights, two yards of fabric from the fabric store and my normal camera gear.  The fabric is actually clamped on to a boxspring I have standing up against the wall… nothing too fancy.

I got the studio lights after the first studio lighting photowalk back in 2008. So far all I’ve used them for is pics of family (and the occasional macro).  I really need to break out of my comfort zone and use them more often so I can get good enough to charge a few bucks and get the cost back.  But until then, I sure have lots of great pics of my boys and their cousins

Somehow on Saturday I got to looking at my flickr favorites list.  One shot stood out to me that I had favorited forever ago with a desire to recreate one day.  It was a close up of some toothpicks that had an almost flower like feel to them.

It had been a while since broke out my gear and way longer since I had done any macro work.  So I got to playing with some toothpicks as well as one of those pin board toys that has hundreds of pins

Both of the subjects presented unique challenges.  It took quite a while to get the toothpicks lined up correctly to be able to get them to rotate and get the feel that I wanted.  I had to keep sticking in additional toothpicks into gaps, some would fall out when they wouldn’t have pressure on them (think jenga), shadows had to be correctly positioned to give separation, etc etc.

The pin board was very reflective so there was a lot of moving around of lights to get a good reflection and shadow relationship, changing the intensity of the lights (used two, one left, one right), making sure all the pins were down, getting them to be lined up correctly with the camera (with such a strong pattern its easy to tell when they aren’t right), etc .

The results are by no means gallery material, but they were a fun first stab at macro in the studio.  I’m glad I favorited that image so many years ago and finally got around to trying to recreate it.  There are many more that I am anxious to try in the future.  While I think it’s good to be your own photographer and not copy others, it doesn’t hurt to try and recreate things every now and then for education sake

Canon 40D, EFS 28-135 IS, 1/30, f/5, 65mm, ISO 800

If I posted all the pictures I take of my kids, the blog would be over run with them.  But for some reason this one just grabbed me when I started editing it.

This was taken in a small cubby hole at the Discovery Park in Pleasant Grove, UT.  It was a bit overcast and this was under the main structure so it was quite dark. The 800 ISO gives the photo a great grain but Daniel’s face still looks like a porcelain doll as my wife says.

Somewhere I learned how to use gradient tool to add the nice dark edges which I really think adds to it, and draws the attention in.

I guess I shouldn’t be so afraid to post the pictures of family that I take.  That is a huge part of my photography right now and those photos are definitely worth being shared as well.

Canon 40D, Sigma 10-20mm 1:4-5.6 EX DC HSM, 1/250, f/11, 16 mm, ISO 100

So I got a request the other day through my LDS Temple Photography site asking if I had any plans to add Oquirrh Mountain Temple to my list of photos.  I had been meaning to get up there forever to take some pics but just never had.  But it so happens that my work was moving to a mile away or so, and so I took the opportunity to run over for a quick photo shoot with the temple.

I got several great shots, and since I have had so little activity here lately maybe I’ll post a few of them.  I went in the morning and then made a return trip that evening to get some dusk/night shots.

This is also my first shot with my new wide angle lens.  I definitely wouldn’t have gotten the shots I wanted without it.  It’s a great addition to my bag.

A project that I have worked on for the last year at work has finally launched.  The Welfare Operations Training site.

When creating the site I wanted to use the iconic Welfare Square grain silos located next to I-15 in Utah as a recognizable banner on the front page.  Unfortunately I couldn’t find any good photos of the silos in the library of approved media.  So I decided to go take the picture myself

Here it is in place on the front page of the site.

We also needed a photo of a computer in our “How to Use the Site” section and again, none of the images I had access to would work as I wanted a white computer (not the norm) that wouldn’t stand out so much.  So I went to the home studio on my white seamless paper, and did a little photoshoot with my own computer hardware.

The LCD is actually a black Dell 2001FP that I did some fairly heavy Photoshopping on to make white/grey.

So while they are my photos, they were taken on the company dime (I signed over full rights to them).  But it’s still cool to have my work out on an official site of the church.

I am grateful I had the skills and equipment to get the photos I wanted.

Made the annual visit to Provo High School to view the fireworks at the Stadium of Fire.

While waiting for the show to begin I was checking my twitter feed and saw Scott Jarvie mention his firework photo tips from 2008.  One of the tips was that he uses his telephoto to zoom in on shapes.  I didn’t exactly follow his advice, but it did make me zoom in in general to get more details then the “big picture” type view I have done in the past.  I definitely liked the different look it gave me.

During a recent family vacation to southern California to attend a family reunion, I thought I would beef up the selection on my LDS Temple Photography site and take pictures of the temples along the way.  Sometimes it would just have to be at the time we were passing by them, and so the lighting wasn’t the best, but something is better then nothing I guess.

The temples we visited were:

1. St George Utah
2. Las Vegas Nevada
3. Los Angeles California
4. Newport Beach California
5. Redlands California

It was interesting to see temples from various eras.  St George being one of the originals.  Los Angeles being from the 1950’s.  Las Vegas from when there was kind of a “lots of spires” wave going on. Newport Beach and Redlands from the “mini” temple category.

We first visited Los Angeles at the worst part of the day with stark lighting from straight above (the “passiny by” reference from above).  After a visit to the beach, I steered the family back for a second visit just at dusk and was pleased to get my favorite temple shot of the vacation (above).

The one I was the most surprised by was Newport Beach.  The grounds were just gorgeous.  Rivaling Temple Square in my opinion.  Sadly there was a heavy smog that morning so it has a nice grey sky to backdrop it.

Of all the places I expected to have nice fluffy white clouds in the background… the desert of Las Vegas was not it.  Just as we turned the corner where you can see Las Vegas for the first time there was this rain storm pounding the whole valley (yeah, crazy).  It hadn’t yet made it to the eastern edge where the temple was and by the time I got there the leading clouds were in the background.  It was perfect.

It’s very difficult to get a good shot of the whole temple.  It now has many mature trees on a smallish lot.  Most of the pictures I saw online were from when the palm trees were brand new.

Redlands is a bit special for my family as it is the temple a city away from where my mom grew up, and where most of my extended family currently resides.  I love the palm trees that surround it and act as natural spires.

Last and certainly not least, is St George.  Again a family favorite as some great-great-great-great-grandfather helped to build it and apparently has a hand print in one of the upper window wells.  It’s odd how the little casual shot you can take on the way into the grounds can end up your favorite, over the ones you walk around forever to find “just the right angle”.  It sure was nice of that tree to grow as a natural frame like that.  A touch cheesy maybe, but you gotta have one of those every now and then

Many thanks to my family for putting up with my little side trips.  It was cool to visit 5 temples in 5 days, and it made for a memorable portion of our trip.