Making Photography Simple
Church damaged from Hurricane Harvey’s strong winds
A week after Hurricane Harvey, the wettest tropical hurricane on record in the contiguous United States flooded thousands of homes and displaced over 30,000 people, I had the chance to join a group of 100 volunteers that met up in Victoria, Texas to help with the relief effort. [Read more…]
I recently returned from a trip to Haiti. I was traveling with representatives from Kyäni, an Idaho Falls company that sells nutrition and food supplements.
Kyäni’s nonprofit foundation, Kyäni Caring Hands, manufactures a nutrient-fortified instant potato product.
We spent a week distributing the product at Haitian orphanages and churches in an effort to alleviate hunger and scout potential humanitarian distribution lines. [Read more…]
A few weeks ago I had an experience that if I’m being honest, I’m still trying to process. I had the opportunity to travel to the Philippines and visit some amazing people in extremely humble circumstances. I don’t think I’m a good enough writer to fully portray the totality of the thoughts and feelings I had during and after this experience, but I’ll try to paint a picture. [Read more…]
I just returned home to Idaho from a 10 day tour through Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines. Although I was there on assignment shooting some interviews with company business leaders, I tried to take time to experience each location and make some photographs.
My first stop was in Tokyo. I learned the hard way that American debit or credit cards will not work at most places in Japan. They use their own chip system and even American cards with chips don’t tend to work. Be sure to bring adequate cash and exchange it at the airport upon arrival. Public transport is incredibly convenient in Japan. I took a train to Tokyo station from the airport and then found a transfer line to the station nearest my hotel. This may not be the easiest thing to figure out how to do if it’s your first time in the area. I was grateful to have a local office staff member pick me up and guide me through the mass transit system.
That evening we explored some of the various districts near Tokyo station including the Honda headquarters and a few other famous streets.
A couple of weeks ago I received the assignment to travel to Hawaii and shoot a cover shot for a corporate magazine. My visit was scheduled to take place during a sales rep meeting where there would be a few hundred people attending. 50 or so of these sales reps have qualified for a company car and would be driving it to the event to participate in a road rally around the island of O’ahu.
The creative brief called for the shot to include as many of these branded, white company cars as possible in an attractive setting. Shouldn’t be too hard in a beautiful place like Hawaii right? [Read more…]
Traveling to a new location can be intimidating. It takes time to research the best locations to photograph. Most of the time you probably have a limited number of days to make the most of your trip. You don’t want to waste time with the smaller details like trying to find a good place to eat. Here are 5 tips that I hope will help you when planing a photography trip to Alaska to make the most of your time in this wonderful state. [Read more…]
ISO 640 17mm f/4.0 1/200 sec
During my short photography assignment in Alaska, we found some time to stop by and photograph seaplanes at Lake Hood Seaplane Base directly across from the airport in Anchorage. Lake Hood offers seaplane pilots a place to dock their aircraft and a waterway to take off or land. It’s the perfect location for taking some exposures of a variety of small aircraft in a beautiful setting. For the above shot, I was looking for a unique angle to show off the aircraft. I got the idea to try out my 17mm lens and see if I could keep the wing tip in focus as well as the body of the aircraft. The lens is wide enough that the entire airplane is in focus even at f/4.0. I like how the wing tip provides an interesting foreground to the image, the wing leads your eye the body of the aircraft in the mid-ground, and the sky and water serve as the background. This composition breaks the image into thirds, from top to bottom. [Read more…]
I hope Camera Stupid can become a place where people interested in all types of photography can gain useful tips or information. Maybe you’re planing a trip to the Maldives, or you’re an aspiring travel photographer, I hope you will find this post about travel photography in the Maldives helpful and interesting.
In May I had the amazing opportunity to provide photography and videography coverage for a company event in the Maldivian Islands. The Maldives are an island nation located in the Indian Ocean. It’s about as far away from where I live in Idaho as you can get. Interesting Fact: If the Maldives sound like a place you want to visit, you may want to do it sooner than later. Forecasts estimate that the islands may be submerged in as little as 50 years due to rising ocean levels. I feel extremely blessed to have been able to experience and photograph this amazing location. [Read more…]