TEDx Telfair Street :: MATTER!

I had the amazing pleasure to cover an event Downtown called TEDx Telfair Street. If you are familiar with TED Talks, TEDx simply means that it was independently organized and setup by a third party. The event took place Friday January 31, 2014 and I covered the event photography.

There were amazing speakers that talked about truly interesting things that is meant to spark ideas and action into the viewers and the minds of those that watched. The theme of the event is MATTER. All of the speakers here that are speaking fall into 4 categories:

      Education

 

      Message

 

      Creativity

 

    You

Time for a Logo Re-Design

Roughly 2 years ago I made a logo for my website through Photoshop that I was satisfied with long before I had the Creative Cloud. It was a pain to make the corners of the ribbon as well as the (3D) wall effect in Photoshop as well.

Recently I have been on a mission to use more of the other Creative Cloud applications to attempt to get my money’s worth out of them. I found out that logos and other graphics were better created in Illustrator, so I this is what I came with. I am still a noob at illustrator, but not too shabby for my fist go at it.

Overall I wish I had the direct selection tool inside of Photoshop CC… It alone made manipulating corned easy and simple to do. Like the Ribbon corners.

Exercising to KEEP you going

zumba-3Exercising by way of music or dance is by no means a new or revolutionary concept, but it is definitely a way to motivate yourself to continue exercising when you get discouraged or don’t feel like exercising. I personally have done structured exercising programs like Shaun T’s Insanity that are great at pushing you to exercise. Recently I took pictures at an International Festival at Georgia Regent University put on by the Jaguar Production Crew and they featured a local Zumba group that danced to about 7 songs back to back and it seemed like a great cardio exercise that a lot of people seemed to enjoy. I personally have never done Zumba, but I know there are loads of people who do it and see results. Photographing them on stage though required me to use a faster shutter speed since, in Zumba, they are moving pretty fast. Find something that gets you active like music or a video and do exercise to it other than the normal day to day things to keep you exercising.

 

While I was at the festival I also made a neat Auto Awesome Video that I will include in this post for your pleasure of watching that includes a good bit of Zumba footage and how everyone enjoyed it as well.

Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s TechNet 2013

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          This past week I had the unique opportunity to attend a Technology Conference called TechNet. TechNet is hosted by an organization called AFCEA (Armed Forces Communications And Electronics Association). The theme of the conference was, “Modernizing for Network 2020 and Beyond:  Empower, Connect, Dominate!” There were many vendors there demoing enterprise technology catering to the Department of Defense. One demo that was popular at the show as you could image is was a war fighter simulation that seem to catch everyone’s eye that was developed by Dell.

While the exhibit floor has many attractions for many, I sat in on one of the keynotes that were going on in the presentation hall. The speaker I happened to sit in on was Lieutenant General Susan S. Lawrence, Chief Information Officer/G-6 United States Army, who gave the morning keynote. Her keynote was based on Network Operational Effectiveness & Security. She spoke the Army of the Future and the direction the Army will be taking through a Networked and Cyber age of Technology. She showed what right looked like as far as a soldier was that was always connected. She mentioned, “…it’s all about staying connected and getting the right information to the right person as soon as possible.” She also spoke about the balance of Enterprise, Business, and Warfighter in relation to Network Operation. After her presentation Chief of Signal Major General LaWarren V. Patterson presented a token of appreciation for speaking and serving our country.

It was an awesome conference and i’d recommend to anyone interested in the DOD or the Army and is a Techy.

 

Low Light Photography is not as easy as it looks

I have taken photos recently at an event at Brunswick National Lanes called jaguaRave. It was a social bowling events. The event started at Midnight so they turn off the regular fluorescent lights and turn on the colorized neon light. I love the vibe and colors in person, but capturing what you see in person was a definite challenge.

lowlight2

Figuring out what camera settings to shoot the event at wasn’t too much of an issue. The only issue I had at times was the ability to grab focus, while keeping a low ISO, WITHOUT using  flash. This was a bowling alley and I didn’t want to upset the vibe with using my Nikon SB-910.

lowlight

I decided to use my 70-200 f/2.8 to cover the event that way I can fill the frame and capture action without being in the way. I shot all of the photos at 1/6oth of a second handheld.

Starting the GRU Year Greek!!!

JPC 2013 ClubFest-5

 

The Jaguar Production Crew hosted ClubFest yesterday. ClubFest is a biannual event welcoming students back to school. It is an opportunity that provides student and campus organizations an occasion to share information about their organizations with incoming and returning GRU students. They were able to set up their tables with the decorated table cloths and tri fold boards.

One set of the organizations many eager to meet were the Greek Organizations and they were well represented.

 

 

The Greek Organizations that participated were:

Alpha Sigma Phi

Delta Chi

Zeta Tau Alpha

Alpha Kappa Alpha

Delta Sigma Theta

Omega Psi Phi

Kappa Alpha Psi

Zeta Phi Beta

 

 

 

My Experience Breaking into Night Photography

The Road Less Traveled…
Landscape-3
I was told along time ago to try night photography, and I finally got up EXTRA early BEFORE training and shot a few shot in the cold. I didn’t know how I felt about night photography. When I shot this one it was freaking cold, so that’s was a CON to me. The pictures turned pretty good. It was shot with a 35mm f/1.8 which was the best lens I could shoot with in low light since it was so dark. It was at 1/4 of a second at f/8 with an ISO of 640. It wasn’t by any means my last night shoot, but I don’t plan to do it as often as others.

This was my second attempt at Night Photography: “The Imperial Theatre”

Picture Taken by Michael Banks

This was a shot that I wanted to attempt to get for about a week (weather). We don’t have many high rise movie theaters like I see from many other notable Photographers, but this will have to do.

From my first attempt it was recommended that I use shutter-priority and keep the ISO down to 100 and I made sure to keep alot of the other suggestions in mind. I am overall satisfied with the shot that I got. I did some post-processing in Lightroom, but no “Radical” changes.

Free-Running is my New Found Respect

At the beginning of this year I had the opportunity to learn and take photos of something that I was completely clueless about at the time, but now very impressed by, Free-Running. Free-Running is more formally known as Parkour. The group that I shot calls themselves Team Apocalyptic.

Team Apocalyptic is a part of Hayden’s Freerunning Academy, which is a program taught out of Hayden’s International Gymnastics Academy. These are really some talented individuals. They spent a few hours running in the park… I had a blast. rained a bit and then the sun came out and left again into the sunset while they continued to run free…

I took most of these shots with two lenses: a 35mm f/1.8 and a 55-200mm variable apertured lense. Most of the photos were shot between 1/400th of a second and 1/800th of a second. The reason I shot them at that speed was because I didn’t want any blur or camera shake in the photo. I rarely like motion blur in my photos. I shot most of the pictures at f/4 because I wanted a shallow depth of field, while keeping them in focus at the same time.

These are a few of the Gravity Defying shots from s photo shoot I had the pleasure to shoot… They blew my mind with how good they are. They didn’t fall once…

Keeping it Simple

Keturah Portrait-1

A lot of time people look for photos to be these elaborate things. Today a part of this photoshoot was dedicated to a simple portraiture style. A lot of time photographers create photoshoots that have so many moving parts to where the model or the subject gets overpowered and lost in the scene. Sometimes it is as Poet Robert Browning originally said, “Less is More…

This portrait is of a good friend of mine Keturah Mingledolph.

A Day at the Lake

 

Here is a candid that I took at the lake.

Since it is Shark Week I thought it would be neat to get a perspective actually in the water… So I daringly took my camera with a 70-200 f/2.8 out in the lake, handheld, and took this shot.

I was a little nervous take it out on the lake, weather ceiling or not. This wasn’t a photoshoot or anything just a casual time at the lake. The shot was 1/500th of a second at f/4 @ 70mm. I did all the editing and post processing in  Lightroom 5 . I wanted to stay out of Photoshop  if I could.

Overall I had a great day at the lake today….always nice to relax or swim with heavy DSLR’s lol