The Master Plan - business as usual

So OSU announced the finished version of the Master Plan a few days ago, without changing ANYTHING that people had been complaining about. The athletic village will be on campus as planned, and they'll keep buying houses to get property for it. The only concessions the school really made had been announced weeks ago and were repeated to give lip service to the city's residents.

It was a heated meeting. Lots of arguing, lots of yelling. This guy even did a protest song.



One thing I've noticed when doing news assignments for the World is my frenzied compositions. I get too busy getting shots that I don't think about getting THE shot. As a result sometimes my composition suffers. I'll be working harder, but not necessarily better. This is something I'll have to remedy.

The mayor, Bud Lacy, had strong words for OSU president Schmidly. It was a pretty easy shot to get - just layer the two men with a 200mm.



One last thing I noticed is I'm not that great at using an on-camera flash. Getting good off-camera lighting is like shooting fish in a barrel for me, but when I strap a flash onto the hotshoe, I feel so limited. The shots end up looking flat, with little distinction between the foreground and background. Luckily, I'm not in this situation much.

That's all for today.

Eddie Sutton steps down

OSU's basketball coach Eddie Sutton put an end to his season Monday after his Friday night car accident. I've been doing a lot of photo stuff for the Tulsa World on this, and it's been going great.

On Friday night at about 9:30 I get a call from Sean Hill, a friend of mine who's now working at the World. Apparently Sutton had been in a car wreck, and they needed a shot of his Durango. After tracking down the wrecker service that moved the car, I drive out to see what I can find. Figuring I would have to shoot through a fence, I wasn't expecting any good shots to come out of the assignment. Luckily, just as I arrived a tow truck was delivering another car and I was able to get inside the lot. The shot was exclusive, with no other paper in the state getting the photo, and it went out over the AP. Made the cover of both the The Tulsa World and The Daily Oklahoman, the two biggest papers in the state.



Yesterday afternoon I got another call from the World. They needed a shot of the other car - another SUV in a wrecker's lot. After doing some detective work I find out it's in a different lot than Sutton's car. So after talking with the wrecker service's manager as well as the owner of the car, I get access.



This was a tough shooting situation. The lot was packed with so many cars it was hard to maneuver. There was only one angle to get a shot of the damages, and even worse, it forced me to shoot directly into the sun. So I polarize the sky to get a little detail and use an off-camera flash to get light on the truck, which is completely in the shadows. Lens flare was also a serious problem.

Overall, though, I like the way the shots came out. Time will tell what else comes out of this story.

Troubles with the Master Plan

After a long hiatus in posting I've realized how far behind I've gotten on the blog. Anyway, I'm still at The O'Collegian, but not working as an editor. I decided at the start of the fall semester that as far as my career goes, I need to be taking photos, not editing other people's.

The big news at OSU recently has involved the Campus Master Plan. Schmidly and his crew have been hosting loads of meetings: with students, faculty, residents and most importantly, the city commission. It seems that people are more upset about the plan than Schmidly has realized. During the Q&A sessions at these meetings, people have consistently and forcefully let the school know just how they feel.



Hank Moore, a city commissioner, was just one of these people. I knew that the fireworks would start as soon as Schmidly started taking questions, so I stuck around during the presentation. After hearing the same hour-long spiel five times, you really learn a lot about the plan.

Anyway, Moore starts ripping into Schmidly and the university as a whole. Apparently the city has had problems with the school flaking out on business deals in the past. I knew this would be the shot, but wanted something different than the standard torso shot. So I got in really close with a 200mm lens and concentrated on getting a good guesture to go along with Moore's face.

After the shot ran front and center the next day I got a call from Moore wanting to buy a print. Turns out the News-Press went with a more standard torso shot - Moore probably ordered one from them, too, but I feel that our shot was stronger.

I've been trying to really break down photo situations to their essence recently, and I think it's helping quite a bit. With a speech, the core is the person's face and gestures they make. I got both in my frame with no extra elements. By shooting more of the face as opposed to the torso, it seems that the shot has more on an impact than the typical podium shot.