Interesting assignments for this session. I have to photograph how the camera sees and for the one after I have to shoot perfect because of the flaw. It will be interesting to see what I can come up with. We did cyanotypes in one of my classes I'll post the one that I did as soon as I get my scanner unpacked.

One of my assignments this week was to write a letter to the editor explaining why photography is art. I had to use a picture of mine to defend what I put in the letter. Here is the picture that I used.

This image was taken on September 10, 2013 using my Nikon D3s with a 14mm lens. I did not crop the image but I did some dodging and burning mostly in the kelp, the foot prints and the waves.

Living In California

We've been here for almost a complete month. It took us three weeks to find an apartment. We've moved into a place in Lompoc which is a little under an hour drive from Santa Barbara. Lompoc has two claims to fame the federal penitentiary and Vandenberg AFB.
Vandenberg is kind of cool in that they launch rockets for NASA and other countries and companies space agencies. This past weekend they launched the Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX. It went off at 9:00am and shook the hell out of the windows. My 7 year old and her friend were absolutely thrilled with it. Unfortunately no pictures from me. If I had known it was taking off I would have found a good vantage point and snapped a few. There is another launch scheduled in December. I'm going to try and get shots of that one if I don't have school.
Speeking of school, our instructors in the Brooks MFA program are no slouches when it comes to assigning reading homework. I've probably read over a hundred pages over the last three weeks for class and still have several more that I have to read for this weekend. It has been a little difficult though to find time to get my homework done while at the same time get settled into our apartment. I will be working very late on Wednesday and Friday trying to get my stuff finished up. I have two images that I have to get done and a couple of pages to write. I also have to draw a sketch for an image that will be due next class period after this weekend.
I will try to post the images that I'm working on here after they are graded with explanations of what the images are for and how they were shot and processed.
Well it's back to work for me. Until next time.

First week at Brooks

First week went rather well. I have a ton of reading to do for next week. Classes are set for every other weekend, eight hours on Saturday and another eight on Sunday.

Moving Day

We'll be shipping out on the 30th for California. The yard sales are over everything is getting packed and ready to go into the trailer. I'll be packing up my computer in the next couple of days and wanted to get this last post in before we leave.

It's supposed to be hot and miserable the next couple of days which isn't going to make it easy getting our stuff organized and loaded. All the equipment is packed and ready to go except for a couple of cameras that I'm going to use on the trip. I'm taking an old Yashica 635 camera, A Zeiss Ikon Nettar 515/16 folding camera, an Olympus Pen EE-3 half frame,  an Argus C4, a Horizon 202s Panorama camera and of course my Nikon D3s. I'm going to load Black and White film in all of the film cameras for the trip and develop it after school gets going. Hoping to get some good shots, we'll have to see how it goes.

We're hoping to get to California on the 2nd of September and find an apartment or house to rent right away. I have orientation on the 5th and 6th and classes start on the 7th and 8th. Those are going to be four very long days after the trip. I won't be posting until we get everything set up in California but I plan on posting quite a bit when we get settled in.

I'm very excited to be starting this new chapter in our lives with my wife and youngest child. It will be a great adventure and I, for one, am looking forward to it.

Take care everyone and I'll be back to posting in a couple of weeks.

Robert Gainor

Bike Rides and the Nikon D40X

Recently I started riding my bike again and as one who likes to have a camera with me and not wanting to put my big expensive pro camera at risk, I decided to strap on my old Nikon D40x.

The D40x is a 10 megapixel consumer model that is about a third the size of my D3s. It doesn't have a front finger wheel to change adjustments and the colors tend to be just a bit saturated. The shutter mechanics are also very different than the D3s. It's almost like there is just a bit of a delay from the time you push the button to the time the shutter fires. Another problem is, when in manual mode you have to change the aperture by pressing a button that is in the most awkward place and then move the thumb wheel. (I usually put it in shutter or aperture priority depending on what I'm shooting because of this). It also has no internal motor so most of my lenses have to be used in manual focus, which is not a big problem for me because I tend to manually focus most shots anyway.

All that being said I've had a blast shooting with this thing. especially while going down the trail as fast as my feet can peddle and firing off a shot at a slower than normal shutter speed. I've also tried some narrow depth of field stuff. I've even shot some to convert to black and white with great results.
Here are some of my results:

I've put more pics up on flickr  and will be posting more.

Knowing your camera and it's limitations can help you get some great shots regardless of any perceived shortcomings it may have. I try to turn those shortcomings into opportunities to be creative.

Here is the link to my flickr account to check out some more of my stuff:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgainor/

Brooks Institute MFA Program

I was recently accepted into the Masters of Fine Arts for Photography at the Brooks Institute in Santa Barbara, CA. For the next couple of weeks I'll be packing up and heading out to California so I won't be posting much here at all after the 26th. I plan on taking some old film cameras in the car with me and plan on shooting the whole trip. I'll be posting some of that here after I get to California.

I'm looking forward to getting there and working with the faculty and other students at Brooks. I also plan on posting a lot on this blog as a record of my time there.