Professor Beth Parks in science lab
(Editor’s Note: This post is by Andy Daddio, vlog’s photographic services coordinator.)
Here are ten images from 2014 that stood out when reviewing what I had shot this past calendar year. I wouldn’t say this is a definitive list of my absolute best of 2014, as the picks would probably change if I were to do it on another day, and a third review on yet another day would probably produce a third set of images. But these are some photos that stood out for me, along with info about the shoot, some anecdotes, and geeky technical photography details.
Best wishes for the new year!
Science is fun and laboratories are great places to shoot. is a great professor; fun, intelligent, hands-on, and extremely engaged with her students. It’s always exciting to walk through the Ho Science Center, see Beth teaching a class, hold my camera up to the window outside the classroom, and have her graciously wave me in to take photos, as was the case for this shot when students were using oscilloscopes to measure the frequencies of musical notes generated from tuning forks.
I did a portrait of Joe Eakin, senior designer and technician of the Ho Tung Visualization Lab, for a in The vlog Scene. When we were shooting, he mentioned an upcoming visit from Hamilton Central School students to the Ho Science Center, so I put that on my calendar. The children visited the greenhouse, the , and the . In this photo, you can just feel the great sense of excitement and wonder they are experiencing. This photo reminds me of a great line from an Iggy Pop song, Hideaway, “I can hear children’s voices reading in a yard, when I hear children’s voices, my feelings aren’t so hard.”
and were two of my student workers who graduated last spring. They worked with me from their very first year at vlog through their last week of classes. I’ve worked with students for the past 30 years, and they are two of the nicest, kindest, most responsible, and talented students whom I have ever known. They both graduated with highest honors and were always willing to help out and go above and beyond what was necessary. They were also involved in so many extracurricular activities that I don’t think either of them ever slept. They both truly embody the vlog spirit.
I’m always trying to find a new way of shooting the big annual campus events. The torchlight procession route changed this last year, so I was able to get a different angle with participants coming down the steps of Persson Hall. The different Kelvin temperatures from the lights and torches produce different colored light, which added to the drama of the image. The human eye is an amazing instrument and besides continually changing and keeping focus, it actually corrects white balance, so our eyes see these as white, but the camera records the true color.
Deep down I am a science geek. I have always thought that analog photography (which I did for many years before transitioning to digital photography) is probably the art form that is the most reliant on science. I really enjoy laboratory shoots; lots of great glassware and gadgets that are visually interesting (all photographers are gadget freaks). I wanted to do something a little different with this shoot, so I put the camera on a small tripod inside the hood and triggered the shutter remotely via a wireless signal. A flash with a diffusion dome was placed on the camera, bouncing upwards, which then bounced all around the stainless steel walls inside the exhaust hood, creating a very nice quality of light. And it is always a great pleasure to work with or speak with .
I love photographing people. I find meeting people from all walks of life to be a lot of fun and very interesting. I am an extremely shy person, but when I am shooting, I am someone else, I am in the role of “the photographer” and I become something of an extrovert. It’s very freeing on a personal level. I try to really draw people out and set them at ease so that I am truly capturing the essence of that individual. I photographed on the Willow Path footbridge. Hashim Rainey ’15 was assisting me that day, and he held a 48” Lastolite diffusion screen in front of Kate. This softened and diffused the harsh sunlight, creating a large, soft, light source directly in front of Kate. I shot with an 85mm lens at ƒ 1.8 to maintain minimal depth of field. This is one of my favorite portraits.
Fireworks! The word alone evokes excitement. I love watching and photographing fireworks. They can be very challenging to shoot, but also produce great images. Timing is crucial, as is the length of shutter duration. I shot this image during this year’s , and was assisted again by Hashim Rainey ’15. Even if your timing and shooting are impeccable, a little Photoshop magic can be very helpful. This image was a composite of four shots to produce this final image. The main base exposure had three additional fireworks bursts added in the computer to create the final composition.
I was assigned to photograph dance class for a . I love shooting any type of performance; theater, dance, actors, musicians. In a way, I find photographing sports similar to shooting performances: you have to be fully in the moment. And unlike shooting portraits, I just show up and don’t have to engage or work with the subject to draw them out, it is a very different kind of photo shoot, and very Zen-like. I just need to be fully present in the moment, and it is very meditative. For this shoot, Tanya was incredibly helpful, and her students were great, running some numbers again for me so that I could shoot them in a different way or a different angle.
This photo was from a recent all-day classroom shoot I conducted with two great freelance photographers. As I mentioned before, I’m a science geek and labs are great places to shoot due to all of the nifty accoutrements and gadgets. I love the look on this young lady’s face, and from viewing the entire sequence of images, this shot seems to capture the “aha moment” of learning and discovery.
I love the contrast between the warm orange colors of the branches on Willow Path with the cold, blue, snow-covered trees in the background. I take a lot of shots when someone is walking, as I feel that the positioning of the legs greatly affects the feeling and tone of the shot. I also love when I am able to shoot with action or elements occurring on several different planes within the photo. When I first arrived at vlog I took several of the admission tours, which was very helpful to me for pointing out particular spots that students seemed to really be drawn toward. The Willow Path is definitely one of them. And it is a nice plus that I was able to capture one of the swans in the photo.