DPChallenge
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
When I first decided that I wanted to take photography seriously as a hobby, one of the first things I did was look for some online digital photography competitions. When I did a Google search, one of the first sites that came back was DPChallenge. When I found this website, it was only a few months old. I discovered it in in early April of 2002, and it had only been up and running since February of that same year.
I signed up for the website and started browsing the competition photos that were available for public voting. I was amazed at what I was seeing and what people were doing with their digital cameras. I decided to give it a try myself. I started entering the weekly themed competitions. My photos performed well, but the photo above is the first winning entry I had in one of their contests. This photo was entered into a "Black and White" challenge, and it won first place out of 153 photos.
During the five years since I won that competition, DPChallenge has grown beyond my imagination. There are multiple competitions each week now, and each of those challenges usually has upwards of 300 entries. The competition is fierce.
If you are a digital camera hobbyist, serious amateur, or even a professional photographer, I suggest signing up on this website and participating in some of the competitions. You can participate in the open challenges without having to become a subscriber to the site, or you can subscribe to the site and participate in additional challenges each week.
Maybe I'll see ya there :)
Weddings
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
My father is thinking about retiring from his current job before too long. The thoughts of retiring have him thinking about what he wants to do with himself when he's not working a normal grind anymore. Since he used to be a professional photographer, he's considering going back into wedding photography as a retirement career. He's serious enough about it that he lined up a wedding to shoot this past weekend to get his feet wet with it again. He asked me to shoot with him, so I did. As a secondary shooter, I spent my time shooting 'secondary' photos rather than the typical wedding shots.
Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not a fan of this type of work. People tell me I'm crazy, because there IS excellent money to be made shooting weddings. I get asked somewhere around 10 times a year to shoot a wedding for someone, and I always refer them to some of my friends who do that sort of work professionally.
If my dad gets back into wedding photography, I feel like I'm going to be pulled into it with him to some extent. As I sit here writing this, all of the things I don't like about wedding photography are swirling around in my mind. I have never been in a church where there was adequate light to shoot without a flash. The wedding I shot on Saturday was in better light than I would have expected to see, but it still wasn't adequate. I found myself shooting at f/2.8, ISO 800, and shutter speeds between 1/40" and 1/60". During the ceremony, most churches do not allow flash photography, so it's a lot of hit and miss work. Some local churches confine the professional photographer to a balcony during the ceremony, which puts us anywhere between 100 and 200 feet away from the 'action'. That, coupled with poor light, creates problems in my mind.
Another issue that I noticed while working this wedding on Saturday was the number of people at the wedding with their own digital cameras. After the ceremony while my dad was shooting the long list of posed group photos that the wedding couple wanted, there were at least 7 or 8 people on EACH side of him shooting the same photos. If I was a professional wedding photographer, I would probably have huge issues with this. Selling prints is part of the 'bread and butter' of a photographer's work.
My biggest problem is that I'm a photo 'snob'. Photography is a passionate hobby for me. I have professional friends in the area who started out this way too. A few of them are very successful professional photographers now. They make lots of money. They have weddings booked every weekend just about all year long. They have long waiting lists for senior portraits. They also get top dollar for prints. Success, for most of them, seems to have come at a price though. They aren't shooting much of anything for themselves anymore. When they go on vacation, it's to get away from the camera rather than to become 'one' with it again :)
My dad has been through this burn out already too. When he got out of photography, he didn't touch a camera again for a long time. When I got into photography, it seemed to rekindle his interest in it just a little. Obviously, my interests and his are significantly different, but at least he's giving it a try again :)
The Delivery
Joshua Papelbon - Greenville Drive
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
The Hickory Crawdads are currently hosting a four-game series against the Greenville Drive in Hickory at L.P. Frans Stadium. Near the end of game two on Friday night, I had already packed up my camera gear and was just watching the game. When the light falls below a certain level, I usually hang it up and just enjoy watching the rest of the game. As I was watching, The Drive put in a relief pitcher who had the strangest looking delivery I had ever seen. His name is Joshua Papelbon. This submarine-style side arm delivery immediately caught my eye, so I got the camera back out and cranked up the ISO to 3200 and tried to get a decent photo of it.
Dairy Queen
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
I made this photo back in 2004 when this particular Dairy Queen shop was celebrating its 50th anniversary here in Hickory. This Dairy Queen shop doesn't have tables and chairs... it's just a drive/walk-up ice cream shop where you get your stuff 'to-go'. It's only open during warm weather months between April and October (I think).
I really like Dairy Queen soft-serve ice cream. But if I want to sit down and eat it in the store, I have to go to the Dairy Queen over on the other side of town. It's newer and has hotdogs, fries, chicken, and barbecue stuff as well as all the normal ice cream treats. I have been there three times this summer so far, and each time it seems like there are only one or two people working. It takes forever to get a simple cone of ice cream. The line is always too long. The old Dairy Queen usually has three people working inside and I never have to wait long for anything.
Baseball Experimental
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
For some reason, I got bored at the baseball game tonight. I didn't feel like making player photos. I decided to try something different. I didn't have my tripod with me, so this little experiment isn't what it could have been. I made a multiple photo sequence of a pitcher delivering the ball towards home plate. I stacked those in Photoshop and played with the opacity of each layer to produce this image. Based on the experiment, I think I like the idea. I may try it again soon to see if I can improve on it...
It was a good day…
Yesterday afternoon, the doorbell rang. The mailman had arrived with a registered letter. It's the letter I have been waiting on. The work I have put in during the last year at school has paid off. I have been accepted into the Radiography program at Catawba Valley Community College.
Last summer, I decided to go back to school in order to create a new career path for myself. After looking at my options, I decided that Radiography would be a good choice for me. Entering the world of X-ray, CT scans, and MRI would be some sort of natural extension of my photography and working with people. I made a trip down to the school to find out what I had to do to get started. This trip was discouraging. I found out that entry into this program was competitive based on grades and other academic elements. The program at CVCC only accepts 10 students each fall. The number of applicants is obviously much larger than that, so in order to get in, I would have to find my way to the top of the list somehow.
I enrolled in classes and started knocking out the prerequisites that I was missing, including two semesters of Anatomy & Physiology. I managed to complete 31 credit hours over two semesters with a 4.0 GPA.
So, in August, I'll be starting back to school for two years in pursuit of a new career :)
Loretto Chapel – Santa Fe
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
The Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was commissioned in 1872 by Jean Baptiste Lamy. Lamy was the Bishop of the Santa Fe Archdiocese at this time. Originally, the Loretto Chapel was to be named “Our Lady of Light Chapel” and would be maintained by the Sisters of Loretto. The Sisters of Loretto established themselves in Santa Fe in 1853 by opening the Academy of Our Lady of Light. In a very short time, this school grew to an attendance of over 300 students. The school covered one city block and consisted of ten buildings.
Jean Baptiste Lamy had hired architect Antoine Mouly and his son from Paris to be the architect and builders for the St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe. During the 10-year construction period of this cathedral, Lamy convinced the Sisters of Loretto to take advantage of the Mouly father and son architect and construction team to design and build a chapel companion to the Academy of Our Lady of Light. The Sisters decided that the school needed a chapel and raised $30,000 on their own to begin construction of the Gothic chapel in 1873. The stones for the chapel were quarried from areas around Santa Fe. The stained glass was purchase from Paris and sent to Santa Fe via ship, paddle boat, and covered wagon. The original construction of the chapel was completed in 1878.
During the construction of the Loretto Chapel, Antoine Mouly died suddenly. Only after much of the chapel construction was complete, the builders discovered that there was no staircase available to the choir loft. The small size of the chapel did not lend itself to the construction of a standard staircase, and the Sisters of Loretto did not feel comfortable with a ladder to the loft. The construction of the staircase to the loft in Loretto Chapel creates a mystery that lives to this day, and the staircase in the Loretto Chapel is still referred to as “The Miraculous Staircase.”
Legend has it that the nuns prayed for nine consecutive days for a solution to the staircase problem in the chapel. After their nine days of prayer ended, a stranger arrived at the academy. This stranger offered to build a staircase to the loft in the chapel, but he would require total privacy in order to complete the task. The stranger locked himself in the chapel for three months with nothing but primitive tools while he built a spiral staircase. Another oddity of this staircase construction is that the carpenter is not known. As soon as the construction was complete, the carpenter vanished without a trace. Another oddity of this staircase is that it was constructed without the use of nails and there is no central support. A third oddity of this construction project is that all of the wood use to build the staircase is non-native wood, and there were no witnesses to the delivery of the wood or the actual construction of the staircase. The carpenter left the site before he could be paid for the work. The Sisters of Loretto offered a reward for the identity of the carpenter, but no one ever stepped forward or provided information leading to the identity of the stranger.
The legend of the Miraculous Staircase of Loretto Chapel lives to this day, but the chapel no longer serves as a church. The chapel does allow wedding ceremonies to be performed when those arrangements are requested.
Madison Bumgarner – San Francisco Giants
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
I have been waiting patiently this week for the live coverage of the 2007 Major League Baseball draft on ESPN2. It's not often that we have local draft prospects. The buzz in the neighborhood was that Madison Bumgarner would be picked up in the first 20 picks of the first round. I have been following news on Madison since early during this baseball season. At 3:05pm today, Madison Bumgarner was picked by the San Francisco Giants. This pick was the 10th overall during the first round.
The First Round Results down to Madison Bumgarner:
1 - David Price - Vanderbilt - Tampa Bay Devil Rays
2 - Mike Moustakas - Chatsworth High School (CA) - Kansas City Royals
3 - Josh Vitters - Cyprus High School (CA) - Chicago Cubs
4 - Daniel Moskos - Clemson - Pittsburgh Pirates
5 - Matthew Wieters - Georgia Tech - Baltimore Orioles
6 - Ross Detwiler - Missouri State - Washington Nationals
7 - Matthew LaPorta - Florida - Milwaukee Brewers
8 - Casey Weathers - Vanderbilt - Colorado Rockies
9 - Jarrod Parker - Norwell High School (IN) - Arizona Diamondbacks
10 - Madison Bumgarner - South Caldwell High School (NC) - San Francisco Giants
Now we'll see how the signing goes...
Congrats Madison!
SuperFan
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
As much time as I spend at L.P. Frans stadium for Hickory Crawdads Baseball, it doesn't take long to get to know who the 'regulars' at the park are. Greg Brunt is definitely a regular. I'm sure he attends at least as many games as I do, if not more. There are only rare instances that he's not in the park at a home game.
Greg was in the park for today's 11am game showing off a few new Special Olympics medals that he recently collected!
Mesa Verde
Originally uploaded by John Setzler.
Another stop on my Southwest Adventure was Mesa Verde. Mesa Verde is located in Southern Colorado near the San Juan mountains at the southern end of the Colorado Rockies. I'm not sure what the altitude at Mesa Verde actually is because I didn't bother to take my hand-held GPS out of my backpack on this trip. A rough guess would be somewhere between 8000 and 9000 feet above sea level.
The Mesa doesn't look really large from the road approaching it. I figured when we entered the park gate, it wouldn't take very long to get where we were going, but it took nearly an hour to get to the top.
When we finally got to the top, the section of the Mesa we wanted to tour was sold out, so we took the hike to Spruce Tree House. The hike into the canyon (yup.. a canyon within a mesa... odd) wasn't too difficult. The cliff-dwellers who lived in this region occupied the area between about 850 and 1250 A.D. That timeframe coincides very closely with the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon, and the Chacoans were known to have traded with the people of Mesa Verde.