Aaron Paul Vogel

Thought I'd share these test shots I did with my friend Alissa, who just happens to look great in a bathing suit. I used my Ewa-Marine underwater bag for these. I think they turned out pretty cool for being in a freezing cold pool that was only between 3 and 8 feet deep. The bag worked very well, though I think goggles will be in order for the next time I do this; I couldn't see anything underwater so I had to guess of the composition. Fortunately I'm getting good at doing that with my 16-35mm lens. Next job for the bag will probably be in a practice pool at a local dive shop where my future roommate works. Then, once I figure out where my fins and wetsuit are, it's out to the open water for some surf shots....bbbbrrrrrr..

NPR : Gregory Crewdson's Photo Alchemy You all should check out this article about photographer Gregory Crewdson. While it's not my style of photography I can certainly appreciate the aesthetic of his images. The vivid colors and intricate sets are simply amazing.

This is the opening shot of a series of images I did for my first assignment in Picture Store, my photo class this session. The idea for the assignment was to capture a process from beginning to end and show the transitions in the middle. After an earlier failure I was stuck at home racking my brain for another process to show. Thanks to the military (never thought I'd say those words) an idea struck me: shit, shower, shave. That's a quaint little saying we have for our morning routine. Based on that I fleshed out some ideas about my current morning routine and came up with this set of 5 images.

This is the series I used for our Farmers Market assignment in PHO208. The assignment was to go to any farmers market in the area (and there are lots of them, pretty much every day) and photograph a farmer from the start of the day - setting up the shade tent, the tables, the produce, etc. - to the end of the day - taking down all the afore mentioned items. The story was to progress in a way to tell something about the person who was working the stand; how they interacted with people, how they felt about their work, what kind of a person they are, or anything to that effect. And it had to be done in about 5 images. I've included here some outtakes that I thought were nice, though not necessary as they duplicated some other image that I included in the final edit.

The farmer I contacted initially was from Harry's Berries. HB's is a farm in Oxnard and the man I spoke to, Rick, said his son and another employee would be at the stand the day I was going to go out. When I got there the scene was great: shady street so no super blown out backgrounds, pretty colors from the strawberries and tomatoes the stand had displayed, and it was a nice day in general. The only problem was Chris and Ceasar were both wearing baseball caps and looking down a whole lot - not good for pictures. So, rather than struggle along and get some decent but rather faceless pictures, or face shots but always from below, I decided to hedge my bets and shoot two stands at once. Fortunately the woman working the stand across the street seemed to be a bit slow setting up, so I was able to work with both stands at once, not missing anything I needed at either one. I spent the rest of the day bouncing back and forth trying to get the farmers interacting with their customers, some close-ups of the product and nice candid portraits.

In the end Laura Ramirez did in fact turn out to be the better subject. Actually she was a great subject; she ignored me when I needed her to and we chatted when I wasn't shooting. She had terrific customers and some great guys stopped by throughout the day to help her out. So, here's a quick slideshow of the images. It's a Quicktime movie that should auto start. If you want to watch it again just click somewhere in the window and hit the space bar. I'll figure out how to add a control button to it eventually.

I stumbled on this wonderful site done by the Magnum photo agency as I was looking through Slate.com's Today's Pictures section - which is another great find in it's own right. Today's Pictures is a daily set of images taken by Magnum photographers. In addition, new photo essays from Magnum In Motion are posted as well. Both sites are worth visiting, but if you're particularly interested in the interactive essays take a look at Magnum In Motion first. There's an incredible back log of work there. Also, take a look at the Previous Days drop down menu on the left-hand side of Today's Pictures Dec. 1st, 2005 and Dec. 2nd, 2005 kicked off the new section with some classic photographs from Magnum's history - the very first on Dec. 1st being my personal favorite by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Photo Stories / Essays

This is a new way I'm testing out for exhibiting my photo galleries. Since I'll most likely be closing my Livejournal blog and thus my extended galleries when my yearly subscription is up, I need to find a new way to show my work with a clean, simple interface. The pop-up you'll see was created with the help of SlideShowPro, a component made for Flash. It requires the latest version of the Flash plug-in for your browser, but I think it'll be worth it for you to download.

A few notes about the player:

• There are multiple galleries within the player. You can access the other galleries by clicking on the square icon in the lower right-hand corner.
• Captions slide down from the top, over the photograph, when you put your mouse over the image. Take the mouse off the image and the caption will go away.

Let me know what you think. I'm not yet decided on whether or not this is the best way to add my galleries to the blog, but it seems like it'll work well for my purposes. I'll probably be weighing the pros and cons of the other options I'm looking at in a later post. But for now I'm liking the SSP solution

It seems that everywhere I look these days I'm seeing Colin Mulvany's name popping up. Mulvany - who's Video Journal blog for the Spokesman Review's website is something I've reading and linking to for about 6 months now - just turned up in the SportsShooter.com newsletter as a featured interview in an article written by another SS.com member G.J. McCarthy. The dialog is really cool, and interesting and encouraging to see on what I'd say is a 99% still photography centered website.

In addition, Mulvany is serving as part of the faculty for the 2006 Southern Short Course which I'm sure has a lot to do with his previous 15+ years of photojournalism, but I can't help to think that his recent success with video, and the integration of audio and slideshows he's done had something to do with it too.

For my photo class this session we had to write a paper critiquing a photojournalism, or photography based website such as magnum.com, nytimes.com, sportsshooter.com and the like. I chose to do my critique on Mulvany's Video Journal. I wasn't going to post it, but since I now have a category (did you happen to see that addition on the right hand side?) for essays and articles, I think I'll post it now. So follow the link below to read my critique of Spokesman Review's Video Journal.

I awoke Saturday morning past to head out for work - shooting youth soccer tournaments in Santa Barbara - only to see this beautiful sight. I obviously couldn't pass up taking a picture. As much as I dreaded what a red sky at morning (sailors take warning) means, it was a delight none the less. California is paradise.

Those of you looking for more content will be pleased to know that I'll be headed out for the Southern Short Course in News Photography tomorrow and while undoubtedly be posting often - well at least once a day - about my experience. This is sure to be an interesting weekend with Ami Vitale, Colin Mulvany and Vincent Laforet all working as faculty.

I've also just re-recorded the voice over track for my MPV161 class final, so that 5-minute documentary on Parkfield, Calif., will be posted up within the next few weeks. It's rough, and it's not exactly as I would have done it, but working in groups means making concessions. I am no less pleased to present it regardless, and working with Dominic Colacchio and Grant Morris was a terrific experience.

UPDATE: I've removed the Flickr SSP feed as I'm switching over to a more controllable environment for putting my photographs online: Photoshelter

Well, there it is. I've managed to get Slide Show Pro to load images from my Flickr account. These happen to be tagged with "Portfolio". Some cool things: 1) you'll notice that if you click on an image not only does it pause the slide show, but it links back to that image in Flickr, allowing you to make comments or add notes. 2) This was SOOOOO easy. I wrote maybe 10 lines of code and let iViewMedia Pro, Picture Sync and Mars Edit do all the heavy lifting. Some not so cool things: 1) you'll notice that I only have 10 images in my slideshow. Not my fault. It seems that Flickr limits the number of images you can load via RSS to 10. That's lame, and is really going to limit the usefulness of this technique. For now I'm going to leave it up, but don't be surprised if I edit it to load differently in the future.

I spent Monday at Buttonwillow Raceway watching street bikes go incredibly fast around the track. I was there with some friends trying to wrap up video shooting for my final project and ended up taking as many stills as I did video shots. That was just too much fun. These are all un-cropped, un-toned and edited for good shots and shots of my friends, so there's a couple half-fuzzy ones in there. Anyway it was a blast, and if you're in the Los Angeles area I highly suggest you check out www.takeit2thetrack.net for info on their track days.

So this has nothing to do with photography, but everything to do with my life. Well, maybe that's an exageration, but some how without my [formerly] trusty steed ready for some high-speed schenanigans I just don't feel whole. I'll note the entire story later, I just wanted to get these photos up for now. Big thanks to Mike and Israel for getting my butt home. It would have been a long walk.

Don't have much time to write anything, but I've had the good fortune of being credentialed at the Laguna Seca Moto GP races! Here's some shots from the first day of practice. Look for more this afternoon, tomorrow and especially Sunday when the actual race is!

It's Day 3 of my Moab, Utah travel adventure, and I thought I'd post up a little update of how things are going, as well as a link to the Flickr gallery where I'm posting my images on a daily basis.

Yesterday I joined Canyon Voyages Adventure Co. for some calm water kayaking. I put one camera in the Ewa-Marine bag with a 16-24mm lens and put the other in a dry bag in the stern of my open-bow kayak with a 100-400mm lens. The open-bow worked perfect as it allowed me to jump in and out of the water without flooding the boat. The bag worked well, though I quickly realized that I'd need to put some Rain-X on the front glass in order to keep the water droplets off as they were which were quickly drying and leaving nasty dust spots. I also realized that I'd need some small, possibly boogie-boarding style, fins in order to more easily move around in the water. The kayaks were moving much more quickly that I was in the water. Also, some kind of lanyard to attach to the kayak would be good so I don't have to hang on to it to keep if from going down river without me.

Some other things I've found is that there's a lot more to Moab than heat and slickrock. If you head northeast of town, up River Rd. and then along the La Sal loop road you'll go through some down right Aspen-like mountainscapes. With Birch and Poplars surrounding you, and themperature dropping as quickly as you ascend, you'll forget you're so near to desert-like conditions down below. There also a number of primitive campsites up there that would make for a great escape from the Moab heat.

The last, kind of sad, thing I've found is that the majority of local mt. bikers are so used to getting paid by photographers taking stock or corporate advertising images, that I'm pretty much SOL for getting local riders to shoot. I'm gonna have to start hitting up the tourists now. Could work... could be a major pain in the ass. We'll see.

That's it for now. I'll be heading out to Negro Bill (I swear, that's the name!) Canyon to do some sunset and night shots of the arches there. I'm so happy there's a full moon for the next few days!

I can't remember having more fun on four wheels in my entire life! The fun I had on Elephant hill and in the surrounding canyons that the trails run through was surpassed only by the amazing beauty of the red rock formations. Being late summer the trails were almost completely empty; a little troubling from a safety stand point, but oh so serene.

It's Day 7 here in Moab, and I'm coming up on my first deadline. I have to get 15 images in to Rick Rickman by 7 p.m. on Sunday evening. I have almost that so far, so I'm feeling pretty good. I'm heading out for some more off-roading today. Probably cruise over to slick rock in the evening and try re-doing that on-bike shot of the trailhead marker. Other than that I'm just kind of cruising. I have another post to write up. Something I'm calling my Photographer's Notebook, then I'm gonna head out.

Now mom, don't panic, I wasn't nearly as close as it looks. And the wind was calm. And it was just for the picture. Promise.

That out of the way, I spent another crazy day of 4-wheeling. This time I went north of Moab to the Entrada Bluffs road and took the Top of the World spur to get to this outlook. The spur was a very fun and fairly challenging 4x4 trail with some great, steep climbs and some hairy off-camber descents. All in all though they were no challenge for the jacked-up Wrangler I rented from Canyonlands Jeep Adventures. With the stock gearing, a 3" lift and some 33" All Terrain tires she handled some pretty big drops and some big climbs very well. Pretty amazing what these rigs are capable of with just a few modifications.

After Top of the World I took a wrong turn because I wasn't paying attention and ended up on a "singletrack" section of the Kokopelli trail. While it's not the true single track that midwesterners are used to - 2" wide trails winding through bar-width gaps between trees - it was definitely narrower and more hair-raising than the double track I'd been on. I didn't get any pictures because I was too busy trying to stay on the trail and get up the insanely loose and steep hill. Thankfully the Wrangler pulled through with flying colors (and I'd like to think my driving skills had a little to do with it).

After that I headed around what I thought would be a nice little loop back to HWY 128, but halfway through realized I was heading to a hill that the trailhead signs had warned required a winch to get up. Turn around time. I took a couple of wrong turns along the way, no thanks to crappy signage, but thanks to my GPS and the map I had I got back on track quickly each time.

Today I'm taking it easy and just hitting the more travelled trails looking for other drivers to take pictures of. The brilliant red Jeep stands out nicely, but I'm getting tired of looking at it. And I'm sure my teacher will too.

Well I've just returned from Moab, Utah, after spending 2 weeks trying to cover a tourist destination in the slow season. It worked out though. I've decided to go with a theme based around Edward Abbey's book Desert Solitaire. I'll be whittling it down to 20 for the final portfolio.

Photoshelter is one of many websites that have cropped up in the last few years that allow photographers to post their wares online and sell prints. One thing that makes Photoshelter different from sites like Smugmug, Printroom, et al, is the ability to sell rights-managed content as well. The site is aimed squarely at photojournalists and offers some pretty cool features; not the least of which is the ability to upload your photos right from Apple's Aperture software.

As readers know I've recently made the jump to Aperture after trying out Lightroom and previously using Photomechanic in conjunction with Photoshop. And I love it! I won't go into another rant, suffice to say that I'll be sticking with Aperture for quite a while.

Getting back to Photoshelter, I just now am starting to use the service for a small fraction of its full potential. I had previously uploaded photos with the Photomechanic plug-in, just to test it out, but hadn't really explored what else I could do. I'll soon be setting up my Paypal account to accept orders of prints and licensing, and I'll be using Photoshelter rather than Flickr to display my work. The reason for that change is a little fuzzy to even me, but it mostly revolves around the idea that putting your work on Flickr is very similar to publishing it. And if you want to charge publications or advertisers for "exclusive" rights you might not be able to do that if your content is up on Flickr. I'm still debating that in my head, but for now better safe than sorry.

I just finished editing my first quality picture package and handed a CD of it off to Rick Rickman to toss around and see if I can't get some buyers for it or at least a few singles. In the mean time I've also posted the package on my Photoshelter account. You can view the gallery here: Moab Adventure Travel.

Alright... So, I'm home, if you hadn't surmised, and I've been very busy relaxing! My friend Aaron Post, shown here at Presidio Winery in Solvang, California, flew in from Chicago the same night that I got back from Morocco and he's been hanging out with me pretty much ever since. He planned the trip around a 2-day bicycle workshop outside of Santa Clarita, but extended it for a full 12 days of California fun. Without going into too much history we both grew up in Barrington and met at Barrington High School when I was a sophmore and he was a junior there. We're both avid bicyclists, though he's followed his enthusiasm much farther than I did and is currently an amateur triathlete and soon to be an owner of the Mission Bay Cycles shops in the Chicago area.

We've been on 6 rides - road and mountain - in 7 days and yesterday we went up to Solvang to watch stage 5 of the Tour of California. the race was incredible, especially Levi Leipheimer's finish. Afterwards we decided to enjoy some of the wine country's offerings. We found out that there are 14 wine shops in Solvang, and while we only hit 2, we were amazed at that number.

I snapped this shot of Aaron while at Presidio Winery during a tasting of their reds. I'm really happy with my new camera setup: a Caon 5D, here with a 28mm Canon lens. I'll go more into why/how I picked up the 5D later, I just thought this was a really nice portrait and wanted to get it up. I think the 28mm will be on the camera oftern.

I can't decide if my shoulders hurting is from all the bicycle riding I've been doing since coming home or left over from lugging 17 kilos (35 lbs) of backpack around most of Morocco. It's probably a little of both. Ever since I started traveling with my 1D Mark II and 17" Powerbook G4 I've bemoaned their heft. While the speed of the MKII and the wonderful screen real estate of the 17" served their purpose in the past, their weight and size are becoming cumbersome. Thus the reason for my recent bout of swapping out old gear for new.

I spent about 3 hours playing with the Canon remote capture software today and decided it would be a good time to make the little humming bird that lives right outside our kitchen window play model. I put the camera on a tripod and a strobe on a light stand right next to it with a softbox on it. The strobe was needed as the light was going away really quickly. Though also it acted to stop the bird's motion quite well too. I was shooting it earlier but there wasn't as good a pose as I got here.

I'd also used a script I found online to watch the folder that the images were going into and copy them into the Aperture library when they appeared. I sat around for a little while waiting for the bird to show up again, and in the darkening light I saw it. I hit the space bar to take the image then switched over to Aperture and made a few adjustments before I used another plug-in to upload the image to Flickr.

The only sad part is that the Canon Window software, which would allow me to view exactly what's in front of the lens, allowing me to stay completely out of sight, doesn't seem to work with latest version of OS X. So I'll just have to wait until that's fixed to fully enjoy all that the software can do.

All in all, very fun.

I spent a few days with my Nature Photography class in the Big Sur area up north. I was trying to concentrate on a macro photography assignment, but couldn't pass up a number of wide and telephoto shots while I was there. I've added a Flickr album with the best of what I came back with. Click on the image to the right to see the rest of the photos.

or, Why I Love Technology...
Take a look at the comment recently posted on one of the photographs I posted to flickr.com recently:

"WOW! I was surprised to see this online as Eleanor was my mother and I wanted to honor her memory. Limekiln Beach is one of my favorite places to visit and so on Mothers Day of 2002 my children and I went up there for the day. We try to do something fun and away from home each year on Mothers Day since her death. Thank you Aaron for the picture as it touches my heart to see it again. Roseanne"

I'd like to draw your attention to the below video. I found it on YouTube through a link posted in the SportsShooter.com forums. It's a music video from what I gather is a German singer. The video was done by Hagen Decker, a German director and shot entirely with a Canon 1D MKIII. It's a fascinating study of what can be done with the amazing tools that we as creative people have a our command. Watch and enjoy!

Last night I had a lengthy conversation from a good friend and fellow intern. She was bemoaning the number of things her editors were piling on her plate on top of already frenetic photo assignment schedule. Once they found out that she - one of two at the paper - knew how to do audio slideshows, they assigned her to compile audio slideshows for a number of other photographers currently working with her at the New York fashion week events.

This particular friend of mine is a quality over quantity kind of person, like myself, so I could completely understand why she spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking and refining two slideshows. What was astounding was that her editors, when told that the third would have to wait until tomorrow, couldn't understand why things that look good take time. My friend was unsure what to do as she'd already been working incredibly long hours and was paying with her health for doing so. You see, she has Lupus, and despite fending off the germs and struggling her way through arthritic joints thus far, The Wolf has finally caught up with her in the form of a cold. "I've touched subway railings and moments later eaten out of those same hands and been fine so far! Why now?"

This little anecdote brings up two points that I think are important for interns to think about. First, a complicating factor in her problems is her Lupus, though more so that she didn't remind her editors of her limitation after accepting the internship offer (she did state it on her resume), nor did she bring it up when it began to become apparent that her photography assignment schedule was exacerbating the problem. Had she been up front and built a rapport with her editor where she could let him know when the assignments were causing a problem and he could be ready for such a situation, the problem of her burnout may have been avoided. As it is she's worked herself sick.

The second half of the problem is unreal expectations by her editors. This is not, sadly, an solitary incident of an editor that's out of the loop. Instead it is a single example of an problem that is endemic in the industry: asking too much of too few people. There is, of course, something to be said for interns busting their butts to prove themselves and produce increasingly better results within their capabilities. It is an entirely different story when unreasonable expectations are placed on any staff member. As 30 year Daily News veteran Frank Van Riper writes in the August 2007 issue of Digital Journalist:

"The danger, though, is what happens when – in an increasingly bottom-line-hungry climate in which deadlines are constant – news organizations (or, more correctly, the suits upstairs who call the tune) feel they can pile various jobs onto a staffer who is in no position to complain, and still expect to get professional quality results in both words and images."

In the end I advised my friend to do what I think she knew she had to: stand up for herself and her body, and tell her editor what he can expect from her. With only 3 weeks left in the internship they're not going to let her go because of it and she won't come home three-quarters dead. She may not get a glowing review if another paper should call, but from what it sounds like, her editors didn't really pay much attention to her before this, so what kind of review would she get otherwise. Besides, if she (read WE) don't stand up for ourselves and our time now we (she) can't expect our editors to suddenly expect a reasonable amount of work. Once a precedence is set, particularly in new media, that's where the bar will always be. So in the end busting your ass and setting unreal expectations is not in your best interest

UPDATE: I got a little iChat update from my friend last night:

"[I'm doing] much better. Long story short I had a good talk with the editor. Said my quality work takes time, either give me that or I make so so slideshows faster. He appreciated my honesty and gave me 2 days off to recoup. He said I'm too valuable to him this week."

I was given the chance to photograph at Arco Arena for my first ever basketball shooting gig. Well, not so much gig as tagging along with Carl Costas, another Bee photog who was shooting for daily. Carl is an awesome guy, and would be fantastic to tag along with more often. Sadly I'm not here for photography, and I'm outta here in two days. So there goes that idea.. oh well, maybe some other day.

This morning I went to Ivy Lawn Memorial Park cemetery for the Veteran's Day ceremony there. I decided that it might also be a good opportunity to grab a few portraits of some vets. The ceremony was lightly attended, but I managed to grab a few vets from the First United States Volunteers color guard who were milling about before the ceremony. They were joined by a couple of kids from Young Marines and Navy JROTC. The former seaman at right is my favorite portrait of the few I took. Click on the image to see the other portrait I liked enough to post.

For both portraits I used a fairly simple setup of a single flash with a shoot-through umbrella mounted on a light stand just above head-height. Fortunately the skys were a bit overcast or I'd have been pretty severely blowing out the backgrounds. I was trying to mimic to some extent the style of a photographer named Platon, who's work you can see here: http://www.platonphoto.com/index.html