Night Photography of the Chicago Skyline with Balanced Exposure Students 8-27-12

What a great evening!  Thirty-five of the Balanced Exposure students joined me as we learned how to photograph the Chicago Skyline.  It was a "sell-out" event and I had to turn down quite a few students who wanted to attend, but 35 is about the limit I can handle and teach properly.

I will offer this again in the future, but due to most of my evenings being taken up with classes at the school itself, this evening was the only one I had open for 2012.

These images were taken with a Nikon D4 and Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens.  The moon photo was taken with the Nikon D4 and a 300mm lens borrowed from one of my students.  It's been cropped tight, but we can still see the craters on the moon.  Too bad it wasn't a full moon, but it was still fun to shoot it.

Professional model Jessica joined us as well so the students were able to try photographing a subject in the foreground while continuing to get a great skyline in the background.

We all had a great time and we will definitely do more of this kind of location classes again.

Fishing with Balanced Exposure Students - August 26, 2012

Another outing with Balanced Exposure students aboard Lucky Dog Charters!

While we did not have the quantity of fish that the last outing had, we got a lot BIGGER fish instead!  In all, we landed 10 out of 11 fish with many of the fish in the 6 to 15.5 lb range with the largest caught by 14 yr old Matt!  He's holding it in the group photo below.

We got two Rainbow Trout (one was mine) and eight Lake Trout.  I ate my Rainbow Trout yesterday and I can tell you it was VERY GOOD!  Not "fishy" tasting at all.

All images taken with a Lumix DMC-LX5 camera.

 

Rustic

Photographed on 8-19-12 during the Photography Field Trip with my Balanced Exposure students.  Nikon D4 / Nikon 60mm f2.8 micro lens.

Moolah Theater and Lounge - St Louis Missouri

This past week, I went to St. Louis, MO with my wife and daughter.  One of the things we did was go to watch The Dark Knight Rises - Batman movie.

After attempting to go in the Chicago area but being unsuccessful in getting tickets to a matinee showing, we decided to see it in St. Louis.  My daughter recommended we go to the Moolah Theater and Lounge which is in the St Louis University campus.  $7.00 per person for a matinee.  Not bad.

But the real surprise was the theater itself.  The seats were all couches!  Loveseats, mostly.  Cozy!  I'd never been in a theater with couches for seating!  Of course the balcony had regular theater seating, but this was definitely different. And, there was a guy who actually played the organ while we waited for the movie to start!  I'd never seen that before!  He was actually really good too!  It reminded me of the old theaters you'd read about in the past where someone played an organ during silent pictures.  Cool!

And after the movie was over, ushers stood near the exits with a basketful of hard candy for you to take on your way out!

Totally unexpected and gratifying experience!  My wife didn't like the loveseat seating though as she felt it gave her a neck-ache having to lean upwards to watch the movie.  Oh well, can't win them all.  But I was happy with it.  Check out the theater if you are ever in the St. Louis area!

August 5, 2012 - Field Trip Students

One of the new techniques that the students learned was how to properly do "Fill Flash" while shooting outdoors.  Just a couple more Field Trips left for 2012!