09.30.07 - wings

jon castelli's famous wings...

today has been a crazy day... we danced in church (which is something we NEVER have done) and then me and some friends grabbed lunch and ate it in a graveyard. went and ate jon's wings up at his place and then went to the movies to see the kingdom.

Chris Hidey so nicely pointed out that in August I posted all of 3 times... and in september well... this is my 42nd post.

I set out when I starated this in late August to make this a daily thing and well... i missed a few days but I think this might be the most consistent I've been at anything in my life. Thanks for all the comments they've really helped encourage me to keep going... we'll see what October brings.

bless you guys,
jim baker

freedom.

09.29.07 - glass

glass is real hard to light...

jim baker

09.28.07 - being weird.

artsy? all i know is the bottom of this pic weirds me out...

jim baker

to make up for the last one...

violin revisited... i can shoot the thing, but i sure wish i could play it.

keep the comments coming... its the only thing that keeps me going :(

cheers
jim baker

09.27.07 - don't rush...

todays lessons... don't rush... pay attention to detail... like i really should have taken out all of the dead stuff before i shot it... i should have taken the time to set my white balance...
i guess you rush when you're trying to shoot inbetween work and work.

off to my second job for the day.
jim baker

p.s i can't wait until the day i just get paid to just do photography.

09.26.07 - my nephews room

an old reloj... messin' with my 28-105 fixed at 60 to see how i like the focal length... TAC sharp... yay for tripods, natural light and poster board.

a design on the dresser in my nephews room... i shot in there because theres less stuff in there and the room gets better light than mine.

i don't know if all of you know but when you leave a comment i do my best to reply so check back after you've left a comment.

pz
jim baker

p.s i am getting depressed opening up my blog and seeing the picture below everytime...

responsibility

photo: Kevin Carter

The prize-winning image: A vulture watches a starving child in southern Sudan, March 1, 1993. CORBIS/Sygma © 2006

I'm not sure if i'm breaking copyright laws by posting this picture, I am giving all of the credit due where its needed... it won pulitzer prize and i didn't take it.

I came across this thread today on photo.net and it talked about this picture and the article that goes along with it.

i encourage you to go follow that link and read it and respond here with your thoughts.

jim baker

09.25.07 - it looked cooler in real life

didn't want to shoot tonite... but i forced myself to anyway, went back to this spot i saw it driving home one night. it looks a lot cooler in real life. i need to start keeping a list of places i want to go back to.

pz
jim baker

about a year later it comes full circle

if you've seen this photo of mine... you probably know that it caught some flack for being a poor photo on photo.net a online community i belong to.

a year later after being called
"the worst photo I've seen critique requested"

the drama subsides...
if you're interested, you can read the comments on this picture throughout the past year here.

pz
jim baker

09.24.07 - ohhh man...

jim what do all these polo shirts have to do with anything? thats not a very good picture anyway... and you need an iron man...

well tonite my friend chris hidey and i went out to shoot. we found some places that we thought would be good at sunset lighting but they were in the shade... so it didn't work so we kept running around until we 'found a spot' and just ended back up at lake elkhorn about 10 minutes to late for that real good lighting.

we decided to go out to dinner afterward and were waited on by an old friend. i was talking to chris and then he busts out laughing. We were wearing similar shirts. Its the second time we've done this, last time i ran back in the house to change when he came over, this time I didn't.

So when our waiter comes back I say to him...
"Jon, Chris is being insecure, please proove him wrong, do we look like a gay couple because we are wearing similar shirts."

his response...

"to tell you the truth my manger just asked me if you two were gay."

he wasn't joking.

so my shirts above are as wrinkled as can be because wrinkled is manly hetrosexual... i don't even know how to use an iron...

lol... whatever.

Chris, we need to figure out a way not to wear similar shirts anymore...

quick snap out of chris' winshield on the way to our date... I mean dinner...

i wasn't sure i got anything worth posting tonite but i guess the story makes up for it.

for the record Chris has a beautiful girlfriend in NYC and we're both hetro.

cheers,
jim baker

p.s for Chris' take on the story you can check it out here.

cleaning out my closet.

i'm cleaning out my closet and getting rid of some stuff...

quit smoking last november no plans to go back, i think i kept the pipe because i thought maybe one day i might enjoy a pipe again... i never enjoyed smoking a pipe when i did smoke so who am i kidding, way to much work. i got that pipe in china off the streets, i didn't wash it before i smoked it the first time and i got so sick. i gave up alcohol for 2007 and i've decided that since i associate drinking with smoking, i probably shouldn't drink if i don't want to smoke. i'm not sure i ever really enjoyed drinking all that much either. HORRAY for a bit o self control. more like thank God for grace huh?

i think i'm in love with my tripod. natural light right here, ball head action. look how sharp that pic is. Tac sharp.

pz
jim baker

09.23.07 - wheaton park

Chris Hidey and I were trying to figure out where we wanted to shoot tonite... and Chris gets the award for best location scout ever. He picked Wheaton park, and I expectected it to just be like the parks around here, a path and a fake 'pond' but this place was dope. Its a bit of a hike from my place but i seriously could spend like 2 weeks in this location. It has a series of different gardens and then some ponds. Its the perfect location for macros and I'd love to take portraits there too. Tonight was a fun scouting trip, it was to dark once we got there, the suns setting earlier now, and traffic on 495 sucked.

Messin' with the ballhead... i wasn't sure how functional the ball head really was but I like it. (Does anyone have a reason why i should take the quick release plate off of my camera when i'm just storing my camera or is that okay?)

pretty disgusting bokeh huh?
(thats photography terminology for the blur in the background)
this makes me want to go buy that macro lens even more.

macro photography is going to take a ton of patience, working with a tripod takes a lot more time than I ussualy like to take but hopefully it will pay off.

Tonight was the first time using the tripod but I'm happy with it. I think its light enough that it shouldn't be a problem. Longer hikes I'll probably need to find something else to do with it though.

I need to spend some time cleaning my sensor again... those spots were left over though from the last cleaning. This time I'm going to get it nice and (i wish you could see me trying to figure out how to spell the word I'm trying to spell... i'll just say, nice and good.
(thuro?... thurough? pshh... why can't english be easy?)
i'm to lazy to look it up tonite.

thanks to everyone that posts on a regular basis I really appreciate it. If any of you want to shoot sometime I'd love to kick it with you so hit me up and lemme know.

Hannah Brogi and Sarah Y are the only two that have continued on with our game of tag.
Thank you to them for playing... and the rest of you...

GET ON IT!
jim baker

what has three legs and is really expensive?

my new tripod.

no i'm not resting my nose against it, or picking my nose with it... its just the way the pic came out and its late and i'm not reshooting it.

expensive is a relative term, because i could have spent double what i did spend... but this is a quality tripod and ball head. i wish i was a bit more excited about it, like if i bought a new lens or something... but i guess its a life long neccisity accesory for photographers... so maybe it will grow on me.

pz
jim baker

09.22.07 - lakefront

i woke up this morning at like 6:30am... and was pumped that I was awake I laid in bed for a while thinking of where I could go catch the sunrise... the lakefront... i got outside and realized it was realllllyyyy cloudy... no sunrise this morning buddy. so what do you do when you can't catch a sunrise and the skys BORRING.

shoot other stuff...

yay for water droplets!

i only had my 10-22mm lens with me so shooting macros with a wide angle is quite interesting.

but kind of cool at the same time... i've never been much of a macro fan but i really enjoyed getting a different prespective this morning.

i looked up macro lenses online and i think i might have to invest...

i'm pretty happy with this mornings shoot... i'm off to go hit up route one... breakfast, thrift store, TRIPOD!

pz
jim baker

09.21.07 - somewhere

i hung out with ed today my old youth pastor and we went to gunpowder state park i think? i don't know its the neck of the woods i don't know... we came across this abandoned house... here ya go.

i'm realizing that good photography takes a lonnnggg time. patience. probably a lot of walking to get to good spots... i think i'm gonna go buy a tripod tomorrow.

adios.
jim baker

check this out....

(photo courtesy of Dennis Fahringer)

this is displayed at a shopping mall in Perth Australia...
this was sent to me and I just saw coffe mugs until today when I went through my trash and saw it as a thumbnail... take a step back and look at this picture!!!

wishing i would have thought of this...
jim baker

p.s i went and looked at tripods tonite... i think i got it narrowed down... i'm gonna spend a wee bit more than i wanted to but whatever i think it'll be worth it.

09.20.07 - i'm sorry ms. jackson...

I went to go take pics by this pond in my area but i got there and theres no more pond.

just dirt and some construction vehicles. :(

i think these pics would have looked a lot better if there was a pond there... looking at these i'm realizing they are pretty sloppy work, i'm sorry.

jim baker

09.20.07 - my view

a lil view of what my life looks like at work... this is what i see most of the day... haha, my blogs up on my computer... i've decided that interior photography must be pretty hard to do. these flourescent lights give me a headache, litterally and figuratively when we're talking about lighting. and the other quick snaps i took there were just a lot of distracting things like wires.

i think that there are some things i'm learning about photography, its much easier to start with an attractive subject to begin with, then do the attractive subject justice with proper exposure, composition and make sure its tac sharp, and then a little bit of post will make it pop. but skip any of these steps and you really can't rely on your post work to make up for any of it.

photography has seemed to be my escape latley. i feel like shooting everyday i'm training my eye to see even more, i sometimes get frustrated though because a camera will never see like your eye does, even my ULTRA wide angle lens that i used for this shot doesn't show what i really see.

::sigh:: i should probably be working huh?
jim baker

a pic from last nite...

i loved the composition of this shot and the concept but its not exactly tac sharp so it wasn't executed well. i'm gonna go buy a tripod today... post is a lot easier when you start with a solid image to begin with.

i brought my camera to work today i might take some pics of my office so you can see whats up.

cheers
jim baker

09.19.07 - mcdonalds...

back then...

in the future...



actually... all within the same 2 minutes. just some different post work.
i saw this mcdonalds with mike shoemaker we went out to eat after our centennial shoot and i was like i need to come back here and shoot that place... i haven't eaten at a 'mcevil' in a long time but it was fun to photograph.

pz
jim baker

p.s WHO'S IT?!

logistics...

I've been tagged...

My brain isn't really functioning well tonite so trying to explain this to you probably won't make a ton of sense. I don't ussualy do these 'online games' but this one actually looks kind of fun and it involves photography so i'm down.

This game of tag was started by Mark Wearsch (whom I don't know) and is based on his blog called "innapropriate happiness" (i tottaly laughed out loud at his church story cause I vivdly remember getting that dirty look from my mother growing up in church) and he tagged Rachel Barker (i've added her link to the right) who is an amazing photographer from Ohio. She has been answering a ton of my questions and been extreemly helpful to me... then Rachel tagged me. You can check out how this got to me here.

are you lost? yeah me too... just enjoy the pics and the stories behind them and go click on the links above...



seemingly innocent enough, this was the worship team (mark, me, daiga, ieva) I led this summer to Comitan Mexico... we were working at a korean run education center. we're sitting on the roof eating lots of junk food.

story behind it? well... the students live there full time and no one is allowed on the roof, not even us, and i went up there one night once all the students were in bed and i caught two girls up there eating chips on the corner of the roof, and when i found them they were really scared and they giggled and offered me some chips, i sent them to their rooms but realized that looked like a good time. So the next day I whispered in the ear of each of my team members 'meet me on the roof in 5 minutes and bring what you have.'
Thus the junk food rooftop rendevous. A mexico summer staple.

ahhh markkk... mark is the definition of 'innapropriate happiness' thats why he travels everywhere with me. i love this guy. the picture on the left... spiderman on the mayan ruins... we got CHEWED out for this one by our tour guide... the one on the right... Mark crawling out of a kid play house in a pizza place in mexico...

i like to dabble in the innapropriate also... to the left... this is me peeing off the great wall of china in 2004 (if you look i have the biggest grin on my face) and to the right 'cussin' under the 'no cussin' sign in virginia beach. :)

TAGGGG YOU'RE IT!
(just tagging the regulars that comment on my blog and have blogs)

The rules? Post on your blog pictures of 'innapropriate happines' and captions explaining it. Comment on this post to let me know you did it and then tag someone else! (Oh come on it'll be fun.) This is a nice chance for others to see your human side. :)

AGATE ZALITE

CHRIS BISCHOFF

CHRIS HIDEY

ELIJAH KU

HANNAH BROGI

JEFF STANFORD

KLAVS LIEPINS

LYDIA BISCHOFF

SARAH Y

TIM LEASE

WAYLAN BRAM

09.18.07 - toni

toni is the worship leader from my church and she wanted a new headshot for the church website so thats what i did. the other headdshots are up on the page, i'm not sure what i think... they seem way to inconsistant. :(

pz
jim baker

09.17.07 - centennial park

Centennial park just seems like a columbia md staple... so i went there and shot it last night at sunset... not a cloud in the sky but whatever... a student just dropped by my room that works there and said they might start shutting the boating area down earlier because of 'gangs' ::shakes head::

the location i was really hoping for to turn out didn't turn out at all... but i did get these...

i've been debating on if i should spend the extra $50 for a multicoated polarizer when I buy one... which will be over a $100 accessory... but i seem to shoot into the sun a lot so... i'm thinking i might make the splurge.

i ussualy give people that still shoot film a hard time... but i shot with mike shoemaker last night and he busts out this old school vintage medium format camera... i spent a little bit of time looking at it and i shut up real quick. its pretty rad stuff. this guy knows way more about photography than i do. he was shooting the whole night without a light meter... i'd be blind without a light meter.

and the group shot.

things i am realizing that i really need... another gig of ram for my computer and a friggin' usb card reader cause this pci crap takes forever.

other things i need to buy soon... a tripod :(
and a polarizer

how much do you think those two accessories will cost me?

i'm looking to spend a little over $300 on those to things... i rather put that money towards a new lens but I guess thats the world of photography. expensive accessories.

pz
jim baker

09.16.07 - headshots

sharon

russ

ken

pretty stock headshots for the churches webpage.

I'm not quite sure why the color temps all seem off, I think its just because they were all wearing such solid colors that were all so different... thats just my random guess. it amazed me though how different they could be all i did was change levels a bit to lighten them up a bit... but these pics were all done in the same location with the same settings withen 3 minutes of one another.

jim baker

09.15.07 - early morning, crappy weather, building

i went to this building park? i dunno what to call it... just a place where there are a whole bunch of buildings like this and shot this morning at like 7:30am... this is the only shot i really liked. its not 'tac' sharp... but thats because it was handheld at iso 100 and it was cold out.

tomorrow i'm doing some headshots for the elders at my church.
cheers
jim baker

09.14.07 - heidi and scott

**DISCLAIMER**
if you're offended by the word 'ass' i appolgize... it just really seemed to fit well and its in the kjv bible too so get over it. :)

Anyway... this is a couple from my church and Scotts mom was pressuring Heidi to get some pictures of the two of them done, so Heidi contacted me and told me that situation and conveyed that they weren't too excited about the idea. But i both knew what would make them comfortable... we set a date and time and i just said make sure to bring your cars. :)

scott and his firebird ws6, classic pose

heidi and her camaro and her cute pose

watch how their personailites come out and tottaly are reflected in the cars they drive

heidi's expression is always cute and her car is too

scotts pretty serious in all of these pics and you can tell he's not joking around when it comes to his car

my favorite shot from the night

and of course the group shot... looks like scott can joke around now. :)

this was the most fun shoot i've done in a while.
jim baker