2nd Thirty Days – Day Twenty

2nd Thirty Days - Day Twenty - Erin O'Neill in the photo lab
Biding her time. | Canon 5D Mk. II and Voigtlander 40mm f/2 Ultron lens; exposed 1/200 sec. @ f/2, ISO 400.

One of the last stills I’ll likely make with the Voigtlander 40mm pancake lens before I send it back to LensRentals.com on Thursday is of fellow graduate student Erin O’Neill, seemingly waiting for the day to end while sitting on the counter next to one of the light tables in the photo lab at the University of Missouri.

2nd Thirty Days – Day Seventeen

2nd Thirty Days - Day Seventeen - Jakob's Suited Up
Jakob Berr "suited up" to go to Jarrad Henderson's reception for a display of prints from his master's project, "Beyond This Place." | Canon 5D Mk. II and Voigtlander 40mm f/2 Ultron lens; exposed 1/400 sec. @ f/2.8, ISO 400.
Jarrad Henderson gives a "thumbs-up" at the reception for prints from his master's project, "Beyond This Place," at the Black Culture Center at the University of Missouri.
Jarrad Henderson gives a "thumbs-up" at the reception for prints from his master's project, "Beyond This Place," at the Black Culture Center at the University of Missouri. | Canon 5D Mk. II and Voigtlander 40mm f/2 Ultron lens; exposed 1/100 sec. @ f/2, ISO 800.

2nd Thirty Days – Day Thirteen

Sarah Flagg at the window
Sarah Flagg at the window | Canon 5D Mk. II and 50mm f/1.4 lens; exposed 1/125 @ f/1.4, ISO 320.

One of a series of portraits I’ll eventually be posting, made at the place where I work for my assistantship at the University of Missouri as the photojournalism sequence’s equipment manager.  This is the “window” where students come to check out photo gear to supplement their own to complete assignments and personal projects.

2nd Thirty Days – Day Ten

2nd Thirty Days - Day Ten - Chelsea and John
Chelsea and John | Canon 7D and 24-70mm f/2.8L lens @ 28mm; exposed 1/250 sec. @ f/4, ISO 800.

Today, while walking out of Broadway Brewery from an early dinner–sans $5 pint glass that I paid for, because those are even easier to leave on the table than a to-go box–with John and Chelsea, I let them walk ahead of me because I could sense that something weirdly endearing was about to happen.  Here’s the advantage of Aperture Priority, folks: I dialed it up to f/4 and bumped the exposure compensation to +1 EV because I knew that the cloudy sky would fool the light meter into thinking the situation was more neutral than it really was.

Could I have retained some detail in the sky at +2/3 instead of +1?  Possibly, but I’d rather have the shadow detail.  The sky isn’t what matters in a picture like this.  Furthermore, in post-processing in Adobe Lightroom, I added another stop, so I could have gone even brighter, but I had properly exposed to the right, so this was less of a problem than it sounds.

If I’d been in manual, I would have had to ratchet up my shutter speed very rapidly, and this is something that you don’t always have time to do.  And when you don’t, you’re happy you know how to compensate for the whole scene, and get it right in the first exposure!