For those of you reading an RSS feed, head over to my website and you will be greeted with a new face. I have updated the design to make it look less like it was created in the 1970’s and bring me into the future. I also completely revamped things behind the scenes, moving away from a platform that I wrote myself to WordPress. I’m very happy with both the new design and the ease and cleanliness of WordPress.
Work has been canceled for me the past two days so I spent the time doing a much-needed portfolio update. I printed out contact sheets of all my best photos and cut them up into tiny little squares to organize them into categories. I came up with some new categories and eliminated some others. I haven’t done a significant update to my portfolio in about 2 years so it feels much better to have my latest work on display instead of old stuff as I’ve gotten much better.
I just got back from Germany. I start my new job on Monday, pending the snow doesn’t make it impossible. I was in Hamburg visiting my friend, Chris. We took a short trip from Hamburg to Berlin. It was quite a trip to Germany. I got my wallet stolen and then recovered (with cash and cards) by the police, we were ditched by our ride back to Hamburg from Berlin, and a 45 minute flight delay because of a little snow in Hamburg caused me to stay an extra night in London. Overall though, it was a ton of fun.
I’ve been shooting with the 1D Mark IV for a little under a month now and I have to say that I really like it. It’s a huge improvement overa all cameras that I’ve owned. My biggest gripe is that I’m unhappy with the ISO performance as I was expecting a performance boost over the 5D Mark II that I loved and instead experienced a downgrade. I have noticed that the files are considerably noisier than the 5D – where I wouldn’t hesitate to go up to 3200, I now think twice about going to 1600 on the 1D.
I’ve been back from Kenya for about two weeks and I’ve finished my photos just in time for my trip to Germany this week.
I’ve really been working on my editing technique which you can see in the photos. We had a lot of fun in Kenya; saw lots of elephants, giraffes, buffalo, baboons, lions, cheetahs, leopards, and more. I flew into Nairobi and visited four parks while there; Sweetwaters, Masai Mara, Lake Nakuru, and Amboseli National Park.
In total, I shot 5,366 photos, 70 videos, totaling 143GB.
All photos are available to see in this gallery.
The photos are geotagged and you can see them on a map by clicking on the “Map This” link above each photo or view all of them here.
New Feature: you can now order prints of the photos right from within the gallery!
I also shot some video directly on my still camera. The Canon 5D Mark II captures really excellent video and, although none of it is production quality because I didn’t have the right supports and wasn’t there to capture video, it’s very interesting to watch nonetheless.
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/8000, f/2.8, ISO 400)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/640, f/2, ISO 400)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/4000, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/30, f/2.8, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 135mm, 1/5000, f/2, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 560mm, 1/640, f/4.5, ISO 640)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 19mm, 1/200, f/9, ISO 50)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/250, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 16mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 400mm, 1/1000, f/2.8, ISO 1000)
I’ve recently purchased a SmugMug account and am going to begin selling photos through the above URL. Check back in a week for my most popular photos now available for purchase online.
Also, you might have noticed that some of the photos are starting to say Canon 1D Mark IV. I’m now shooting with one and love it. I sold my 5DII and now shoot with just 1D’s. I wish I had the 1DIV for my Kenya trip, but it came in the week that I returned. Speaking of Kenya, I’m now editing my 150gb of photos and should have them up within the next few weeks.
I’m graduating in exactly 9 days. I finally finished my Honors Thesis last week, the product of 2 semesters and a summer of research and work. I’ve created a website for it, www.maxwellkruger.com/thesis09. I encourage you to take a few moments to read it and share it with anyone who might be interested.
Abstract:
How can traditional media change to embrace an evolving readership and provide a news product that readers find useful and media corporations can make profitable? Newspapers are facing tough times because of the internet news revolution – news is available instantly, anywhere, and for free. It’s a no-brainer for consumers to get their news online. It no longer makes sense to wait a whole day to see the news, and even less sense to pay for it.
At the same time as readers going online for their news, they have also become capable of creating their own reporting; and at times doing a better job of it than trained professionals. This revolution has emerged from the ubiquity of camera and smart phones. In essence, every person with a camera phone (which is most everyone) is a reporter. The difference is that these reporters no longer have to be dispatched to the scene when something happens. They are already there and capable of capturing and uploading content before a traditional reporter has time to get there.
Through this thesis, I will explore this question of how traditional media can change to embrace new technologies and the concept of citizen media interactions. Although I will focus on newspapers because they are in the most trouble, these concepts can be applied to all forms of media to increase readership and become a more active member of the local community.
As a result of the research I conduct, I will create a prototype to demonstrate many of these concepts. The prototype is a multi-device platform that focuses on community involvement with news media. There will be a web interface and a fully featured mobile phone interface to allow photo, video, audio, and text contributions, discussions, and collaboration.
Here are some more overhead shots from the Women’s Basketball game last night versus Monmouth. It’s a fun angle to shoot from. I’ve found that I get great shots if I overexpose a little bit and focus SLIGHTLY below the rim. I usually autofocus on the rim, then use live view, zoomed in 10x to focus it a tad bit underneath. It would help to have someone down there to focus on, but usually, there isn’t time for that. The 5D Mark II really makes things so much easier, with it’s high res screen and live view for cosuing, high resolution 21mp files for cropping, and clarity at ISO 3200. My only complaint is its low framerate because I sometimes miss key moments.
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 3200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 3200)
(Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 3200)
They all scrambled for the ball at one point toward the end of the game. (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, 300mm, 1/500, f/4, ISO 3200)
