One Frame a Day

IPC Visual Lab has extend the invitation to its students to produce one picture a day
for the next consecutive 70 days.  We are also extending this challenge to the public,
as part as of a photo competition where the winner wins free classes in Spring 2013
and also gets to be part of Iris PhotoCollective's exhibition in the fall.  If you think you have
the skills then please let us know at ipcvisuallab@gmail.com.  Each image must be
produced in the vein of photojournalism.  No digital manipulation or photoshop trickery,
and definitely no setups.   All images must be by a single photographer with cutlines
and other meta data information.  Good luck, now let see what IPC Visual Lab student,
Zeus Shama, has submitted.

 

Hard to Enjoy: Day 1 

September 22, 2012

This photo breaks my heart and is hard to share.  This is my wife and son sitting on a stone wall down in Key Largo, Florida.  We drove down on a Sunday morning in September to get away from the stress of my current jobless situation but it proved to be more difficult than anticipated.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

No Kids to Play With: Day 2

September 23, 2012

This image is part of the "Down Turn" series  that was shot within a two block radius of my home in Cutler Bay neighborhood of my home in Miami, Florida.  It is late September, the end of Hurricane season, and this backyard has no children as the family that lived in this home abandoned it due to being "upside down on their mortgage".  Families are fleeing their homes not because of natural disasters but man-made ones.

Barren Landscape: Day 3
September 24, 2012
This is an image is also part of the "Down Turn" series that was shot within blocks of my home in Cutler Bay neighborhood of Miami, Florida.  It is  late September, the end of Hurricane season, this is prime plot of land that was scheduled to start construction for a Mall.  But due to the economic downturn in the economy, the project has been abandoned indefinitely.

ZShama

Vacation Experiment

After spending a week in Paris, France I was looking over old photographer books owned by my grandfather.  My grandfather, Bernard, 80, was a paratrooper for the French Special Forces in Algerian War from 1957 to 1958 (Algerian War was a conflict between France and Algerian independence movement from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria gaining its independence from France  - source Wikipedia).  He rarely talks about his wartime adventures and when it is brought up he quickly changed the conversation.  He never showed me any photos of battle just training images.  When pressed, he would pick-up one of many photo books and precede to look at ones with animals.

As a mental refuge from wartime memories, Grandfather would share his photo books on animals.
Never talking (very awkward) he would just look at the pages while turning them at his own pace.

After receiving his first digital camera, Grandfather started documenting his daily life one frame at time and storing them on his computer.  Grandfather for some particular reason would concentrate on two distinctive geese that lived near his farm house.  From that point on, Grandfather would  continue photographing animals in pairs documenting the lives of his animal subjects.

Inspired by his love of animal photography, I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and emulate his photographic style and ventured out to a local horse stable. The perfect opportunity presented itself when my cousin, Antoine, invited me to attend his horse riding class and visit the stable where he kept his horse.

As I arrived, I noticed a rider briskly riding a horse.  I wanted to capture movement as the student

practiced trotting.   Due to lack of light, I first changed my ISO and proceed by lowering my shutter speed to 1/25 so that I capture the  motion blur to create the sense of movement.

After the trotting session and during the cool down stage of classes, Antoine approached his girlfriend and started
a conversation regarding an upcoming competition event.  During the exchange of words,
I noticed "V" created by Antoine's body, the horse, and its rider.  Quickly, I made a frame
slightly tilting the camera in order to get the parts of the saddle. 

As a avid sport shooter, I am use to shooting action. Grandfather taught me the art of slowing down.  To be more observant and finding other ways to express myself other than using words.  

How do you slow down? Share with me your thoughts and pictures that has caused you to stop and ponder.

EBitton

Deering Estate

The Deering Estate at Cutler is a 444-acre preserve at the edge of Biscayne Bay south of Miami. It was the winter home of the Deering family for 70 years before the property and its historic buildings were acquired by the state and Miami-Dade County in the mid-1980s. Now open to tours and nature walks, the estate offered an opportunity to try shooting two subjects I don't often seek out: interiors and nature.

The Beaux Arts home that Charles Deering built in the early 20th century has remained largely unchanged since his death in 1927. Largely empty of furniture, the ballroom and other interior spaces all incorporate natural elements in some way. The ceilings of the ballroom and exterior passageways incorporate shells and ocean imagery, while humidity bends the light from electric lamps. Lush views of palms and pine-rockland habitat through upstairs windows fill rooms now empty of anything except artwork on the walls.

An 18mm-55mm lens gave me a wider perspective than I do with the 50mm prime lens I normally use, allowing me to capture some of the vistas unique to the estate -- specifically the water and the imperiled pine-rockland and tropical hardwood hammock, accessible only from specific paths.  

Golden orb spiders, suspended in a large web, guarded the entrance to one nature trail. They're not poisonous, but they're intimidating; the large one was roughly  the size of my palm. 

JKay