Sequence: First draft

Ruben Porras, 52, has his hair cut at Chistina's Beauty Salon in Columbia, Mo., Saturday, Jan. 23, 2010.

I used two cameras for this -- my Nikon FM3a and my Canon 20D. I ran out of film with the first (less than 10 frames!), so I turned to my Canon. Hence the difference in the third frame. In the end, this was too safe for me, so I wanted to tried something new. See previous entry.

Sequence: My first time-lapse

The Central Missouri Food Bank in Columbia, Mo., moves about 22 million pounds of food to 145 agencies in a year. Here, we see staff unloading food, moving food and loading food over a four-hour period Thursday, Jan. 28, 2010.

This was my first attempt at time-lapse photography. I used the internal intervelometer in the Nikon D3: ISO 3200, f8, 1/60, AWB. There's no story arch, but I learned a lot through the process! Mike DeSantis, the marketing director for the food bank, is also a professional photographer -- he lent me a head and a clamp. I chose the location and perspective, then he helped me secure my camera on a high shelf. He also talked me through my choices of aperture and shutter speed as I set the frame.

I made 600 frames, one every 30 seconds for four hours. When I pulled all the photos into Bridge, I realize all of them were slightly crooked. So I refreshed myself on creating Actions in PS and learned how to do Batch Actions in order to tilt, crop and resize the large chunk of frames.

I then pulled them all into Quicktime Pro, which creates an easy-peesy .mov file. I pulled that into FCP, added a couple freeze frames, a fade in and a fade out. Then I compressed it as a smaller .mov. The result you see here.

Plan to add public-domain music and allow the food bank to use this on its own site.

Dusting off the lens

This is Gaby Perez, 41, who sat beside me while I was having my hair cut on Friday. We chatted in a mix of English and Spanish (although I do not speak the latter), and I found myself drawn to her. She shared about her work at a local restaurant, her family and her desire to visit Paris, France.

Had we not shared in class and had I not read the opening chapters of Lamott's "Bird by Bird," I don't know if I would have pushed myself beyond that awkward inner question of "Should I ask...?" to make this frame. I wasn't sure if she would be open to the idea of someone making her picture while she waited with a plastic bag on her head for her hair dye to set, but she was genuinely touched and smiled with a "yes" when I did ask.

I also posted this on my blog, where I said sharing with Gaby reminded me of why I love photography -- making connections with others. This encounter encourages me to keep my camera at my side. There's no telling who'll I'll bump into next...

Another New Beginning

Anne Lamott writes (p. xxxi) in Bird by Bird, "But I also tell them that sometimes when my writer friends are working, they feel better and more alive than they do at any other time. And sometimes when they are writing well, they feel that they are living up to something. It is as if the right words, the true words, are already inside them, and they just want to help get them out. Writing this way is a little like milking a cow: the milk is so rich and delicious, and the cow is so glad you did it. I want the people who come to my classes to have this feeling, too."